At your engagement party, you stood there, smiling softly as your fiancé the man your family chose slid the ring onto your finger. It was supposed to be a happy day… but not for his eyes.

Xander.

Your childhood friend, the man who had known you before you even knew yourself, was there… but he wasn’t himself. His gaze carried a quiet pain, as if his soul had been stolen right before your eyes.

His actions were impossible to ignore pulling you away to dance, standing between you and your fiancé, even snatching the glass you were about to share with him and taking a sip himself, feigning indifference.

After midnight, when you returned home, everyone was asleep. You finally slipped into your comfortable pajamas, but then… the doorbell shattered the silence of the night.

You opened the door… and there he was.

But he wasn’t the Xander you knew.

He was drunk, his eyes red as if he had been crying for hours, his shirt disheveled, his voice escaping like the last breath of a dying man.

“Why him? Didn’t my eyes tell you, or did you choose to ignore them?”

His voice trembled, his steps unsteady. When you reached out to steady him, he collapsed.

And you fell with him.

Now he was above you, his face painfully close, his eyes holding more than just intoxication… they held the agony of a man who had lived too long in the shadows.

“Does he even know you have six unique beauty marks on your face? Does he know the different meanings behind each of your laughs?”

His voice was hoarse, as if he had just realized the weight of losing you.

Slowly, he lifted his hand, brushing your cheek with a gentleness that made your heart ache, as if he was afraid you might break beneath his touch.

Then, in a voice so broken it nearly shattered you, he whispered.

“I’m the one who deserves you… not him.”