Page 64 of A Memory Not Mine (Sanguis Amantium #1)

Chapter fifty-nine

Mira

(Mira) I made it.

I t was all I could bring myself to say. The moment the plane landed and I took my phone off airplane mode, I tried. I stared at the screen, fingers hovering, typing and deleting, retyping. Something heartfelt. Something witty. Something that might carry the weight of what I felt.

Nothing was right.

Nothing could capture the hollowness that had already settled in me, the aching loneliness that had taken root before I even reached the gate.

I’d been lonely before I went to Scotland—lonely in the way of someone who hadn’t yet known real connection. But this…this was different.

This was the silence that followed something precious being torn away. This was the ache of a bond severed. And I was the one who’d severed it.

Almost instantly, my phone pinged with a response.

It was the picture—the one he’d taken on the boat.

To anyone else, we looked happy. Two people smiling, windblown, sunstruck, clinging to each other, chemistry electric and apparent. But I saw what was really there, in his eyes and in mine .

Don’t forget this.

That’s what the look said. A silent plea. A promise.

And I wouldn’t.

So, naturally, I did the most heartbreakingly teenaged thing imaginable—I saved it as my phone’s wallpaper.

Because I needed to see it.Because part of me still wasn’t ready to let go.

I waited, hoping for more, something else, more words from Baird. Teasing, something. But there was nothing. Just silence that stretched as the minutes turned into an hour. Maybe it was his own way of closing the chapter.