Page 234 of Sage Haven

That maybe—somehow—someday, she’d piece it together. That she’d understand. That she’d look back and realize it was never abouthurting her.

Never about wanting to leave. Never about turning my back on her.

It was about keeping her alive. Keeping her free.

But that’s the problem with choices like mine.

They don’t come with explanations. They don’t come with second chances.

Only damage.

And she doesn’t understand the ENA.

Not the way I do.

She doesn’t know what they are. What they’re capable of. The lengths they’ll go to in order to enforce their control. The things I’ve seen them do. The things I’ve done for them.

She thinks she knows pain, but this? This is different.

The ENA doesn’t punish you. They erase you. They make you a ghost of yourself before they end you.

And anyone who tries to run? Anyone who tries to break free? They don’t just destroy them. They salt the earth where they once stood, as if they never existed.

And if I had stayed… if I had let her stay… They would’ve erased her, too. They would have taken her from me. They would’ve takeneverything.

So, yeah. Maybe I did make a choice.

But it wasn’t the one everyone thinks it was.

It wasn’t about pushing her away because I stopped loving her. It wasn’t about running from her because I was afraid of what we were becoming. It was about choosing her— her life.

Her safety. Her future.

Even if that future didn’t have me in it.

I chose to protect her.

Even if it meant ripping us apart. Even if it meant tearing myself in half and living with the emptiness she left behind. Even if it meant I’d lose her completely.

And I did.

God, I did.

But it doesn’t stop me from wanting her. From missing her like hell. From waking up at night with her name on my lips and reaching for her out of reflex, only to find cold sheets and nothing but the echo of who we used to be. From standing in the places where we once stood together, pretending she’s still there, hearing her voice in the back of my mind like a ghost I can’t shake.

If I could just see her like that that again.

Just once.

If I could kiss her forehead the way I used to—when she was half-asleep and safe and warm against me, When the world couldn’t touch us and we made promises in the dark that I was stupid enough to believe.

If I could hold her again, feel her head tucked beneath my chin, feel her fingers tracing circles into my skin like she was memorizing me. Like she was branding me in ways I would never recover from.

I’d give anything for that.

Anything to hear her laugh again. That soft, breathless sound that never failed to pull me back from the edge. That spark in her eyes when she was lost in her own head, creating some impossible world that I knew—without a doubt—would always be brighter, better, because she was the one imagining it.

And fuck, the way she reached for me.