บททั้งหมดของ A Yearning Beyond Years: บทที่ 71 - บทที่ 80

Noah's POV:The world hadn’t stopped when she left. But something inside me had. Something quiet and deep and too familiar now, like a permanent echo of the day she looked me in the eyes and told me she never loved me.It was 5:13 a.m. The same time I had been waking up every morning since Stacey shattered my heart. It wasn’t by alarm anymore, my body just knew. Like it had decided if my heart was going to ache, it might as well ache while I chased something worth it.The finals were in five days.I sat up, the grey light of early dawn pouring through my apartment window. My sheets were a tangled mess, evidence of another restless night. I hadn't been sleeping. Not well. But that didn’t matter. All that mattered now was training. Breathing. Running. Dunking. Winning.I stood, cracked my neck, and headed for the shower. Cold water. Sharp. Cleansing. I needed to feel anything other than the twist in my chest every time I remembered how she had said the words like they meant nothing. "Yo

Noah's POV:The morning of the final game arrived with an unsettling stillness. I woke up before the sun did.The room was still cloaked in shadows, the only light coming from the streetlamp outside filtering through the half-open blinds. My alarm hadn't gone off yet, but sleep had long abandoned me. I lay there, staring up at the ceiling, heart pounding in a strange mix of anxiety and fire. Today was the day. The finals. The game that could change everything. Today felt sacred. Like I was walking into something bigger than myself. I sat up and swung my legs off the bed, rubbing the back of my neck as if I could massage away the tension building there. It wasn’t just a game. Not anymore. It was the game, the one I’d thrown myself into like a man possessed. Ever since Stacey ended things, I’d trained like hell, refusing to let the pain slow me down. If anything, I used it. Every sprint, every jump shot, every sweat-drenched morning was a scream echoing from the hollow space she’d lef

Stacey's POV:Time has a strange way of moving when you’re not in a rush and your days are both full and quiet. With two kids, you’d think time would drag me around like a rag doll, but it didn’t. Sometimes, it stretched thin, like it was teasing me, daring me to see how much I could do before it snapped. Other times, I’d blink, and an entire week would be gone, swallowed up in feedings, laundry, playtime, and the low hum of the city outside. France had been like that for me, a blur stitched together by mornings scented with coffee and baby powder, afternoons tangled in crayons and lullabies, and evenings where I’d watch the sun melt into the rooftops of Lyon, some older than the history books I’d once read. When I first came here with Michael, I thought I’d be restless. I’d imagined I’d get tired of doing nothing, that I’d start counting the days until I felt “ready” to start working again. But somehow, the quiet didn’t suffocate me. Maybe it was the streets of Lyon with their cobb

Stacey’s POV:When I finally decided to stop hiding, it didn’t feel like some grand, cinematic moment. There were no fireworks, no lightning strikes of clarity. It was quieter than that.It was me, one evening, staring at the neat stack of papers on my desk while Micheal washed the dinner dishes in the kitchen and the kids giggled over some cartoon in the living room. My manuscript. My confession. My truth.And I whispered to myself, I’m going to do it.The next day, I opened my laptop and researched publishers, agents, and editors. My heart pounded with every click, as if simply searching made this decision irreversible. I sent out emails, carefully worded, formal but laced with the raw urgency of someone with something that needed to be heard.Then I waited.The waiting nearly drove me mad. Every morning I checked my inbox like it was oxygen. For days, silence. For weeks, polite rejections, “not the right fit,” “not what we’re looking for at the moment,” “beautiful writing but does

Michael’s POV:I hadn’t felt this kind of restless joy in years.It hummed in my chest like a quiet, constant rhythm, a mix of anticipation, hope, and something dangerously close to certainty. Stacey’s words from that night after the party had lodged themselves firmly in me: I’m ready to move on.I knew she hadn’t said it with a diamond in mind, not the way I had heard it. She meant she was ready to live again, to let the past be the past, to grow without carrying the shadow of a man who had broken her heart. The way the words had left her lips, steady, honest, resolute, lit something fierce in me.And I couldn’t stop imagining.This time, if I proposed, it had to be perfect. No half-hearted gesture, no rushed question mid conversation, no subtle hint hidden inside an ordinary day. Stacey deserved more than that. She deserved something worthy of her courage, her resilience, her quiet strength. She deserved to feel chosen, celebrated, and adored.So I started planning. Slowly, quietly,