Page 233 of Sage Haven

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No matter how much easier it would have been. Because if that were true, he wouldn’t have left that note. He wouldn’t have called me wildflower. He wouldn’t have promised to find me again.

And he sure as hell wouldn’t have looked at me the way he did that last night— like I was his salvation and his home.

He once warned me not to take things that didn’t belong to me but I think I stole something from him anyway.

Something he wasn’t ready to give.

Maybe I stole his peace. Maybe I stole his future.

Maybe that’s why now— he’s only a memory.

Faded, distant.

A name I whisper when I can’tsleep.

A ghost I reach for in the dark, even though I know he’s not there.

But I still kept that note.

Tucked in the pages of The Scarlet Pimpernel, the book he told me was his favorite.

I read it sometimes, when the nights get too long and the silence screams louder than I can bear.

I trace the letters he scrawled across the paper.

And I wait.

Because maybe, one day, when he’s someone else— he really will find me.

And maybe, just maybe, I’ll still be waiting.

54

REICH

One Month Later

Istill couldn’t believeI let myself do that to her.

Fuck.

The word didn’t even come close to the weight of it.

Nothing did.

Not the ache lodged in my throat. Not the fist that felt permanently clenched around my ribs. Not the hollow silence that followed me everywhere, filling every inch of the space where her voice used to be.

None of it came close.

I knew.

God, I fucking knew what it would do to her.

How it would tear her apart. How it would fracture something in her that might never heal again and I still did it.

I did it with my own hands.

I told myself it was the only way.

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