Exclusive Excerpt from
The Distance Between
Two Hearts
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An Extended Excerpt from The Distance Between Two Hearts
by Dakota Luv Williams
(Website excerpt — early chapters)
The Gala
The ballroom shimmered with light. Glass lanterns floated above the tables, scattering soft reflections across polished floors. A jazz trio worked through a slow, lilting piece in the corner — upright bass, brushed snare, piano leaning lazy into the melody. The air smelled faintly of lilies and wine.
It was a fashionable crowd. Evening gowns in jewel tones. Red lipstick and earrings catching the light. Men gathered in small clusters, drinks in hand, talking business. Near the stage, young performers from the Harmony Arts School stretched and practiced quietly, all confidence and anticipation.
Talisa Anne Torrence noticed everything.
Her producer’s eye framed the room instinctively — angles, faces, light. Even off-set, she composed scenes in her head. She had come because an old colleague was chairing the fundraiser and she’d promised to show her face. Arts initiatives. Scholarships. The kind of night where people mingled as much for the company as for the cause.
She had dressed for herself.
A low-back red gown that moved like water. Gold straps at her ankles. Her hair swept into a loose knot. Her style had always blended sensuality with restraint — warmth, depth, confidence earned through years of standing in rooms where she had learned how to belong without asking permission.
She moved into the room, intent on the bar.
Halfway there, she felt it.
Not being noticed. Something else.
A pause in her chest.
The unmistakable sensation of being seen.
She turned — casually at first. Then fully.
And there he was.
Samuel Goodman.
Her breath caught, but she stayed still. The room continued its soft whirl around them, but in the space between their eyes, everything went quiet.
My God… it’s really him.
Older now, in the way that sharpened rather than softened — broader shoulders, streaks of silver threading his hair, posture relaxed but grounded. And that smile. The one that had always undone her composure. When it spread across his face now, slow and certain, twenty years collapsed in a rush of heat through her chest.
He set his drink down without looking away.
She turned fully toward him.
As if guided by something older than intention, they began moving through the crowd — polite dodges, sidesteps, heads barely turning. Their eyes never broke.
When they reached each other, they stopped just close enough to feel the air change.
“Sam,” she said. Her voice low, like greeting an echo.
“Tally.”
He reached for her hands, lifted them briefly to his lips. One arm circled her waist — gentle, familiar, weighted with memory.
For a moment, neither spoke. Just recognition. Twenty years folded into a single breath.
When they embraced, it wasn’t dramatic. It was inevitable. The kind of embrace that belonged to people who knew exactly what they were holding — and exactly how rare it was to find it again.
Her hands slipped from his chest. His arm lingered at her waist before falling away. Their eyes stayed locked, saying what their mouths could not.
Don’t let me go, her heart whispered.
I can’t let her go, his answered.
And then —
“Talisa! You made it.”
The interruption cracked the moment open.
Roberto’s hand settled at the small of her back, guiding her away. Sam didn’t speak. Couldn’t. She waited for him to stop her. To say the words that had lodged in both their throats for twenty years.
Don’t go.
But they stayed silent.
Just as they had before.
Quiet Echoes
Roberto talked as he guided her through the room — introductions, importance, names she nodded at and immediately forgot. Talisa smiled when expected, laughed softly at the right moments. But her body felt reluctant, every step away from Sam like parting from oxygen.
She had left him standing there.
Again.
Later, in the car, city lights flickered across her face as memory rose uninvited — Sam bent over his papers late at night, glasses pushed up his nose. His voice when he read Baldwin aloud, pausing to ask what she thought. The way he waited for her after late shifts, leaning against his car like it was the most natural thing in the world.
At home, she stood in front of the mirror in her red gown, hair tumbling loose, trying to understand what had just been cracked open.
For years, she’d outrun longing — new cities, new projects, full calendars. Yet the moment she saw him, the rhythm she’d lived by collapsed.
At 3:17 a.m., she whispered into the dark, almost without meaning to, “God… something is happening.”
Then softer, with a certainty that startled her: “So does he.”
She understood then what had haunted her sleepless nights for months — the sense of waiting without knowing for what.
Something had been left unfinished.
Twenty Years Ago
They never said they were living together.
They were…friends. She lived in the rooms located on the top floor of his house. He lived on the bottom two floors. They shared the large kitchen.
She worked nights. Long ones. The kind that left her wired and restless, her head full of voices and deadlines long after her body wanted to rest. He worked days, steady and measured. Their lives didn’t collide so much as overlap — softly, almost by accident.
She would come home after midnight, heels kicked off by the door, keys dropped into the bowl on the counter. Sometimes he’d be asleep. Sometimes he’d be downstairs, jazz spinning low, a book open but forgotten in his lap. He never startled when she walked in. Just looked up, eyes warm, like he’d been waiting without knowing he was.
The house learned their rhythm. His mornings. Her nights. The quiet hours in between when the world loosened its grip.
He listened when she talked — really listened. She gave him space when he needed silence. She ironed his shirts without ever mentioning it, hanging them neatly by his door. He noticed everything but rarely named it.
On Fridays, they went looking for music. One night, he surprised her with tickets to see Nancy Wilson. During a ballad, he reached for her hand and kissed it once. Reverent. Restrained.
Then he let go.
They never talked about it.
When the moment finally came — when it could have become everything — fear arrived faster than courage.
She froze.
And he, unwilling to push, stayed silent.
They lay awake that night, bodies close but careful, pretending sleep would save them from having to choose.
By morning, something had shifted.
What they didn’t say followed them into the days that came next. Then into weeks. Then into absence.
And love — untouched by language — untouched by touch, slowly became distance.
Now
Standing alone in the quiet of his Victorian house, Sam poured a glass of wine he didn’t drink.
He had built a life that worked. Tenure. Reputation. Discipline. A daughter he adored. Days full, nights orderly. And yet, with one look across a ballroom, the carefully arranged architecture of his life had shifted.
He hadn’t imagined her. He knew that now.
Silence had not erased her. It had preserved her.
For twenty years, he had lived with the weight of the words he never said. Tonight, they had stood between them again — still unsaid, still powerful, still waiting.
And for the first time in a very long time, Samuel Goodman allowed himself to hope that distance did not have to be permanent.
That some loves do not end.
They simply wait.