Page 232 of Sage Haven

Erased.

Every trace of him, vanished like smoke through my fingers.

All gone.

As if he had never been there. As if we had been nothing. As if I had dreamed it all.

And maybe I could have believed that.

Maybe I would have.

If not for the single folded note left behind. Sitting on the bed we shared like a parting gift I never asked for.

One word scrawled across the front in his uneven handwriting:

Wildflower.

I stared at it for what felt like hours before my hands stopped shaking enough to open it.

Inside, his message was short. Cryptic. Just like him.

One day, when I am someone else, I’ll find you.

-Reich

I read it again. And again.

Until the ink blurred and my vision swam with tears I refused to shed.

What did that even mean? When he’s someone else?

I didn’t want someone else. I wanted him. Exactly as he was.

Dangerous. Flawed. Damaged.

But him.

I needed the man who held me close in the dead of night and whispered that I was the only thing that made him feel alive.

The man who stood between me and the darkness without hesitation.

Who never asked me to be anyone other than exactly who I was.

I needed him to stay.

He had promised he wouldn’t leave. He had promised he’d find a way. That we’d figure it out—together. That the ENA wouldn’t win. That he’d make it out.

But maybe those were just words too.

Maybe he only said them because he thought I needed to hear them.

Because I wouldn’t stop begging him to stay.

And maybe—maybe that’s all I was to him, just another job to complete.

Another obligation. Another broken girl who couldn’t save herself.

But I didn’t believe that.