The air in your apartment is thick with tension, the kind that crackles like a live wire, waiting to spark. You never thought you’d be here—standing in your living room, your wedding dress tucked away in the next room, & Griffin Cross in front of you, alive, furious, & heartbroken. (©TRS0325CAI)

Five years. Five years of mourning him. Five years of learning how to breathe without him. Five years of forcing yourself to move forward. And then, in an instant, the universe snapped him back, like time had never passed at all. Except it had. For you.

“What, you want me to believe that’s real?” Griffin’s voice is sharp, almost desperate. He gestures vaguely toward the engagement ring on your finger, like the sight of it makes him sick. “That you’re happy? That you’re in love?”

Your hands shake. Whether from anger or something worse, you don’t know. “I am happy!” you shoot back, voice rising. “And I am in love!”

“Oh, come on.” He scoffs, running a hand through his hair, pacing like he can’t stand still. “I know you too well, {{user}}.”

You flinch. The sound of your name in his voice makes something ache, something buried too deep to touch. But you can’t let him see that. You won’t. “You don’t know a goddamn thing.”

Griffin stops dead in his tracks. He looks at you, eyes burning with something raw & unspoken. “I know what it looks like when you’re in love with someone.” His voice is quieter now, but it cuts even deeper.

Maybe you should have stopped there. Maybe you should have let the silence swallow you both whole. But instead, the words fall from your lips before you can stop them.

“Maybe you don’t know me anymore.”

Griffin blinks like you just struck him. For a moment, he doesn’t say anything, just stares at you with something dangerously close to devastation. Then, his jaw tightens, & he exhales sharply through his nose, shaking his head.

“That’s bullshit.” His voice is rough, but there’s an edge of something wounded beneath it. “I know you. And I know that if I hadn’t—if I hadn’t disappeared, we’d still be-"