Serial · ongoing
My Heart Grows Fonder.
"He was a safety net for everyone, but he was the one falling." Devin is the perfect campus icon, always sacrificing his own dreams to keep others from falling. But the smile is a mask. He is a ghost in his own life, too afraid to truly exist. When he connects with Cassie, a guarded girl haunted by a tragic loss, they find a rare sanctuary. Yet a complex paradox binds them: the fierce, protective selflessness that draws her close is the exact phantom she is terrified of losing. When a sudden crisis strikes, Devin’s instinct to suffer in silence forces a crushing drift between them. Enter Eva—a vibrant, perceptive soul who sees right through Devin’s perfect facade to the fading heart beneath. As three fractured souls collide in a web of unvoiced trauma and bittersweet choices, a painful question remains: How do you save someone who is entirely willing to bleed to death just to keep you dry?
Chapter 1: The Space Between Echoes
“Just two more minutes, Dex. Seriously, if you don’t pull up that final slide, Professor Harrison is going to have a literal aneurysm right…
Chapter 2: The Fracture
"Hey! Aby! Have you seen Dex?" Marcus slammed his hand against the doorframe of the crowded creative arts lab, his breathing ragged and hi…
Chapter 3: Echoes and Impact
“My head feels like a rock when I think about this,” Devin muttered under his breath, his long strides taking him aimlessly across the sunli…
Chapter 4: The Tanning Bed and the Trailor
Right in front of the staff room, Aby pressed her phone to her ear, her fingers trembling as the line rang. Once. Twice. She cut the call a…
Chapter 5: The Quiet Room
The seminar room on the third floor was thick with the scent of old chalk and dust, illuminated only by the faint, gray twilight bleeding th…
Chapter 6: The Shadows on the Gravel
The long, winding road leading away from the university was swallowed by a dense, clinging fog. Devin walked in silence, his breath blooming…
Chapter 7: The Gathering Storm
The dean’s office sat on the top floor of the administration building, insulated from the rest of the campus by thick oak doors and floor-to…
Chapter 8: The Price of a File
The storm had turned the entire campus into a hollow, echoing ghost town. Rain lashed violently against the high glass windows of the academ…
Chapter 9: The Broken Anchor
The emergency wing of the university medical center was a sensory overload of flickering fluorescent lights, the sharp stench of antiseptic,…
Chapter 10: The Shattered Mask
The campus courtyard was blanketed in a heavy, suffocating fog for the evening vigil. Hundreds of students stood around the central stone fo…
Chapter 11: The Echoes of a Friend
The rain had returned by midnight, not as a storm, but as a relentless, icy drizzle that slicked the brick pathways behind the arts building…
Chapter 12: The Price of Living
The psychiatric wing of the university medical center smelled of lemon floor cleaner, warm tea, and muted fluorescent silence. It was a plac…
Chapter 13: The Flowers and the Hero
The morning of Marcus’s funeral, the sky over the city was a quiet, seamless slate of grey. A heavy mist hung over the oak trees of the hill…