Free Words

He was just a colleague. They barely spoke. They didn’t share friends or moments or memories—nothing that could justify this pull. And yet, there it was. A connection she couldn’t explain, something that drew her toward him despite how little she truly knew him.

Still, she felt it—this quiet certainty that whatever she was feeling, he felt it too.

And that look… it always left her wondering what it would be like to close the distance between them, to feel his lips against hers, to let that unspoken tension finally find its way into something real.

Prologue

She still remembered the first time she laid eyes on him.

It was well past midnight. She sat by the dorm window, crying over a breakup that barely deserved her tears. Her boyfriend had left her for Stephanie, the new girl on campus.

She wasn't heartbroken.

Not really.

She knew they wouldn't last. Stephanie was just a distraction, another pretty face that would eventually lose its shine. What hurt wasn't losing him—it was being replaced. It was the blow to her pride, the realization that someone else had been chosen over her.

As she wiped away the last of her tears, movement outside caught her attention.

A man stood beneath the streetlight, a cigarette resting between his fingers. Smoke curled lazily into the cold night air as he waited.

For someone.

She knew because, seconds later, a girl came sprinting toward him. She threw herself into his arms as if the rest of the world had disappeared. He laughed softly, wrapped an arm around her waist, and kissed her without hesitation.

She couldn't look away.

Not because of the kiss.

Because of what she saw in it.

The certainty. The ease. The kind of longing she'd only ever watched in movies.

She wished she knew what that felt like.

She never had.

Maybe that was why every relationship she'd ever been in ended the same way.

You're so cold.

Do you even love me?

I can't tell what you're feeling.

Maybe they were right.

She had cared for people before, but never like that. Never enough to run into someone's arms as if they'd become her home.

Then the stranger looked up.

His eyes met hers through the window.

For a heartbeat, neither of them moved.

Heat rushed to her cheeks.

Instead of looking away, he smiled.

Then he winked.

It was shameless.

Completely inappropriate.

And, somehow...

incredibly attractive.

She didn't know his name.

She didn't know why he was looking at her instead of the girl in his arms.

She only knew that when she finally crawled into bed that night, she wasn't thinking about her ex anymore.

why does being myself feel like the hardest thing to be?

i move through the world in borrowed faces, soft lies stitched into smiles, shapeshifting into whoever feels safest to be.

a different mask for every room, a different version of me for every pair of eyes— until i can’t tell which one is real anymore.

i carry my pain quietly, like it’s something shameful, like my scars are stories i’m not allowed to tell.

because what if they see me— really see me— and decide i’m too much, or worse, not enough?