Semua Bab Almost Yours: Bab 1 - Bab 10

After the pineapple cake, Rihanna stopped pretending this was nothing.They didn’t meet.They didn’t even suggest it.But they talked.Every day.It started small. A good-morning message. A joke about how bad lockdown food was getting. A late-night question that didn’t need answering.Then it grew.Rihanna woke up to Dennis’s name on her screen and fell asleep with it still there. She learned the rhythm of his attention — when he replied instantly, when he disappeared for hours, when he came back with something thoughtful like he hadn’t gone anywhere at all.She told herself not to read into it.She failed.Sometimes the conversations were playful.Dennis: You’re impossible.Rihanna: You started this.Dennis: No regrets.Other times, they slowed into something quieter.They talked about childhood memories. About the strange loneliness of being surrounded by people who thought they knew you. About how silence felt louder during lockdown.Dennis asked questions no one else ever had.Wha

Rihanna didn’t sleep much that night.Every time she closed her eyes, she felt it again—the weight of Dennis’s mouth, the certainty in the way he’d leaned in, like the decision had already been made long before either of them admitted it.By morning, her phone was warm in her hand.No messages.She told herself not to panic. Not everything needed instant reassurance. Not everything meant something.Still, when her phone finally buzzed around noon, she answered immediately.Dennis:Morning.Just that.No Glonkey.No teasing.No mention of the kiss.She typed and erased three replies before settling on something neutral.Rihanna:Morning. You disappear easily.Three dots appeared.Then stopped.Then appeared again.Dennis:Busy day.Something in her chest tightened.They texted lightly through the afternoon, but the rhythm was off. Dennis replied slower, shorter. He asked what she was doing—but didn’t share much himself.By evening, Rihanna felt restless again.She posted an Instagram s

Rihanna didn’t plan to see Dennis the next day.She told herself she needed space. Time to think. Time to remember who she was before every thought started orbiting around someone else’s comfort.But Willow Creek didn’t believe in distance.She was halfway through her afternoon walk when she saw his car parked near the curb, engine off, door open. Dennis stood beside it, phone in hand, like he’d been waiting—or like he’d just arrived and hadn’t decided which excuse to use yet.Her steps slowed.He looked up.Their eyes met.“Hey,” he said.She almost kept walking.Instead, she stopped a few feet away. “You didn’t text.”“I figured you might not want to talk.”“And yet here you are.”A corner of his mouth lifted. “I didn’t want to leave it weird.”“It already is.”Silence stretched between them, thick and uncomfortable. Jack barked once from the back seat, tail thumping against the door like he was trying to break the tension himself.Dennis exhaled slowly. “Can we talk?”Rihanna hesit

Rihanna woke to silence.The rain had stopped sometime before dawn, leaving the air heavy and clean, like the world had been reset without her permission. For a few seconds, she lay still, staring at the ceiling, her body remembering what her mind wasn’t ready to process yet.Dennis was gone.The window was shut. Her room looked untouched. If not for the ache in her chest and the echo of his voice from the night before, she might have convinced herself it hadn’t happened.Her phone buzzed.She reached for it immediately.Dennis:Last night shouldn’t have happened.The words knocked the air from her lungs.She sat up slowly, reading it again. And again.No are you okay.No I miss you.No acknowledgment of how he’d shown up soaked and desperate, how he’d said he couldn’t stop thinking about her.Just that.Last night shouldn’t have happened.Another message followed seconds later.Dennis:I don’t want things getting complicated.Her hands went cold.She didn’t reply.What was there to s

It started quietly.Late-night walks returned like a habit neither of them admitted they’d missed. No texts announcing it. No plans. Just Rihanna stepping outside after midnight and finding Dennis already waiting, hands in his pockets, eyes following her like he’d been counting minutes.They didn’t talk much at first.They didn’t need to.The streets were empty again, the town asleep, the kind of stillness that made everything feel possible and dangerous at the same time. Their shoulders brushed. Their fingers found each other without ceremony. It felt like slipping back into something familiar—something they both knew they shouldn’t trust yet.But they did.They ended up at the pond.Of course they did.The water was black and glassy under the moonlight, the trees leaning in like they were keeping secrets. It was too dark, too quiet, too far from reason.Dennis stopped walking first.Rihanna turned to face him, heart racing before anything happened.“This is a bad idea,” she said sof