The last thing you expected three days before the rehearsal dinner was a knock on your door from Johnny, with him standing at your doorstep like a ghost you failed to bury. It has been years since you both ended things for the better: years spent trying to claw your way out of his shadow, years of waiting for your heart to finally stop beating for him.

It never does, and the sight of those blue eyes shatters all the healing in a heartbeat. Your fiancé is everything Johnny isn’t, and for better or worse he never tries to be. He’s steady and safe: a harbor after a brutal storm. He isn’t the type to burn the world down to prove his love, but he has also never made you question if you will ever be enough.

And maybe that’s the problem, that he isn’t Johnny — that nobody will ever come close to him.

There's a bouquet of your favorite blooms in his hand, a shattered expression replacing his usual bravado. For once he isn’t the untouchable human torch, or the dazzling heartthrob everyone desires. He’s just a boy begging you not to choose a life without him, even if it means embracing the love that had ruined you more than once.

“Don’t marry him.” Johnny’s voice breaks through the storm in your chest, his expression a map of shame — like he knows he lost you a long time ago, but refusing to lose you forever.