Page 38 of Laced in Longing

“You think I cannot recognize when your favor has turned against me?” There’s no accusation in his voice, only a gentle sadness that tightens my throat. “I’ve watched this play out hundreds of times, in just as many ways. I know the signs.”

I say nothing, my eyes fixed on the horizon where sky meets city in a hazy line.

“I admit, you had me convinced for a moment that you were warming to me,” he continues. Why do I feel like a child with her hand caught in the cookie jar? “But I should know better by now. Your soul has cycled through this routine for countless decades. It’s difficult to leave the familiar, even when it’s killing you. Even when you don’t realize you’re making every excuse to stay.”

Something hot and sharp rises over my skin. “Don’t talk as if you know me better than I do.”

“But I do.” The simplicity of his statement, the absolute certainty behind it, makes me want to scream. “I’ve known your soul longer than you’ve inhabited this body. I’ve watched it grow and change and struggle many times, Maven. I know when I have lost your favor.”

“Stop it.” My fingers curl into fists. “Just stop. I don’t want to hear about past lives or souls or any of it. I just want⁠—”

What? What do I want? To be left alone? To go back to the emptiness that defined my existence before he appeared? To continue drifting from city to city, job to job, never connecting or belonging, until eventually the darkness wins and I find a way to make the next suicide attempt stick?

The thought brings me up short, and the rage collapses all at once.

Maybe he’s right. I am clinging to the familiar, even though the familiar is slowly killing me. This life is all I know. It’s miserable, but it’s mine. I understand its contours and its limits. I know exactly how much it hurts and where the pain will strike next.

What he offers is unknown. Uncertain. And it requires a leap of faith into darkness with no guarantee of what waits on the other side.

What if I say yes and he takes me somewhere I’m not happy? Somewhere I’m trapped, bound to him for eternity with no escape? Or worse—what if he takes me somewhere I am happy? What then? What happens to the person I’ve been all these years, the identity I’ve built around my pain?

A tear slips from the corner of my eye, hardening instantly against my lashes. The cold crystallizes it, turning my sorrow into something sharp and tangible.

I don’t want to feel this. Any of it. The confusion, the yearning, the fear—it’s too much. I’m overwhelmed at being forced from the carefully constructed numbness I’ve known for so long.

He needs to go. I need him to go. So I can return to my routine, to the empty but predictable existence I’ve carved out for myself. So I can breathe without this constant awareness of him, this pull toward something I don’t understand and can’t control.

“Your silence speaks volumes,” Ash says after a long moment. “You’re afraid.”

“I’m not afraid,” I lie, the words bitter on my tongue. “I’m tired. Tired of you showing up whenever you want, talking about crazy shit. Tired of working.” A crazed laugh slips from my lips. “And I’m fucking tired of being here. What is the point of any of this? Life? My head is so fucked, and you’re not helping by saying my soul needs to go with you. Do you know how crazy that sounds?”

“You don’t believe in souls?” There’s genuine curiosity in his question, as if my answer matters to him.

I shrug again, the motion a mere jerk. “I don’t know. Maybe. But if they exist, they belong to the people who have them. Not to whatever cosmic lottery assigned mine to you.”

“It wasn’t a lottery.” His voice drops lower, intimate despite our public setting. “Your soul was promised to me as a balance. A counterweight to my nature. Just as each Dark God was promised a soul that would complement and complete them.”

“And what exactly is your nature?” I’m unable to stop myself from asking. “What does the God of Longing need balancing against?” I sound bitter, and I am. I’m so tired.

He’s quiet for a moment, and I risk a glance at him. The fabric covering his face reveals nothing, but his posture has shifted, tension visible in the line of his shoulders.

“Longing is…consuming,” he finally says. “It hollows out everything it touches, leaving space that can never quite be filled. It’s hunger without satisfaction or thirst without quenching. It’s the fragile thing between wanting and having.”

A shiver runs through me that has nothing to do with the cold. His words resonate somewhere deep inside—because I am all of those things.

“And what am I supposed to be?” My voice is barely audible over the piercing wind. “What balances that?”

“Fulfillment,” he says as though it’s simple. “Completion. The end of wanting.”

What would that even feel like? To want for nothing and be satisfied? A body that’s complete and whole. The concept is so foreign I can barely imagine it.

“I don’t know how to be that,” I admit, the confession slipping out. “I’ve never been enough for anyone. Not my birth parents, or my foster families; not friends or colleagues or anyone. How am I supposed to be fulfillment personified when I’ve spent my entire life being insufficient?” Waves of mist cover my face as my breathing deepens, the truth of my life waiting to be said. “I can’t even be enough for myself.”

Ash makes a sound low in his throat, something between a growl and a sigh. “You misunderstand, my flower. It’s not about being enough for anyone else. It’s about being exactly what you are—the missing piece that completes me, just as I am the missing piece that completes you.”

“But I don’t feel incomplete,” I argue, though even as the words leave my mouth, I know they’re a lie. I’ve felt incomplete my entire life. Broken. Missing something essential that everyone else seems to have.

“Don’t you?” He steps closer, his presence a tangible weight against my side. “Haven’t you always felt that barren space inside you? That emptiness nothing seems to fill? It’s the reason you move so often and search for something you can’t name, is it not?”