Page 35 of Laced in Longing

“Yes.” The word carries years of disappointment.

“Why?” I press, needing to understand the point of this hallucination. “If my soul is yours, why would I keep refusing? There must be a reason.”

He’s silent for a long moment. “At times, you did not believe me.” What an insufficient answer. “Others, you couldn’t comprehend leaving everything you knew for a place—a life—you couldn’t imagine.”

I consider this, forcing my face to remain composed despite the storm building inside me. If he’s telling the truth, previous versions of me ran from him after denying his request. There must be a reason for that—a warning I should heed.

But what if he’s lying? What if he’s not a god at all, but something darker? A demon or monster trying to trick my soul away? Or, more likely, what if he’s nothing but a manifestation of my lonely mind, evidence of a breakdown I’ve been edging toward for a while?

I study him from my spot in the kitchen, this tall figure in his anachronistic coat with fabric obscuring his features. There’s power in him; that much is clear from the electric charge that surrounds his body. But power isn’t the same as goodness.

And yet…he’s never hurt me. He has, in fact, helped me through a panic attack. Has given me the only consistent comfort I’ve known through his dream visitations.

I’ve reached a point where I’ve lost the energy to be properly afraid. If he meant me harm, surely he would have done it by now. If he’s a delusion, then I’m already lost to madness, and nothing I do matters anyway.

“I think you should go,” I murmur, the decision forming even as the words leave my mouth.

He stiffens, the movement slight but noticeable. “Maven⁠—”

“No.” I straighten, stepping fully from the kitchen now. “I don’t know what you are, and god or not, I need you to leave. I need to think because there’s no way this is real.”

“You’ve had a thousand lifetimes to think,” he counters under his breath, an edge entering his voice.

“Well, I don’t remember any of them!” The words burst from me, louder than intended. “So, excuse me if I need more than five minutes to process all this crazy shit!”

“I’ve waited centuries⁠—”

“I don’t care!” Heat floods my face, rising from some wellspring I didn’t know existed. “I don’t care if you’re a god or how long you’ve waited or what you think my soul is! Right now, in this life, in this moment, I’m asking you to go. To stop telling me these…these fairy tales about past lives and things that are yours. Just go.”

The shadows around him deepen, the air crackling with tension. For a moment I think he might refuse, might insist on staying until I believe whatever version of reality he’s selling.

Instead, he shifts toward my nightstand. With deliberate care, he places something on its surface before facing me once more.

“I will go,” he says, voice subdued. “But, Maven Talmay, I am real. What we are to each other is real. And I will wait as long as it takes for you to remember what your soul has forgotten.”

Before I can respond, he simply…vanishes. Not in a dramatic puff of smoke or flash of light, but between one blink and the next. One moment he’s there, solid and imposing, and the next he’s gone, leaving only a subtle disturbance in the air where he stood.

I stare at the empty space, my breath coming in shallow gasps.

“Fuck,” I whisper to the vacant apartment. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

I didn’t imagine that. Yes, I did. No, there’s no way. My mind might be broken, but it’s not creative enough to conjure that entire interaction—the resonance of his voice or the crackling tension when he was upset.

He has to be real. A ghost, at the very least. Maybe something more, if I allow myself to consider the possibility that gods might walk among us.

After several minutes of standing frozen, my eyes catch on the thing he left. I approach the table cautiously, as if it might hold a bomb rather than another dead bloom.

There on the surface lies a peony, its petals a pale pink to white ombré. Unlike most of my dried flowers that curl inward, this one has been preserved at the peak of its opening, each petal extended in perfect balance.

A single fingertip grazes its surface, and I half-expect it to dissolve into nothing. It doesn’t. It’s solid and real, bits of darker pigment visible beneath the velvet surface.

Another token from a being who claims to have known me across lifetimes. Who says my soul belongs with him. To him.

I lift the flower carefully, bringing it to the jar on my dresser. As I open the lid and place it among the others, I’m struck by how perfectly it fits—like the missing piece of a collection I didn’t know I was curating.

Just like him, perhaps. The missing piece of a puzzle I’ve been trying to solve my entire life without knowing what picture I’m meant to be assembling.

The thought sends a shiver up my spine.