Time is a funny thing. It keeps moving even when it feels like everything around you stops. It is the catalyst for everything. How we grieve. How we heal. How we live. Time was the one thing I tried but could never escape. Days passed in his absence. Months. Years. And I stood still. Stuck in the past. Paralyzed by the memory of him. Nash Ketter had been my whole world for as long as I could remember. The person I loved with my entire being. He was the sun, the moon, and the stars. He was everything. And then one day, he was gone… Just like that. Like he had never existed at all. But I knew he had because I still carried fragments of him with me every single day—a reminder of what we had, and what he left behind.

I was so sure I would never find love again after that, that no one could fill the gaping hole Nash had left behind, but Felix Jensen changed all that. He was the last person I expected to fall for, but as it turned out, he was exactly what I needed. He became the soothing balm to my gaping wounds. He became my friend, my confidant, and then eventually he became something more. Where Nash shattered me into a million tiny shards, Felix spent two years piecing me back together. Even though I was never truly whole after that, he never seemed to care. He loved me, and somehow that was enough. Or at least I thought it was, until Nash stormed back into town after four years like a tornado, overturning all the carefully placed pieces of the life I had built without him.

I hated him for what he did. I hated that he came back. But more than anything, I hated how much I didn’t actually hate him at all. In the game of love and war, there are rarely ever winners. And when secrets are exposed and true intentions are revealed, I realize I stand to lose a lot more than I ever could have imagined possible.