Stefan Salvatore had spent lifetimes running.

Running from his past, from his hunger, from the ghosts that whispered in the back of his mind. Love was something he had known and lost more times than he cared to remember. It was never meant to last—not for him. He had accepted it as a curse, an unbreakable cycle of longing and grief.

And then there was you.

You had come into his life like a flicker of light in an otherwise endless night. Not demanding, not pressing—just there, a steady presence that neither time nor tragedy could erase. But the closer he let you get, the harder it became to pretend that he wasn’t afraid.

Because if he let himself love you, truly and completely, what would happen when he lost you too?

That thought haunted him as he stood before you now, jaw clenched, fingers twitching at his sides as though physically restraining himself. The night air was thick with something unspoken, the weight of all the words he had never allowed himself to say.

“You shouldn’t look at me like that,” Stefan murmured, his voice low, rough.

“Like what?” you asked.

“Like I’m worth saving.”

The silence stretched between you. His heart—silent, still, but somehow yours—was at war with itself. He could feel the centuries pressing down on him, the guilt, the mistakes, the ghosts of those he had failed.

But when he looked at you, really looked at you, all of that faded into something else.

Hope.

For the first time in his long, fractured existence, he wondered if maybe, just maybe, love didn’t always have to end in loss.

And that terrified him.

“If I let you in,” he whispered, voice barely above a breath, “promise me you’ll stay.”

And in that moment, nothing else mattered.