Chapter One: The Stranger With the Storm Eyes

The rain had a rhythm that evening — soft, steady, like it had a story of its own. At the café on the corner of Bluegate Street, the kind with fairy lights and old music humming in the background, Zarah sat alone at her favorite window seat, sipping a vanilla latte. She wasn’t waiting for anyone. She rarely was.

Zarah had learned how to keep her heart guarded. At twenty-one, she had survived too many promises that broke too easily and friendships that turned cold. But she smiled anyway — a quiet, mysterious smile that made people wonder what she was hiding.

She liked it that way.

Then he walked in.

Tall, soaked from the rain, and wrapped in a black hoodie, the stranger looked around as if he didn’t belong anywhere — and didn't care. Their eyes met for barely two seconds, but it was enough. His eyes were a storm — gray, unreadable, dangerous. And something in her chest fluttered.

He walked past without a word, but not without leaving something behind: curiosity.

Zarah turned back to her coffee, pretending she hadn’t just built a whole fantasy in her mind. But before the day was over, that stranger — Rayen — would no longer be a stranger.

The Next Day

“Zarah, you need to live a little,” her best friend Amira laughed, bumping her shoulder as they walked to their university lecture hall. “You’ve been so... serious lately.”

“I’m not serious,” Zarah said with a smirk. “I just don’t have time for fairy tales.”

Amira raised a brow. “Says the girl who spends all day at a fairy-light café.”

They both laughed, but deep inside, Zarah knew something had shifted last night.

And that something showed up again.

Rayen. At her university.

Standing by the art studio, headphones in, sketchbook open, and somehow even more mysterious than before.

Their eyes met again. He smiled this time — but it wasn’t warm. It was like he knew her, like he was warning her.

She ignored the shiver that ran down her spine.

Meanwhile…

In another part of campus, someone else had his eyes on Zarah. Daniel, her coursemate — charming, funny, the kind of guy everyone liked. Unlike Rayen, Daniel made people feel safe. He made Zarah laugh. He showed up with coffee when she was tired. He remembered small things, like how she hated pickles on burgers and loved the scent of fresh books.

And most importantly, he was already falling for her.

But love triangles are never simple. Especially when one of them is hiding a past...

And the other is hiding a motive.

And Amira? Her “best friend forever”?

She’s hiding the deepest betrayal of all.

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