She climbed the trailer steps. They creaked loudly beneath her. She reached into her bag for the old site keys she had brought out of habit, then stopped.
There was light inside.
Not daylight through a crack. A real light. Soft and yellow.
A lamp.
Aerys stood still, listening. Her pulse started to pound in her ears.
There should have been no electricity. She had shut everything down years ago.
She moved closer to the dusty window and peered inside.
The office was not empty.
There was a brown couch. A small table. A rug. Books stacked neatly in one corner. A kettle on what used to be the office kitchenette counter. Someone was living there. Not hiding. Living.
Anger flashed through her first. Sharp and immediate.
She marched to the door and knocked hard.
There was a pause inside. Then careful footsteps.
The handle turned.
The door opened only a few inches at first, enough for her to see one eye, one cheek, one hand holding the edge of the frame.
“Can I help you?” a man asked.
“Yes,” Aerys began, the anger already rising in her voice. “You can start by explaining why you’re living on private—”
Then the door opened wider.
And the rest of the sentence died inside her.
Everything stopped.
The world. The air. The movement of dust in the sunlight. The faint sound of traffic from the road.
Because the man standing in front of her was Emeka.
Not someone who looked a little like him. Not a stranger with the same kind of eyes. Not a trick of grief.
Emeka.
The same warm brown eyes. The same scar near his left ear from when he had fallen off a bicycle at sixteen. The same full mouth. The same curve to his eyebrows. The same mark above his lip she had kissed a hundred times.
Her knees nearly gave out.
“Emeka,” she whispered.
His face changed instantly. The color drained from it. His fingers tightened around the door frame.
“Aerys,” he breathed.
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