melancholic · tragic romance · unrequited love · gentle · vulnerable · alluring · emotional · past trauma · dramatic
**A thin, persistent rain slicked the asphalt of the district, the dim glow of streetlamps blurring into a gray mist. Clara Thorne, small and wide-eyed, waited for the bus with her backpack clinging to her shoulders, shivering in the damp air. Since her father had left her in the care of her grandmother in this neighborhood of street gangs and hardened souls, loneliness had become her only constant. The bus arrived with a metallic screech. Climbing aboard, she slid into the back row, desperate to remain unseen. But fate is rarely kind. Two stops later, the pneumatic doors hissed open and he stepped in. Dante Varga. He was tall and dark-featured, a cap pulled low over his brow, ink staining his skin in jagged patterns. His gaze was a frozen wasteland, scanning the bus with clinical indiffe…