Prologue - Before everything

The night June Rivas decided to leave, the town felt too small to breathe in.

It was the kind of night where everything was too quiet — where the waves hitting the harbor wall sounded louder than they should, where the air felt heavy with things left unsaid. The crooked lamppost by the old diner buzzed and flickered, the only living thing on a street lined with shuttered windows and fading signs.

She sat on the hood of her car, staring out at the dark strip of water where the bay met the sky, a duffel bag slumped at her feet.

It had taken her months to make the decision.

Weeks to find the courage to say it out loud.

Thirty days to convince herself she was ready.

She wasn’t ready.

But she was going anyway.

The town had stopped feeling like home a long time ago — somewhere between broken promises and restless mornings, between people she couldn't save and places she couldn't stay. It had turned into a cage made of familiar streets and familiar disappointments. Every corner of it carried a memory she didn't want anymore.

She told herself she was moving toward something — not just running away.

New job. New city. New life.

It was easier to believe that in the dark, where nobody could call her a coward.

Her fingers drummed absently on the metal of the car, a restless rhythm against the cold. She imagined the road stretching out in front of her, endless and waiting, full of places where nobody knew her name, nobody asked her to stay longer than she wanted to.

Freedom.

Still, when she closed her eyes, she could feel the weight of all the goodbyes she hadn't said yet pressing down on her chest.

Leo.

Her dad.

The old woman at the bookstore who slipped extra receipts into her bag just to have an excuse to talk.

She was already leaving them. She just hadn't told them yet.

Not far from where she sat, across town on a narrow street lined with sagging houses, Ezra Holt pushed the last of his suitcases into a corner of his father’s living room. The house smelled like dust and memories, like old coffee and wood that had been left to rot in the rain. He should have felt relieved to finally be somewhere that didn’t ask him to keep moving.

Instead, he felt lost.

Ezra had spent years chasing places that felt alive, places bursting with strangers and stories. Cities that never slept. Landscapes that begged to be captured in photographs. Always believing he could outrun the heavy, tangled thing inside him — the thing that said he didn’t belong anywhere for too long.

But now he was here. Back in the town he once promised himself he’d never return to.

Back in a place he thought he’d outgrown.

At that moment, Ezra and June were just two restless souls orbiting the same tired streets, unaware of each other. Two people carrying heartbreaks they didn’t know how to name. Two people convinced that leaving — or staying — was the answer.

Neither of them knew that thirty days could change everything.

Neither of them knew that sometimes the wrong time is exactly the right time.

And that sometimes, the hardest promises to keep are the ones you make to yourself.

But the clock had already started ticking.

And their story — messy, painful, beautiful — was already waiting.

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