Ayla didn’t touch her journal for the rest of the afternoon, not because she didn’t want to, but because she couldn’t, she sat on the bed where she’d left it, closed, silent but louder than anything else in the room.“Still writing everything down?”The words replayed in her head, over and over again, too casual, too sure, too specific. Ayla paced the room slowly, arms folded, trying to make sense of it. There were some things Ayla would never say out loud, not to Lina or to anyone, not even to herself—at least, not in a way that made them feel real because once something was said out loud, it changed and it became something you had to face, something you had to own and Ayla wasn’t ready for that, so instead, she wrote. Her journal sat exactly where she had left it, tucked beneath the loose wooden panel in her bag, hidden between her clothes like it was something fragile, she pulled it out and stared at the worn cover for a moment longer than necessary, her fingers traced th
Last Updated : 2026-04-09 Read more