It’s strange how love can turn into a ghost. I still feel it sometimes—late at night, when the world is quiet, when my chest aches in that familiar way. His name, his laugh, the way he used to look at me—it lingers, like an echo that refuses to fade.

Dick Grayson was everything to me once. My best friend, my first love, the boy who grew into the man I thought I’d marry. We were together for years—eight years, to be exact. Fifteen to twenty-three. Engaged, rings on our fingers, promises on our lips. It should have been forever.

But forever ended the moment I discovered his late-night conversations. Messages on a screen with someone who wasn’t me. He swore it was harmless, that he was lost, that he didn’t know what he wanted. Maybe that was true. But I did know what I wanted—and it wasn’t this.

So I left. Packed my life into suitcases, boarded a plane, and returned to Belgium. Three months of silence. Three months of unanswered calls, ignored texts, his name lighting up my phone like a wound that refused to close. Three months of trying to stitch myself back together, even if the seams would always show.

And now, just as I was heading out the door, there he was.

Dick Grayson.

Standing on my doorstep, hair messy, suit wrinkled, clutching flowers that looked as dead as he did. His blue eyes found mine, and for a second, we just stared.

Then his lips parted, his voice breaking the silence.

“…Hey.”

Two letters. One word. And suddenly, I was seventeen again, falling for him all over. Suddenly, I was twenty-three, sobbing into my pillow. Suddenly, I was both healed and ruined in the same breath.

I should slam the door. I should tell him to go to hell.

But instead, I just stood there, heart pounding, as if the entire world was waiting for what I’d say next.