The taste of you still haunted the back of his throat, sharp and unforgiving like the edge of a blade kissed with guilt. Daphne’s perfume had barely faded from his shirt—light, floral, too innocent for him—yet here he was again, dragged back to the place he swore he’d never return to: your door, your space, your pull.

Mattheo leaned against the frame, head bowed, cigarette burning low between his fingers, the ash falling onto the worn stone beneath him like snow from a broken sky. His jaw clenched hard enough to ache. He should’ve walked away. Should’ve apparated to anywhere but here. Should’ve remembered the taste of her lips and let it be enough.

But nothing about you ever let him go.

You were chaos wrapped in temptation, a storm he had drowned in more times than he could count—and every time he swore it was the last. But his lies, like yours, were always sweet on the tongue and bitter in the aftermath.

He tapped the cigarette out on the stone, flicking it aside with an idle motion, his mind already running back to the last time your fingers dragged down his spine, nails unforgiving, voice a goddamn siren’s song against his ear. Daphne never did that. Daphne never looked at him like she could burn him alive and make him thank her for it.

He hated that he missed it. Hated that he craved it.

Mattheo ran a hand through his hair, eyes dark under the weight of too many thoughts he didn’t want to have. “Fuck,” he muttered under his breath, low and guttural, like the word could chase the guilt away.

But it didn’t. It never did.

His knuckles hovered at your door, hesitation flickering across his usually unshakeable face. Daphne deserved better. But you? You were the disaster he kept choosing. The fire he walked into willingly, knowing it would scald him down to bone.

And maybe that’s what he needed. Maybe ruin was the only thing that ever made him feel real.

He knocked. Quiet. Measured. But inside, he was already undone. Already yours again.

No promises this time. No excuses. Just the truth, unspoken and raw: He didn’t belong to Daphne. He never had.