Chapter Five: The Distance Between

The lamplight pooled like spilled gold across the floorboards.

Outside, Paris whispered — faint rain tapping glass, like fingers asking to be let in.

Éloïse’s hands trembled as she closed Lucien’s journal.

Words still echoed in her chest, curled like smoke.

“You were the only thing I ever got right.”

She looked up.

Lucien stood across from her — quiet, like dusk before the stars appear.

“I didn’t mean for you to find it,” he said, voice low.

“But maybe… maybe I always wanted you to.”

She didn’t speak. Couldn’t.

Her fingers slid slightly along the table, brushing the edge of the journal.

He stepped forward. Barely.

And then—

Their hands grazed.

A breath. A heartbeat. A pause that bloomed like spring in slow motion.

The space between them shimmered, fragile.

A promise not yet made.

A memory not yet claimed.

“Funny,” Lucien whispered, “how something so small can feel like a beginning.”

Her eyes fluttered closed for half a second — just enough to see a memory:

A summer field.

A younger Lucien chasing dragonflies.

Her laughter in the air, his hand nearly finding hers as they ran.

The past bled into the present.

She opened her eyes.

“And if it’s not a beginning?” she asked.

“Then it’s the page we both forgot how to turn.”

Their hands hovered — still not quite joined.

And then—

“Éloïse?”

A voice from the hall. Distant. Familiar.

Her body tensed.

Lucien pulled his hand back — a flicker of hesitation, swallowed by old restraint.

Éloïse turned toward the sound, jaw tight.

“I should go,” she said, though she didn’t move.

Lucien nodded, the shadows swallowing the softness from his eyes.

“Of course.”

But as she stepped away, she could still feel the ghost of that near-touch burning against her skin.

Not a kiss.

Not a confession.

Just a moment.

Unfinished.

🎬 BTS: teaser

Lucien, After the Door Closes

The echo of her name still lingered in the hallway.

Éloïse. Called by someone else.

Claimed by someone else.

Lucien didn’t move.

The air where her hand had hovered still felt warm, electric — and infuriatingly empty.

He exhaled sharply.

“Of course it had to be him,” he muttered under his breath.

He ran a hand through his hair, pacing.

Was it the patron? The ever-so-charming art investor?

Or that bloody historian who always smiled too wide around her?

“God forbid she gets a full minute to think without someone dragging her back to their world.”

His eyes drifted to the journal she had left behind — slightly ajar, like a door half-opened.

He wanted to believe she had read the truth in those pages.

That she had felt something in the silence between their hands.

“You found it, didn’t you?” he whispered to the room. “But did you find me?”

He leaned against the table, jaw clenched.

“Next time,” he said, “I swear I won’t let anyone steal that moment from us.”

His fingers traced the edge of where her hand had been.

Almost.

Always almost.

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