Six More Days Of Us
Aubrey's Pov
How ethereal could one person be?
I had never been a believer—not in fate, not in divinity, and certainly not in anything that could not be reasoned, measured, or understood.
And yet—
if someone were to ask me, with complete sincerity, to offer a logical explanation for how a woman like Emma could exist—so composed, so captivating, so... impossibly herself—
I would find myself at a loss.
Because there was nothing rational about her.
Nothing that could be broken down, analyzed, or explained with the precision I had always relied on.
If I were forced to answer—
truly forced—
I suspect I would have to abandon reason altogether.
And say—
that she was not something meant to be understood.
But something... borrowed.
A fragment of something untouched.
Something unearthly.
As though she were a piece of paradise that had found its way into a world that had no right to contain her.
And no measure of knowledge—
no matter how vast, how meticulous—
could ever justify how she came to be.
There was no possibility of remaining unaffected.
Not when she sat across from me—real, tangible, entirely within reach.
The thought alone was enough to unsettle me.
Emma.
Here.
With me.
We were sharing a table, a conversation, a moment that should have been ordinary—and yet, nothing about it felt so. Not when every quiet glance, every measured word, seemed to carry a weight I could neither ignore nor dismiss.
And for the next six days—
I would see her again.
The realization settled slowly, almost dangerously, threading its way through my thoughts with a quiet insistence that bordered on indulgence.
Six days.
Six more opportunities to observe her, to understand her, to gather the pieces she so carefully revealed and concealed in equal measure.
It should not have affected me the way it did.
And yet—
The mere thought of it was enough to leave me... intoxicated.
And yet—
Somewhere beneath the quiet ease of the evening, something in me resisted.
Not enough to disturb the moment. Not enough to alter my expression or the way I carried myself.
But enough to question.
Quietly.
Carefully.
How could a mere café worker possess such effortless refinement?
It wasn't studied. It wasn't the kind of precision one acquires through observation or careful mimicry.
It was... innate.
The way she held her glass—elegant, but unthinking, as though she had never needed to learn it.
The way she navigated the table setting—each movement exact, unhesitating, untouched by the smallest flicker of doubt.
There was no pause.
No second-guessing.
Only certainty.
And then there was this place.
A space that demanded a certain awareness—a certain composure that even the well-acquainted sometimes struggled to maintain.
Yet she did not falter.
Not once.
She stepped into it as though she belonged here.
As though she had always belonged here.
As though this world—the quiet luxury, the unspoken expectations, the subtle weight of refinement—was not foreign to her, but familiar.
Returned to.
The thought lingered.
Uncomfortable.
Unsettling.
Because it did not align. Not with what I had been told. Not with who she claimed to be.
For a brief moment, I allowed the possibility to surface—that there was more to her than she revealed. Far more. And that I had only been permitted to see fragments.
But just as quickly—
I dismissed it.
Or attempted to.
Because the alternative required questions I was not yet willing to ask. And answers I was not certain I wanted to hear. My attention drifted back to her. To the way she ate. Without restraint. Without the careful self-awareness that often accompanies such settings.
There was no performance in it. No quiet attempt to impress. Only enjoyment.
Simple. Unfiltered.
And strangely—
that affected me more than anything else.
I hadn't touched my food. Not truly.
The plate before me remained almost untouched, a mere formality I had yet to fulfill.
But watching her—
watching the ease with which she surrendered to something so small, so ordinary—
It did something to me.
A warmth settled in my chest, unfamiliar and uninvited, but not unwelcome.
It felt... absurd.
To be affected by something so insignificant.
And yet—
It lingered.
As though her presence alone—
her quiet contentment, her unguarded moments—
were enough to satisfy something in me I had not realized was lacking. Enough to leave me... full. I considered, briefly, suggesting she take more with her. The thought formed with an ease that surprised me. As though ensuring she had more—ensuring she left with something—mattered in ways I could not entirely justify. But I did not voice it.
Some instincts, I understood, required restraint.
Especially when I had yet to determine whether they were born of reason—
or something far more dangerous.
Emma felt like something I had long denied myself—a quiet disruption in the relentless weight I had grown accustomed to carrying. Being near her was like taking a breath I had not realized I had been holding, unsteady and unfamiliar, yet undeniably necessary. And with that came something far more dangerous than I was prepared to acknowledge: the quiet realization that there was still beauty left in this world. Not something distant or remembered, but something real, something present, sitting just across from me.
It was not a thought I trusted.
I was not someone who believed in such things anymore—not after him.
The memory never arrived gently. It never softened with time, nor did it fade into something distant and manageable. It remained sharp, intrusive, threading itself through even the smallest moments of stillness with an insistence I could not ignore. It did not ask to be remembered; it simply existed, unrelenting.
I had failed him.
There was no softer way to frame it, no version of the truth that could make it easier to bear. I had not been there when it mattered, had not seen what I should have seen, had not done what I should have done. And that failure did not lessen with time. If anything, it deepened, turning inward until it became something I carried within myself, something constant, something inescapable.
There were moments when I resented it—resented the memory, the weight of it, the way it shaped everything that came after—but more than anything, I resented myself. For the absence. For the oversight. For the silence that had cost everything.
And yet, beneath that, buried somewhere I rarely allowed myself to reach, there lingered something far more dangerous: a quiet, reluctant desire to let go. To step away from the past. To stop reliving a moment that had already taken more from me than I could ever hope to reclaim.
But I couldn't.
Not yet.
Perhaps not ever.
Because the guilt outweighed everything. It was heavier than reason, stronger than time, and it bound me to a truth I could not escape. I would not allow what happened to remain unanswered. I would not allow him to become just another loss without meaning, without consequence.
Not until I knew.
Not until I found who was truly responsible for his death.
Only then, perhaps, would I allow myself to let go.
But until that moment came, I would carry it—all of it—without hesitation, without mercy.
Because anything less would mean I had failed him twice.
And yet, the very reason I should have let go of the past sat before me.
She was like the morning—quietly luminous, untouched by the weight of what had come before—while I had long since grown accustomed to the night, to the stillness and the darkness that asked nothing of me but endurance.
She felt like something rare, something fleeting—like a fallen star, soft in its descent, beautiful in a way that did not belong to this world—while I was something else entirely, something harsher, something that burned too violently to ever be held without consequence.
And perhaps that was what unsettled me the most.
Not the difference itself—
But the quiet, dangerous thought that, despite it, I found myself drawn to her all the same.
By the time we returned to the limousine, the night had deepened into something colder—quieter, as though the world beyond the restaurant had withdrawn into itself, reclaiming its distance from us.
The warmth we had shared lingered only faintly, like the final echo of a dream one is reluctant to awaken from. Whatever had existed between us within that space—the ease, the unguarded cadence of conversation, the quiet intimacy that had settled so naturally—began to dissolve, giving way to something far more delicate.
Not distance.
Not silence.
But awareness.
The city moved around us in hushed brilliance, its lights dissolving into fleeting ribbons of gold against the glass, and though neither of us spoke with the same freedom as before, the quiet that replaced it was not empty. It was filled with recognition. With the subtle, undeniable truth that something had shifted—something neither of us could return from.
At dinner, there had been no such restraint.
Words had come with a rare and effortless grace, slipping past the careful boundaries I had long since learned to maintain. I had spoken more than I should have, more than I ever allowed myself to, and she had met me there—not fully, never fully—but with enough quiet honesty to leave something behind.
An elder brother.
A younger sister.
Fragments of a life she offered with careful deliberation, as though each piece carried weight, as though each one was given rather than simply spoken.
And then—New York.
"I always wanted to be away from home and do something that makes me go crazy with passion."
There had been something in her voice then—a quiet longing, restless and uncontained.
"So… a café makes you go crazy?" I had asked, allowing myself the faintest trace of amusement.
She had scoffed, the reaction instinctive, almost immediate—before it softened, dissolving into laughter that felt unguarded, untouched by pretense.
For a fleeting moment, everything had felt… effortless.
Now, that ease belonged to something already passing.
The car slowed with quiet inevitability, the movement gentle, almost reluctant, until it came to a stillness before her apartment. The engine settled into a low hum as Uncle Gren stepped out, the door opening to admit the night once more. The cold air slipped inside, brushing against what remained of our shared warmth, dissolving it further.
And yet—
She did not move.
Instead, she turned toward me.
"So… when do we meet again?"
Her voice was softer now, touched with something more fragile than before.
Not uncertainty.
Not quite.
But something that lingered dangerously close to hope.
For the first time that evening, I allowed myself a pause.
It was brief.
Barely perceptible.
But I felt it.
I had not anticipated the question.
It should not have mattered whether she asked out of eagerness or simple curiosity. It should have been answered without thought, without weight.
And yet—
It wasn't.
"Whenever our schedules align," I said at last, my voice composed, measured, though the words felt insufficient—too distant from what I was unwilling to reveal.
She held my gaze for a moment longer than necessary, as though searching for something within the answer, before a faint smile found its way to her lips.
"I like that," she said quietly. "Let's meet for the next six days… when we can. Not in a rush."
I inclined my head in agreement.
"Take care."
The words came with ease.
Too much ease.
Because they carried none of what I meant.
I did not want her to leave.
Not yet.
Not when the night still lingered around us in fragile fragments.
Not when I was not prepared to return to a world where she was no longer within reach, no longer seated across from me, no longer looking at me as though my presence had, in some inexplicable way, earned her attention.
She smiled then—but it did not fully reach her eyes.
There was something there.
Something unspoken.
A quiet reluctance that mirrored my own, suspended between us in a silence neither of us dared to acknowledge.
For a moment—
It lingered.
Unresolved.
Unfinished.
Then she stepped out.
The door closed with a softness that felt far too final.
And she was gone.
I remained where I was, my gaze resting upon the space she had occupied, as though the absence itself required acknowledgment, as though something of her still lingered there, refusing to dissipate entirely.
Outside, the city continued as it always did—unchanged, indifferent, untouched by the quiet shift that had taken place within the span of a single evening.
And yet—
something within me had altered.
Irrevocably.
If I allowed myself the indulgence of thought—if I permitted even the smallest fracture in my restraint—I knew, with a clarity that unsettled me, what I would have given her.
Everything.
Not in fragments.
Not in measured offerings.
But entirely.
I would have rewritten the world in her favour, shaped it into something worthy of her presence. I would have named the moon after her if it meant she would look upon it and think of me. I would have built something enduring, something that would not fade with the passing of a night, and placed it before her without hesitation.
Something permanent.
Something hers.
And yet—
For all that certainty, there remained something I could not define.
I did not know where I stood.
Not truly.
I did not know whether she was becoming mine—slowly, imperceptibly, in the quiet spaces between what she revealed and what she withheld—
Or if she was simply passing through, leaving behind something I would never quite be able to forget.
Still—
The question lingered.
Persistent.
Unrelenting.
Would she ever say it?
Would she take that step—toward me, toward whatever this was—unburdened by whatever held her back?
I did not know.
But I found, with a certainty that both unsettled and anchored me, that I was willing to wait.
For as long as it required.
Because if she ever chose me—
It would be without hesitation.
And that—
It was worth everything.