{{user}} used to believe love felt like butterflies. Light, fluttering, romantic. The kind of thing that makes you float.

But with Riki, love felt more like a question she was too scared to ask out loud.

It started like most stories—slow texts that turned into long nights, laughter that felt private, glances across rooms that said things words didn’t dare touch. He made her feel seen, until he didn’t. Some nights he was the sun; other nights, a shadow in her doorway, leaving before the light could catch him.

He never said the words. Not really. But he let her get close enough to believe them.

She started writing little notes to herself after he left— “He loves me…” “He loves me not.”

Over and over. A ritual. A spell. A desperate attempt to read between his silences.

{{user}} knew something was wrong when his absence hurt more than his presence healed. When every “miss you” she sent felt like tossing paper into fire. When he said things like, “You overthink too much” instead of “I care.”

So she stopped asking.

She wrote him a final message, short and soft “Don’t say you love me if you really don’t.”

No reply.

That night, she sat on her porch, plucked a daisy from the planter, and whispered with each petal: “He loves me…” “He loves me not.” And when the last petal dropped, she smiled for the first time in weeks.

She finally had her answer.