All Chapters of Only His On Paper: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

Ava’s POVThe sun was rising, but it didn’t feel like a beginning.It felt like exposure.Light spilling over everything I couldn’t outrun.The headlines. The whispers. The worst part wasn’t what he said.It was how steady his voice was when he said it.Like it didn’t cost him a thing to doubt me.Like all the moments we shared, everything we survived could be erased with one look at aheadline.Lily stirred beside me on the train, her head tucked under my chin.So small. So still.She felt light in my arms, but heavy in all the ways that mattered.Too fragile to be out of a hospital bed.Too fragile to be caught in the middle of any of this.But I carried her anyway.Because no one else would.Because I couldn’t leave her behind, even if that meant leaving everything else.I kept one arm wrapped around her, like maybe I could still protect her from the noise, the world, the wreckage.But my other hand wouldn’t stop shaking.My phone screen glowed in my lap—still open to Naomi’s messag

≈ Ava’s POVThe sea kept its own time.Every evening at six-thirty, the tide reached the rocks beneath the little bookstore-café and sighed like an old friend coming home. I learned to close the cash drawer by the rhythm of those waves, to stack the chairs before the gulls settled on the rail. Out here, on this forgotten stretch of coast, the world shrank to things I could hold: a chipped mug, a paperback that smelled of salt, my sister’s steady breathing as she napped upstairs.Lily had good days now. Better days than the city ever gave her. The damp air seemed to loosen her lungs; the silence let her sleep. I’d pushed two mismatched armchairs together and called it a sofa so she could watch the water when she woke. She said the horizon looked like freedom. I told her that was a dangerous word.I didn’t tell her how much I needed it too.Most nights, after I locked the front door, I sat at the counter and wrote lists on the backs of receipts. Rent. Medication. Groceries. Lies I would

Ava’s POV⸻I looked down at the photo again.He wasn’t smiling.But he looked lighter.Like he’d finally put something down.The letter sat beside me, haunting in its silence. The kind of silence that didn’t echo—it swallowed you whole.Naomi’s hand brushed my shoulder, steady, grounding. “Say something,” she whispered.I couldn’t. Not yet.Because somewhere between his last word and the missing signature, something inside me cracked.“I should go to him,” I finally murmured.Naomi said nothing.“But I won’t.”She let the quiet stretch.“I can’t leave Lily,” I added. “She’s still healing. She needs to be calm. And what if I go there and… and he’s already moved on? What if I become the girl who always runs toward the person who leaves first?”Naomi shifted. “He didn’t move on, Ava. You saw the photo.”I nodded. “I did.”And still, I didn’t move.—By morning, I packed what little we had into a small duffel bag—one for me, one for Lily. Naomi had arranged a place for us weeks ago: quie

Ava’s POV⸻The sea kept coming.That’s all it did. Just wave after wave, like it didn’t care who was standing on the shore watching. Sometimes I told myself that was a strength. Other times I knew it wasn’t.It was just what happens when you forget how to stop.I was putting books away behind the counter, not really thinking about the titles. Just moving. The wind tapped against the windows like it had something urgent to say but kept forgetting the words. Lily was upstairs humming something soft. Off-key. Familiar in a way I couldn’t name.The bell on the café door rang here and there. It always did. Locals. Strangers. A woman who only came in for warm bread and left with poetry she never meant to buy.Two days had passed.Since Damian.Since I saw him vanish into fog and choked on a goodbye I never meant to say aloud.I hadn’t touched the letter. Not once.Not because I didn’t want to but because once I opened it, the truth would be real. And once it was real, I’d have to feel all

Ava’s POV⸻We didn’t move.Lily had gone upstairs, but neither of us said anything. We just… stayed like that.The rain was still tapping on the window. Same steady sound. Like it didn’t care that everything had changed inside.No documents between us. No script. No mask. Just the quiet. And his hand, still holding mine.He didn’t let go.Even when I crossed the room to switch off the lights. Or when I turned the lock on the door. He stayed close, quiet. No pressure. No moves.And maybe that’s why I didn’t ask him to leave.Because for the first time… we weren’t pretending.—We didn’t say much the next morning either.The rain hadn’t stopped. Just kept going like a rhythm we were already used to. The sea sounded rougher outside, and the quiet between us felt full but not heavy. Just there.Like air after you’ve been underwater too long.I was barefoot, wiping down the counter, not really thinking when the bell over the door rang.It wasn’t soft. It rang like someone who knew why the