And there she is.
Anna.
Leaving.
Fast.
And okay, that shouldn’t bother me.
I should just keep my head down, finish my damn song, move on with my life like a normal, functioning human.
But instead, my fingers almost falter over the strings, my throat tightening around the next lyric.
Because this isn’t just Anna stepping outside for fresh air.
That much is clear in the way she moves—stiff shoulders, clipped strides, the kind of exit that isn’t just about leaving a place but getting the hell away from something.
From me.
And somehow, I know—deep in that annoying, traitorous part of me that still gives a damn—that I’m the reason.
Which is just fantastic.
Because I wasn’t trying to piss her off.Again.
Hell, I didn’t even know she was here.
And yet, apparently, I’ve developed some kind of personalized Anna Chang Radar, because now that I do know she was here—now that I know she’s not—it’s like I can still feel her absence.
Like she took all the oxygen with her when she left.
Like she left the whole damn room off-balance.
I exhale slowly, forcing my fingers to stay steady on the strings, but something shifts.
The song was already raw, already unfinished, but now it feels hollow in places.Like I’m missing something.
Like the melody doesn’t quite sit the way it should.
Like it’s waiting for somethingmore.
And before I even know what I’m doing, before I can talk myself out of it?—
I find it.
The words slip out, unplanned, tumbling past my lips in a way that wasn’t in the original draft.A line I didn’t write, a feeling I hadn’t meant to put here, but now that it’s out in the open, I know it belongs.
I know it’s hers.
Shit.
I don’t stop.
I can’t.
Because suddenly, this song—this thing I thought I understood, thought I had control over—is shifting under my hands, finding new meaning in real time.
And I don’t know what that means.