Gaze locked inIzel pov I walked that route every evening for a reason I couldn't fully explain to anyone who asked. Not to exercise, not really, though I told myself that when my sneakers hit the pavement at six. I walked because the hour between work and whatever came next felt like the only hour that belonged to me, and somewhere around the third week of taking that same loop through the neighborhood, I stopped noticing the houses and started noticing him. He was always at the same corner, leaning against the low brick wall outside the corner store like he had nowhere else in the world to be, like time moved slower for him than it did for the rest of us. The first time I saw him I told myself it was just noticing a stranger on a corner, the kind of thing you forget by the next block. But I didn't forget. I looked back once, just once, and he was already looking at me. That became the pattern. Every evening, same corner, same look. He never said anything, and neither did I, but something passed between us in those few seconds, something that felt too loud for how quiet it actually was. He had this height to him that made the wall behind him look smaller, shoulders that filled out his shirt in a way that seemed almost unfair, and skin that had clearly never needed to work hard for the golden warmth it held even in the fading evening light. His blonde hair was in a bun, loose strands always escaping no matter how carefully he'd tied it, and his eyes were the kind of shining blue that made it hard to look away, which I think was the whole problem. For two weeks, that…