jac3yblack
Eva Waters is your typical city girl-27, single, and the proud owner of a quiet little bookstore café tucked between streets no one really notices. Her life is exactly how she likes it: predictable. Safe. Normal. She serves coffee, recommends books, and goes home to her equally normal cat, Trout. No drama, no surprises, no questions.
She doesn't have many friends-never really wanted them. People are complicated, and Eva has always preferred stories where everything makes sense in the end. Real life is messier. Harder to control.
But there is one exception.
He's been coming in since the day she opened. Tall, a little awkward, charming in a way that sneaks up on you. The kind of man who always has a book in his hand and a thoughtful question ready. Every day, like clockwork, he stops by-sometimes for a new novel, sometimes just for conversation. He asks about her life, her routines, her "normal" little world.
And Eva tells him exactly what he expects to hear.
Because normal is the story she's chosen.
The café, the quiet life, the carefully measured loneliness-it's all part of something she's built with precision. A life that looks effortless from the outside, but only exists because she's made sure no one looks too closely. Not at her past. Not at the gaps in her stories. Not at the things she avoids saying.
Especially not him.
But the more he shows up, the harder it becomes to keep everything simple. His questions linger a little longer. His presence starts to matter more than it should. And for the first time, Eva feels something dangerously unfamiliar: the urge to be known.
Which is exactly what she can't allow.
Because if he ever stops believing in her "normal and boring" life, he won't just see the truth.
He'll unravel it.