In this life, and the ones after...

The door shut behind us, sealing us away from the world, but it wasn't enough. It would never be enough. Not after all this time, all these months of torment. I needed her closer—needed to feel her, to make sure she was real and not some cruel figment of my longing.

"Iris," I breathed, reaching for her before my mind could catch up. My fingers were rough, desperate as they traced her face, her jaw, her lips—Goddess, her lips. How had I survived without them?

She looked up at me, wide-eyed, breathless, and something inside me shattered. "I thought you hated me" she whispered.

I swore the ground cracked beneath me. A groan rumbled in my chest, pained, wrecked, because how could she possibly say that when she had been the one haunting me? She was the reason I couldn't sleep, couldn't breathe, couldn't exist properly.