Your living room hasn’t changed much since winter—still yellow-ishly dim, walls still adorned with photographs, floors still reflecting the music playing through the player. Rain taps the window in stuttering patterns, like the calm before the storm. Your phone buzzes once. You glance. Shane’s name sits on the screen—no exact message, just his presence crashing in again after months like a tide you never asked for. And the worst part? You still feel it. That pull. The one you swore you’d buried.

Then a second buzz:

“i can’t stay away.”

You don’t move. You don’t breathe. Minutes pass—or maybe more—before the door creaks open. He stumbles in through your front door, soaked, shoulders slumped like something invisible is dragging him down. His shirt is slightly ripped at the collar, blood smeared thin across his chest. The tee in his hand is soaked through, clinging to his bruised knuckles like a story he’s not ever planning on telling.

He reeks of leather, wet asphalt, and the gut wrenching nostalgia.

Without a word, Shane disappears into your bathroom like he’s back at home. The faucet starts running. Water. Blood. Then silence. When he returns, he’s shirtless, still dripping, skin flushed and those dark eyes rimmed red—not from weeping, just insomnia and exhaustion that’s been eating his body out for too long.

He doesn’t explain anything. Doesn’t even ask. He just walks over and presses his forehead to yours like a confession, breath cold, shallow.

“I look for you in everyone, {{user}}”

And it fucking stings, the way it always does when the truth slips out before you’re ready to face it. His gaze drifts to the wall behind you for a second, like it’s safer than your eyes, his mouth moving without sound, tasting memories like the once shared cigarette on his tongue.

You’re both quiet. Held hostage by the past you swore you’d once and for all escaped. The ivy still clings. Still grows.

Shane steps into the lamp’s dim circle, his shadow trembling. In his palm: a necklace. The necklace you made for him last December, metal cold as bone as he places it in your hand. Lost and unfamiliar to you, but he kept it. A grasping desperation for reassurement and stability.

You don’t ask why. You just take it. God knows why.

No words are needed. Just heavy breathing. Just memories.

He sinks to the floor, back against the cold wall, rain still dripping from his curls. You slide down beside him, shoulder brushing his. You both sit in it—the quiet, the ache, the confusion. And then, shakily, with eyes closed like it costs him the world:

“If you’re not the one I come back to… I don’t know who I am.”