But not the Blake I married the Blake I buried.
His mask. His avatar. His lie.
“It’s killing me staying away. I lost a piece of myself. Time won’t fix it. Let today be the day you meet me. Let me fall for you in person, Pandora”.
I scoffed.
He was always a poet when he wanted something.
“Blake, you pull at old scars just to watch them bleed. You ask for time when I beg for space. This is fake.”
“Nothing’s fake but your picture. Your words are real. I’m falling for you.”
“Then fall in love with my words. But love like that is fiction four letters used to break people open. I’ve been shattered before. I’ve eaten the lie and begged for the ride to stop.”
Didn’t he hear me? Didn’t he recognise the rhythm of my grief? My breath? The way my words bent under weight?
“Love was always going to be tested. Think of this as a taste test. The recipe might finally be right.”
I nearly laughed. God loves a trier.
I slid under my desk, curling into the hollow darkness with my knees to my chest. The ocean shimmered through the tinted glass like it was mocking me.
I needed to disappear. Needed shadows. Needed dimness. Needed a place where my heart could break without an audience.
“You whisper poetry on a jaded tongue, offering promises my soul can’t carry.”
“Masked party. Friday night. Come. Let me find you. Let me kiss you in the dark. You’ll know it’s me.”
I chewed my bottom lip until it stung. Maybe this was the moment to end the game. To face him without him knowing he already had. To look him dead in the eye and watch recognition claw its way through him.
“Maybe a mask is exactly what I need. A breeze from the North when I’ve been drowning in the West.”
I set the phone down. My heart thudded like war drums against my ribs. Blake stayed in my veins like poison.
But Dane…
Dane seeped into me like warmth. Like sunrise. Like wreckage I’d choose to die beneath.
I grabbed my phone again, sending a message to Dane.
“I blamed everything on heartbreak, the fears, the ache, the way I fell apart. Love was a battlefield, and I wasn’t looking for another war. But then you showed up. And you… You feel like fiction. Like the kind of love my family writes about but never gets to live. You make me believe in things again. Even the reckless ones. I like you in my world.”
Seconds.
Silence.
My knee bounced.
The envelope tapped against my leg.
I tore it open.
The smell hit first whisky, lemon, stale history.
Our bar.
A napkin.
