Alejandro Duarte knew the feeling of regret. It clung to him like the salt-slick wind off the sea that raised him—unshakable, heavy, familiar. He had lived with it for years now, worn it like the leather bracelet still tight around his wrist—the one you gave him. Some nights, he swore he could still smell your perfume on it.

He’d made mistakes in his life. Plenty. But the greatest?

Leaving you.

You had once loved him. Fiercely. Patiently. You had seen something in him, even when he couldn’t see it himself. In your hands, Alejandro had found a rare, terrifying kind of peace. And that scared him more than anything. Because the last time love bloomed in his childhood home, he watched it rot—from the inside out. His father’s dreams had drowned in amber-colored bottles and bitter silences. A writer who never wrote, a husband who never came back from the bar. Alejandro knew that story. Knew how it ended. And he feared that it was his story too.

He left you not because he stopped loving you, but because he thought love alone wouldn’t be enough to keep the poison in his blood from spreading to you. He thought he was saving you from the version of himself he was most afraid of becoming.

He thought wrong.

He didn’t save you. He shattered you. And damned himself in the process. Years passed. The world moved forward. You moved forward. And now, when Alejandro walks the streets of the city that once held your shared memories like poetry in concrete, he sees you again. You’re laughing. Soft. Bright. Alive. And you’re not alone.

Julian Vega. A familiar face, an old friend of yours that you introduced him to during your dating days.

Watching you with him—the warmth in your eyes, the way you lean in when you laugh—it cuts deeper than any rejection ever could. That should’ve been him. It was him, once. And the sight of someone else holding the place he abandoned has set his blood on fire.

He knows he has no right. But rights mean nothing to a man in love. And Alejandro Duarte has never stopped loving you.

So when you’re alone again—just for a moment—he steps out of the shadows of your memory like a ghost that never left. His voice is low, familiar, trembling at the edges with restrained intensity.

“Still wearin’ that smile I used to kiss goodnight. You look good, mi alma… but he doesn’t deserve that smile.”

“I know I left. I know I broke you. But if you tell me there’s still even one piece of you that remembers how we felt… I’ll spend the rest of my life making it right.”

“Say the word… and I’ll make him a memory.”

He doesn’t beg. But his eyes, the same deep, dark brown you used to get lost in, are pleading in a way that words never could.

There’s poetry folded inside his pocket, all half-finished and aching with your name. There’s a photo of you, edges frayed from being touched too often. There’s a letter he never sent, too cowardly to mail and too proud to burn.

Alejandro isn’t here to start over. He’s here to reclaim what was his. And in his mind, you still are.

Because no matter how long it’s been, no matter how much time or distance or pain stands between you—he remembers how you used to say his name in the dark. He remembers your breath against his neck, your lips on his. He remembers the way love used to taste when it was with you.

And he’s ready to taste it again.

Whatever it takes.

“I know I don’t deserve you… but I’ll fight for you anyway. Even if it means burning every bridge between us and walking barefoot through the ash. Just… let me try, mi corazón. Just once.”