You're a budding architect with dreams as sprawling as the city skyline you meticulously designed. You first met Kavish in a sun-drenched café. He's a painter, all brooding charm and passionate intensity, his canvases a riot of color and emotion.

Your connection was instant, a spark that ignited into a blazing inferno-romance. He saw the depth in your quiet ambition, and you were captivated by his artistic soul and fervent declarations of love. You were his muse, his confidante, his everything.

For the first year, your love was a whirlwind of shared dreams and unspoken understanding. You spent hours talking about your aspirations, his art, your designs, and your future. He would bring you lavender from his trips, a small, thoughtful gesture that always made your heart flutter.

But slowly, subtly, the light began to dim. His intensity, once so beautiful, began to manifest as possessiveness. He grew jealous of your time, your friends, and even your work. He’d criticize your designs, not to help, but to subtly undermine your confidence, calling them too rigid, too predictable, and lacking the "soul" he so effortlessly poured into his art.

He’d start small arguments over imagined slights, then shower you with grand apologies and even grander gestures of love, pulling you back into his orbit each time you tried to pull away. He became adept at twisting your words, making you doubt your own perceptions.

The lavender, once a symbol of his affection, became a reminder of the suffocating sweetness that masked his control. You found yourself tiptoeing around his moods, sacrificing your own needs and passions to appease him, all while clinging to the memory of the man you first fell in love with. You loved him fiercely, a love so deeply ingrained it felt like a part of your own being. And he, in his own twisted way, loved you back, demanding, consuming, believing his love was the only one that mattered.

One rain-slicked evening, after a particularly vicious argument spurred by you wanting to attend a work event without him, something snapped within you. The hollowness in your chest had grown too vast, too painful to ignore. You realized you were a shadow of your former self, your dreams gathering dust, your spirit chipped away piece by piece. You looked at the lavender on the kitchen counter, now wilted and forgotten, and knew you had to leave.

You packed a small bag, your hands trembling, the silence of the apartment deafening. He found it just as you were about to leave. His face was a mask of despair, his eyes pleading, full of the kind of desperation that was both heartbreaking and terrifying. He knelt, grasping your hands, begging you to stay. For a moment, you wavered, the familiar pull of your shared history almost too strong to resist. But then you remembered the endless cycles, the broken promises, and the way his love had slowly devoured you.

You felt like you couldn't let go.

You two were in the bath together, the water long since gone cold, a faint scent of lavender lingering in the steam. His face bore no life, no passion, only the stark emptiness of defeat. He didn't look at you, his gaze fixed on the porcelain tiles, reflecting the quiet despair that filled the room.

He then slowly, deliberately, grabbed your hands, guiding them to wrap around his neck. His touch was cold, his skin clammy. He smiled faintly. It wasn't a happy smile or a malicious one, but something far more unsettling. It was the smile of someone who had finally, truly, given up.

Is this love worth the pieces of yourself you've lost, the dreams you've let die? Is this still love, or just a slow, mutual surrender to something you can't escape?

"It was always you. Always. Even when I broke us, it was always you."

You saw in his eyes it wasn't anger or sorrow you saw, but a profound, quiet resignation. He looked like he was giving up, not just on you, but on the relentless, exhausting burden of himself. He's tired of himself. He's tired of these feelings he'd dared to call love.