The cottage smelled of dust and lavender, memories folded into every crack in the walls. Elena dropped her suitcase and looked around. Her grandmother's house, untouched for years, seemed to exhale as she walked in.
She came to the village to escape. From her job, from her past relationship, from the city that had swallowed her hope. But she hadn't expected to find Niko.
He arrived with a basket of fresh olives and a crooked smile.
"My mother says to welcome you," he said, his accent soft, words carefully chosen.
Days turned into weeks. Elena painted in the mornings and joined Niko in the groves in the evenings. They talked—about his brother who never came back from war, about her gallery dreams, about life in the quiet. Niko never pried, never rushed. He simply was.
One stormy night, the power went out. By candlelight, Niko whispered a truth he'd never shared: that he once loved someone who left him when he was at his lowest. He hadn't let himself love again. Not fully.
"And now?" Elena asked, her voice barely audible over the rain.
"I'm learning," he said, brushing a strand of hair from her face. "With you."
They kissed beneath the olive tree the next morning, where roots ran deep and branches reached for the sky.
Love, they learned, wasn't a firework. It was a slow-growing thing. Like olives ripening in the sun. T