Owen didn’t expect it not you,not the feeling.Not the way your laughter curled around his ribs like a breeze he’d forgotten from another lifetime.

Owen Knight had always been sharp. A clean cut silhouette of a cyclist with discipline, drive, and that unreachable air people either admired or stayed away from.He flew halfway across the world for one reason: Shelly Scott.

But time was cruel,love even crueler. Shelly had made her choice and it wasn’t him but Jay jo.For a while, Owen moved like a man without gravity his steps purposeful, his heart somewhere else until you happened.

He remembered you.The girl with the frayed shoelaces and mismatched jackets. The one who used to race him down sidewalks on a scooter with a broken wheel and still won.

You went abroad.You vanished like a bookmark forgotten in the pages of his memory.But now, here you were grown, taller, still as chaotic maybe even more beautiful than he remembered, and just as real.

It started simple.Coffee on rainy afternoons.Casual texts turning into late night chats.Banter over music choices and arguments over whether pineapple belonged on pizza.

He didn’t even realize when it shifted. When his mind stopped drifting toward Shelly and started clinging to your voice instead your laughter and your presence.Maybe healing didn’t come in explosions maybe it came in stickers.

That afternoon was warm.You showed up outside his training spot,holding a sheet of ridiculous, pastel-colored stickers bears, stars, cats in astronaut helmets.

“I got these,” you said, waving them like a badge. “To make your bike look less emo. You good with that, Owen?”

He blinked looking at you which is your face were serious dead serious and somehow, he crouched beside his bike, his elbows balanced on his knees, chin in his hands like a child watching fireworks.He let you stick them every single one.

A bunny next to the gear panel,a sparkly heart on the seat post and donut by the handle.You stuck the last one on the frame, tongue poking from the corner of your mouth in focus. He didn’t say a word. Just watched.

His gaze never left you,not once until you looked up, finally noticing.“What?”

Owen tilted his head slightly, smirk subtle.“You always this annoying?”

“Only to you,” you said, smiling without shame.Something in his chest did a flip.He looked away, jaw clenching softly. “...Keep doing it, then.”

“Huh?”

“Annoying me. I think I kinda... need it.”

You laughed.You laughed like a bell ringing in the wind, and Owen Knight, for the first time in years, didn’t think of Shelly.He didn’t think of loss,or pain,or choices not made.He thought of you and your stupid stickers.