The months dragged on. Everyone else seemed to forget he’d ever existed, but me? I was still waking up every single night at three-thirty-three and crawling the walls in the dark, my heart pounding so hard I swore it would kill me, mind spinning with the same pointlesswhy, why, whys?
“You know what I finally figured out?” I glanced over at my new friend, silent and stately as ever. “Sometimes, things just end. They’re messy and complicated and it sucks, but life doesn’t owe you answers and a neat little bow to tie things off. Sometimes, all you get is a smashed heart and a choice: make friends with the pain and move forward, or curl up on the kitchen floor, fall back into the past, and fuckingdrownthere. I didn’t want to drown, Gargs. I wanted to fight.”
I told him about my so-called rise from the depths of that dead sea—leaving Elian’s apartment, joining Bay Coven, practicing my blood magick, trying to build an actual life for myself that didn’t involve looking at old pictures and waiting for them to talk to me. I made new friends, found things to smile about. I even met a new guy—a wolf shifter. I thought I could love him, too. Not right away, not in the same reckless, passionate tumble I’d experienced with Elian. But in a mature and stable way—one that would last. It’s what I thought I’d wanted, and for a long time, things were good. Not amazing, not butterflies-with-every-searing-hot-touch, but good.
Then, just as I was finally getting my footing again, it happened.
A mutual witch friend who’d moved down south had heard about a club in New Orleans. Saints and Sinners, it was called. An abandoned cathedral bought and resurrected a few months earlier by a silver-eyed fae with a crooked grin and a clever tongue.
A man who’d allegedly done the impossible:
Escaped the deadly realm of Midnight after years of exile.
His name was Elian.
“I wept to know he was alive,” I said. “Wept to imagine what he must’ve endured in captivity. Wept to think he might soon return to the Bay, or call or write me, and what would I even say to him? I was in a different place in my life at that point. Stronger. Older. Content with my wolf shifter. But I still cared for Elian. I wanted him to know he’d always have a friend in me. One who wanted him to be safe and happy, no matter how badly things had gone between us. But Elian… He never reached out, and I was too scared to make the first move. I figured he had his reasons—reasons he didn’t want to share, or couldn’t share, and I tried to accept that. But I couldn’t.
“My witch friend had visited the club a few times since then—told me about the wild parties, the fae women, Elian at the center of it all like some giant supernova. I wanted to be happy for him, but all I could think about was the fact that in all her visits, for all that he’d rolled out the red carpet for her, he’d neveronceasked about me. It was like I’d stopped existing for him the same wayhe’dstopped existing for everyone else years earlier.”
I ran my thumb along the blade of my dagger, accidentally nicking myself. Blood welled on my skin, and I stared at the little red beads. They glinted like rubies in the sunlight.
I pressed my thumb to the blade again, just enough to make it sting.
“I started waking up every night at three-thirty-three again,” I said. “Started having nightmares about him being trapped in Midnight. The questions I’dswornI put to rest were back with a vengeance, scampering around my mind all day and night like rats. I’d do my best to keep it together at home, then lose it in the shower, hoping my boyfriend didn’t hear me. I didn’t have the courage to tell him about Elian—about how often I still thought of him. Missed him. It was tearing me up inside—I could barely function anymore. Eventually, I got fired from my job. I blew up my relationship, pushed away most of my friends. I sank right back into my old, desperate patterns, and it was only the barest shred of pride that kept me from hitching a ride down to New Orleans and making a scene so explosive, it would put Elian’s craziest parties to shame.”
Another breeze cut through the humidity, carrying the scents of jasmine and the still waters of the pond. I shivered, despite the heat.
The worst night of my life was slowly clawing its way back to the surface, strangling me in its icy grip.
I hadn’t thought about it in a long time—not even when I’d finally seen Elian last night—but suddenly, it was all around me again. The darkness. The cold.
“My friend called me one night,” I said softly. “Said she was at the club, and Elian was heading down to meet her, and did I want to give him a message? Feeling brave, I told her to say hello for me, and to call or text later if he wanted to say hello back.”
I shook my head and groaned, the old shame rising inside. “You never think you’re gonna be that girl, Gargs. The one who holds her phone and literally stares at the screen for three hours, waiting on the ping that never comes. And it didn’t, of course. It was never going to. So, as the sun started to rise on yetanotherday without a word from the man who still owned my heart, I decided I was finally done. Just done. I chucked my phone in the toilet, stripped out of my clothes, and turned on the bathwater.”
A deep, shuddering breath rattled through my lungs. I’d never told this story to anyone. Not to my sisters, not to my coven mates, not even to my journals.
Now, I was telling it to a statue beneath the gentle sway of Spanish moss, feeling safe and calm in a way I hadn’t since my high school years in Nona’s kitchen, doing homework at the kitchen table while she baked her world-famous lasagna.
“The next thing I was consciously aware of,” I said, “I was naked in a scalding hot bath with a bottle of pills in one hand and a kitchen knife in the other, trying to decide which would kill me faster. Pills were unreliable, I figured, so I went with the knife. A vertical slit from wrist to elbow, as deep as I could stand.”
I shivered and traced the tip of my dagger along the scar, a pink and silver ridge about the length of my pinky. The skin was numb there. It didn’t want to remember that night, either.
“There was a lot of blood,” I said. “More than I was expecting. And seeing it, that bright red mess... Something snapped inside, like someone just yanked off the veil and shined a flashlight in my face. Maybe it was Nona, or my dead parents, or the sisters I hadn’t even met yet. Maybe it was fate itself, reminding me I still had important shit to do. But in that moment, I heard a voice in my head, clear as a bell.Stop hoping, it said.Just stop.At first, I thought it was encouraging me to give up, but it wasn’t. It was saving me.”
My friend’s reports of Elian’s party life in New Orleans had reignited hope inside me, and every day that passed, I washopingI’d see him again.Hopinghe’d finally explain.Hoping, above all else, he’d finally fucking acknowledge that what we’d shared had meant something to him, even if we had to let it go.
All that hope? I was poisoning myself with it.
“So I stopped hoping,” I continued, “and instead tried to think of one simple thing—onerealthing—I could appreciate. First thing that popped into my head? Nona’s lasagna. I’d just made a batch the night before, and suddenly, Ihadto survive, if only to taste one last bite. So I made myself a deal: Get out of the bathtub, stitch up the arm, and warm up the damn lasagna. If I still wanted to opt out after all that, I could get right back in the tub. But you know what, Gargs? Once I had that first hot, gooey bite, I wanted another one. So I made a new deal: Stay alive long enough to eat one whole piece. One piece became the rest of the pan, which got me through another week. Then I found something else to appreciate. On it went, a few hours or days at a time, all these little moments of appreciation and bargaining until I finally realized I didn’t want to get back in that bathtub. I was ready to fight again.”
It felt like a thousand years ago, that fight. I thought it would’ve ended by now, but it didn’t.
I wasstillfighting. Every single day.
Seeing Elian last night, as beautiful and alive as I’d ever known him, still rocking that stupid smirk and those eyes that could melt my soul…
I could very easily let him break me again. Slip right back into the darkest hours of my life. Slice the vein. Slide under the water. Goodbye.
