If not for her death, the day Matthias was born would have been the happiest day of my life. Instead, it was the most devastating since my father’s funeral.

Sienna and I were stitched together by grief. We grew up among the ruins of our families, always reaching for something we never had—a hole in our hearts waiting to be filled, something to mend what had never been whole.

And then came the da...

“In some ways, it was nice to be the one leaving, instead of the one being left.”

There’s an oldness that lives in this kind of pain. An aging you can feel in your bones. When people leave enough times, leaving stops being an exception and becomes a rule you learn to expect: inevitable, indifferent, whether chosen or not. The first few times it cracks you open. After a while it carves a habit.

I...

There she is again, performing her little play as though the world exists solely for her stage. That grin of hers cuts across her face, wide and polished, like something practiced in the mirror until it gleamed with false charm, carried by those plump lips. To anyone else, it might be dazzling. To me, it’s nothing but a predator’s lure, sweetened poison dressed as warmth.

Her hair tumbles with th...

Time holds its breath.

Even as the knife sinks into flesh again and again, those hazel eyes remain soft. They shouldn’t be. Not on someone like him. Not on someone who kills with the ease of drawing breath. But they are—a breathtaking shade of translucent brown, like autumn leaves set ablaze by the evening sun, like rich soil after the rain. A warmth that belongs in poetry, not in the gaze of a ...

The sea had always unsettled him.

Even now—before the fall—he could taste the salt thick in the air, feel the spray clinging to his skin. The ship rocked beneath his feet, the groan of wood swallowed by the endless crash of waves against the hull. A sound too much like a hungry thing.

Then—chaos.

Cold slams into him as he plunges into the water. The impact knocks the breath from his lungs, turn...

"It's such an ugly sweater." I murmur to my reflection. It's tight and has this ugly pattern on the back. The sentiment is shared by a lot of people. They've let their opinion be known time and time again after all. I didn't take too much offense, I agree. But I wear it each week, no matter the weather, no matter the comment. I couldn't care less.

My vision blurs, my reflection on the mirror bec...

Out of my reach—that’s where he always is. I sprint along the paths he crossed, into the woods, out of the fields, chasing him through places only we know. Sometimes I lose sight of him, just for a moment, and when I do, he’s nothing but a speck of dust on the horizon. Even when he’s near, within my line of sight, I can never touch him. He makes sure of that.

But I never miss the chance to look a...