Page 216 of Sage Haven

That the void was an immutable part of who I was.

A truth I didn’t need to fight anymore because it was easier to believe I was built for nothingness.

I had accepted it.

Resigned myself to the cold comfort of silence. Of solitude. Of indifference.

And then she walked into my life. Like a reckoning.

My wildflower.

But there was nothing fragile about her.

She had been scorched. Burned down to the bone.

Thrown through the kind of fire that strips you bare.

But she hadn’t let it consume her.

She hadn’t let it harden her into something bitter and twisted like the rest of us.

She fought.

Not for vengeance. Not for destruction.

But for understanding. For connection.

Even as she hid the wounds that festered beneath the surface, even as she wore masks so no one would see the pain she still carried.

She was miraculous.

And she had a power over me that I couldn’t explain.

Not to myself. Not to anyone.

She slipped into the fractures of my soul, filling them with something I thought I’d lost long ago.

She made me feel whole in ways I didn’t think possible. She filled every empty, broken part of me until I wasn’t sure where I ended, and she began. And I knew, with brutal, gut-wrenching certainty, that when she left—when I made her leave—she would take every last piece of me with her.

Because she had to go.

And if she didn’t, I would have to be the one to walk away.

Even if it meant tearing myself apart in the process.

I didn’t want to let her go. I didn’t want to leave.

I wanted to be selfish. To keep her. To burn down the world if it meant holding onto her for just a little longer.

But I didn’t know how to keep her safe.

And one small mistake could be the difference between her life and her death.

We’d been lucky this last time.

Dumb, reckless luck.

And I wasn’t about to risk it happening again.