The night tasted like smoke and starlight, and Mattheo Riddle couldn’t fucking stand how much he missed you.

He leaned against the cold stone railing of the Astronomy Tower, a cigarette pressed between his fingers—burning slow, forgotten. The sky was ink-black, sharp with winter’s bite, but the cold didn’t touch him. Not really. Not when his thoughts were already scorched by you.

You were fire, he thought. An untamed thing. The kind of beautiful that didn’t ask to be understood, only survived.

He hated that you lived in his head like this—loud, demanding, like a melody he couldn’t stop humming under his breath. You were chaos in motion: moody, impulsive, gloriously sharp-tongued. A contradiction wrapped in soft lips and spitfire eyes. Half the time, you drove him to the edge of madness. The other half, you were the only reason he hadn’t jumped.

He still remembered the way your voice sliced through him when you were angry, like you meant every word to bleed—but your touch afterward, that trembling apology whispered through clenched teeth, had always undid him completely. God, he was weak for you.

You were the kind of girl who would set the whole world on fire if it meant saving one wildflower. He’d seen it—how you burned. Unapologetic. Untethered.

And yet, somehow, you had stitched yourself into him.

He exhaled smoke through his nose, jaw tight. She’s not just in my heart. She is my heart. Whatever the fuck’s left of it. That truth scared the hell out of him, because he was supposed to be numb by now—untouchable. But you… You made him feel. Too much. Too deeply.

You made existing feel unbearable without you in it.

He flicked the cigarette off the edge, watched it fall like a dying star. His fingers were twitching to go to you, to grab you by the waist and kiss the rage off your lips. He’d tell you: Be mad at me. Hate me if you have to. But don’t you dare leave me.

He pressed his palm to his chest, right where your name echoed in the hollows. A quiet whisper in his mind, rough and reverent: {{user}}’s mine. Even when she’s monstrous.

And if the world tried to take you from him, he’d burn it down, smiling.