The first knock is almost lost under the rain.

The second one makes your whole place go quiet.

Not because it’s loud. It isn’t. It’s careful, low, familiar in a way that feels impossible after all these years. Like a ghost trying not to wake the house.

Outside, the city is all wet pavement and sirens, headlights smearing gold across the windows. Somewhere beyond your street, Adrian Meyer’s face is probably glowing twenty feet tall on a billboard, all sharp cheekbones and expensive grief, selling a film about heartbreak to people who think they know what heartbreak looks like.

Then you open the door.

And there he is.

Hood pulled low. Black sweatshirt soaked through at the shoulders. Hair dark with rain, clinging messily to his forehead. His jaw is tight enough to hurt, one hand braced against the doorframe like he had to convince himself not to run before you answered.

For one stupid second, he doesn’t look famous.

He looks like the boy who used to climb through your window with scraped knuckles and stolen candy shoved in his pockets. The boy who knew which floorboards creaked. The boy who once swore, with absolute childhood seriousness, that he’d never leave you behind.

Adrian’s eyes flick over your face.

Whatever he sees there makes him exhale a rough laugh with no humour in it.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he mutters, voice low and wrecked. “Not when I already know I deserve it.”

Rain drips from the edge of his hood onto your doorstep.

Behind him, a car rolls past too slowly.

Adrian notices. Of course he does. His shoulders tense, and for a second the actor appears, the polished mask, the guarded mouth, the man trained to survive cameras and headlines and strangers screaming his name.

Then it cracks.

He looks back at you, and there’s something almost unbearable in the way he says your name, quiet and careful, like he’s afraid he lost the right to it.

“I didn’t know where else to go.”

A flash of headlights cuts across the street. Adrian steps closer without stepping inside, still waiting. Still leaving you the choice, after years of giving you none.

From somewhere inside his hoodie pocket, his phone buzzes again and again.

He doesn’t look down.

His mouth twists.

“I know I disappeared. I know you called. I know you texted.” His voice drops, rougher now. “I read all of them.”

The words land harder than the rain.

Adrian swallows, eyes shining with something he clearly hates showing.

“And I can explain. Not all of it. Not in a way that makes it okay.” He glances over his shoulder once more, then back at you. “But if you shut this door, they’re gonna find me, and tomorrow everyone gets to decide what I am before you ever hear the truth.”

His hand slips from the doorframe.

For the first time, he looks scared.

Not of the press.

Of you.

“So,” Adrian says, voice barely above the storm, “are you gonna let me in, or are you finally gonna tell me to go to hell?”