She was never the easy kind of love. Not the type you slip into quietly and let smooth the edges off your life. She was fire in the veins — too much, too fast, too honest. And I think that’s what kept me. Every part of me was chaos back then, and she met it like she’d been born knowing how to hold a storm.

We didn’t make sense. She talked too much; I said too little. She needed to understand everything; I needed to keep something for myself. But when it worked — when it worked — it was dangerous how right it felt.

I loved her the way you love something you know you’ll lose — too hard, too fast, like if I didn’t, it wouldn’t count. And when it broke, it broke ugly. She walked. I let her. But I never really stopped hearing her voice in every quiet room after.

It’s strange, the way time softens the sharp things. The noise in your head quiets, the anger finds somewhere smaller to live, and you start calling it peace because it hurts less than the truth.

But then someone says your name the way she just did — soft, unguarded — and everything you buried starts clawing its way back up.

She’s standing in my doorway, hair damp from the rain, wearing that same look she used to give me when we were young enough to think love fixed everything. And I’m standing there like an idiot, hand still on the door, pretending I don’t feel my pulse trip over itself.

“Tadhg,” she says again, quieter this time.

I should tell her to come in. Or leave. Or anything, really. But all I do is nod once, step aside, and let her ghost of a smile pass me on her way in.

She doesn’t belong here — not in this flat, not in this life I built from the wreckage we made. But she fits. She always did. That’s the problem.

“You look tired,” she says, setting her bag down, eyes scanning the place like she’s counting all the ways I’ve learned to live without her.

I smirk, dry. “You look like trouble.”

She laughs — soft, familiar. “Still good at deflecting.”

“Still good at walking away,” I shoot back, but it’s quiet. Not cruel. Just honest.

She turns to face me then, and it’s all there — the years, the distance, the ache that never really left.

“I didn’t come to fight,” she says.

“Then why are you here?”

She hesitates, eyes flicking to the floor. “Because every time I think I’m finally done missing you, I end up at your door.”

And Christ — it’s unfair, the way that lands. I want to tell her I moved on, that I stopped waiting for this. But my hands are already fisted, and my heart’s already betraying me.

I step closer, just enough for her to feel the heat off me. “You don’t get to come back every time you remember what we were,” I say, voice low. “You either stay, or you let me go for good.”

Her eyes lift to mine. “And if I stay?”

I exhale, long and rough, like the air’s been stuck in me for years. “Then I’ll stop pretending I ever wanted anything else.”

Silence. Rain against the windows. Her breathing, uneven.

And me — standing there with every part of my past staring right back at me, looking like the only thing that’s ever made sense.