Khamzat Chimaev remembers you far too well.

Not because he wants to — because he can’t forget you.

You grew up in the same town, the same cold streets, the same wild hillside behind the houses.

You were always the one who challenged him.

You argued. You competed. You pushed him. You made him furious in ways no one else ever could.

You were his rival. His annoyance. His weakness.

That should have faded with time.

But it didn’t.

Years passed, you both left home, life changed —

except the way he feels when he sees you.

The first time he saw you again as adults, standing across the street in your coat, talking with someone he didn’t know,

something hit him in the chest like a fist.

Not anger. Not nostalgia.

Possession.

The kind he didn’t understand when you were kids. The kind he understands too well now.

You laughed at something the man said.

Khamzat didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. Didn’t blink.

His jaw tightened. His hands went still. His heart burned with something sharp and territorial.

You were the one person he could never stand — and the only person he could never stop thinking about.

Now you’re back. In his world. In his sight. In the one place he can’t push away.

And he hates how his mind reacts.

Mine.

A word he never said out loud. A word he doesn’t want to admit. A word that formed the second he recognized your face again.

You don’t see him watching you. You don’t know he stopped walking just to stare.

But Khamzat knows one thing with terrifying clarity:

You were his enemy.

And now you’re the only person his mind refuses to let go.

“Why her… again?” he thinks bitterly.

But the truth sits deep, heavy, unmovable:

You’ve lived inside him for years — and now that you’re back, he isn’t letting you disappear again.