His scars

HIS POV:

Rain taps on the café window like it’s trying to get in. It’s cold outside, but here, she’s warm, calm, and settled into her usual corner.

Hair twisted into a messy knot, sleeves rolled up, a paperback in her hands. She’s been coming here every morning for months. Orders chamomile tea without even looking at the menu.

She always reads something with a glossy cover—probably something romantic, but I never get close enough to know for sure.

I don’t need to. I’ve watched her enough to memorize the details.

The way her fingers wrap around the mug. The little scar under her collarbone—I don’t know where it came from, but it feels like it matters.

Like it's part of the story I’m not allowed to hear yet.

Then her eyes flick up.

She sees me.

For a second, I wanted to look away, pretend I wasn’t staring. But I don’t. I hold her gaze. I’ve seen people flinch when I look at them like that, like I’m peeling back layers.

But not her. She doesn’t look away. If anything, she leans in, lips curling just slightly like she’s been expecting this.

“Watching from afar again, aren’t we?” she says.

It knocks the breath out of me, but I don’t let it show. My heart stumbles, yeah—but my voice stays steady.

“You always walk toward me instead of away.”

She laughs. Not a soft laugh, not kind or sweet. It’s sharp, a little bitter. Like she’s used to being alone and doesn’t trust anyone who gets too close.

But still—she doesn’t leave.

She studies me like I’m the next chapter she’s deciding whether to skip or read slowly. Then she asks, “So, what have you figured out about me?”

I think about lying. Playing it cool. But what’s the point?

“That you drink tea like you’re trying to quiet something inside,” I say. “And that you sit in that corner because it makes it easier to see the door.”

She doesn’t smile this time, but she doesn’t walk away either. Just closes her book, slides it into her bag, and stands up like she’s about to leave. I panicked for a second, thinking maybe I pushed too far. But then I say it before I can stop myself.

“Tomorrow,” I tell her. “Same time. I’ll bring coffee. Or something stronger.”

She pauses at the door. Looks back.

“You’re bold,” she says.

I shrug. “Only around you.”

A smile breaks through, small but real. “Alright then,” she says. “Let’s see if you’re still around tomorrow.”

And then she’s gone—into the rain, into the noise. But she left something behind. A hook in my chest. A reason to show up again.

And I will.

Her POV:

I’ve read enough thrillers to know when someone doesn’t just enter your life—they infiltrate it. Quiet. Methodical. Lethal in the way they make you forget how to breathe.

He does that.

He’s always there, like a secret folded into the corner of every room. Rain-spattered windows at the café. The echoing office hallway. Even tonight, at a party I didn’t want to come to, he’s just… there.

“You’re staring again,” I say, keeping my voice casual, like my pulse isn’t a damn drum solo.

He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t blink. Just tilt his head slightly, gaze molten and unreadable. “So are you.”

I tuck my hair behind my ear, more for something to do than any real coyness. “Do you always stalk people you haven’t officially met?”

“That depends.” He steps closer, and the air shifts, heavy with something electric and old. “Do you always talk to men you know are dangerous?”

God. His voice. Low, deep, and precise.

“You don’t scare me,” I lie.

He smirks like he’s read that line straight from my bones. “That’s not the same as saying I’m safe.”

He’s right, of course. Nothing about him feels safe. Everything about him feels like a countdown I chose to ignore. And yet, I can’t look away.

He thinks I’m sweet. Soft. All tucked away in my bubble of books and biting sarcasm. But I see him. I see him—the tension held beneath his skin like a coiled wire, the cracks spider-webbing behind his eyes.

I wonder if he knows I’ve imagined tracing the scar above his collarbone. A hundred different scenarios. A thousand different endings.

Tonight, I’ll step into his orbit. Close enough to touch it. Close enough to change it.

And maybe, just maybe—I won’t write him out.

Maybe I’ll rewrite myself.

His POV

She touched me like she had the right to—fingers skimming the scar carved into my chest, that jagged memory I never let breathe in daylight. I stilled, every muscle taut. She didn’t flinch, didn’t ask for permission. Just pressed her thumb to the mark like she could soothe it—like she wanted to.No one’s ever dared that. They look, they speculate, they retreat. But her? She claimed it.

“Why?”

Soft. Steady. Her voice was a tether and a blade, slicing through the armor I’d worn for years.

I looked away. Couldn't meet those eyes—too bright, too honest.

Still, I answered.

“Because I’m waiting for someone who sees more than just the mask.”

The words tasted like blood and truth. I shouldn’t have said them. I didn’t owe her that.

But she didn’t recoil. Her gaze burned brighter, soaking in the pieces of me I hadn’t meant to give. That look—like she saw me and didn’t turn away—threatened everything.

I wanted to disappear. Fade into smoke and vanish, like I always did when things got real. But she smiled—soft, crooked, brave. And somehow, for the first time in years, I wanted to stay.

Even if it meant letting her tear me apart.

Her POV:

He thinks I’m chasing safety. That I’ll get too close to the edge and flinch, retreat to the light like all the others before me. He hasn’t realized—I was born in the dark. I don't fear his shadows. I intend to own them.

I step into the storm of his silence, not to calm it—but to challenge it. To coax out the confessions he’s buried beneath grit and bone. My voice lowers, velvet laced with gunpowder.

“I want to kiss every scar you tried to forget… to prove they’re real.”

He flinches like I struck him. Not in pain—but recognition. His lip trembles. He takes a step forward, then another, until there’s nothing between us but air and heat and the lies we’re done pretending to believe.

He’s so close I feel it—the tremor in his chest, the war in his breath. He’s not unbreakable. No, he’s a fortress that chooses not to fall. That’s the difference.

And that’s what makes him perfect.

I don’t want easy. I want him, trembling and towering and barely holding it together. I want the moment he finally shatters—because I’ll be the one he breaks for.

I smile. Sweet. Dangerous. I savor this—the delicious unraveling.

Because tonight, the monster isn’t him.

It’s me.

His POV

She’s a storm I never saw coming—

Not the kind that warns, not the kind you survive untouched.

She’s beautiful in the way lightning is—danger wrapped in awe.

And I? I’m the fool who stepped into the downpour without an umbrella or an exit strategy.

When her lips find the scar on my chest, time stutters. The past quiets.

All I know is her—

The way she doesn’t ask, doesn’t hesitate. Just claims.

A hundred confessions burn behind my teeth, but I say none.

I only echo the word she gave me, the only one that matters anymore.

“Stay.”

And God help me—

I do.

Her POV

He’s my favorite plot twist.

The kind that flips the page when you thought the story was ending.

He’s silence and smoke and scars stitched into skin like secrets.

And I’ve chased him for chapters, through shadows and silence,

Refusing to be just another reader.

Now?

I’m the co-author.

His breath is uneven, like the truth’s trying to claw its way out.

But I don’t need declarations. I don’t need grand gestures.

Just him.

So I press my lips to the wound he tried to forget, and I write the first line of us.

Not clean. Not perfect.

Just real—

One jagged sentence at a time.