Chapter 27
Khalee
I wake with my body wrapped around his, our limbs tangled in the hush of morning, the air still thick with the echoes of last night.
His warmth grounds me, steady, solid, real, and I press closer, nestling my face into his chest like I could disappear into him and never have to surface again.
The scent of him, of us, lingers in the room, clinging to the sheets, to my skin, to the air between us.
For a while, I don’t move. I just breathe him in, letting the slow, steady rise and fall of his chest beneath my hand anchor me to this moment, to him.
To the fragile truth that this, whatever this is, is real.
At least for now.
I keep my eyes shut.
Because I’m afraid.
Afraid that when I open them, he’ll be different.
That his form will shift.
That the look in his eyes won’t be what it was last night, but something colder. Distant.
Regretful.
Mornings are cruel like that; they always bring the truth with them.
There’s something bitter about sleep, the way it so easily divides yesterday from today, the past from the present.
Waking always feels like the start of a new chapter, even when we’re still clinging to the pages of the last one.
The present slips through our fingers, and the past… Though it lingers, it tastes like ash the second you open your eyes.
“Are we competing to see how long we can last until one of us says something? Because this is causing me anxiety.” I hear him and immediately start laughing. His hand moves instinctively, fingers threading through my hair like he’s afraid I’ll pull away.
" Pretty sure you lost already.”
“Yeah, sorry, ” he says, tone soft but teasing. “It was either that or spiral internally for another five minutes while pretending to be chill. Thought this was the healthier option.”
I tilt my head, finally daring to look up at him. His eyes find mine instantly, no regret, no distance—just him.
“You’re still solid, ” I say quietly.
“Seems like it, ” he replies. “Want me to go ghost again?”
“Definitely not.”
He smirks. “That’s a relief, because I have no fucking idea how to do it on demand.”
“I don’t know if I should be happy about that or mildly concerned.”
“Let’s go with happy, ” he says, raising an eyebrow, still smiling. “Maybe we just… enjoy it while it lasts?”
And somehow, he says it so easily.
So fluidly. Like nothing about this feels heavy to him.
Like he hasn’t been living in the same storm I have.
I want to say yes. I want to let myself fall into that lightness.
But the truth is… I can’t stop overthinking because… There’s so much he doesn’t know.
“Yeah… we can go with that. But I still owe you the truth.”
That does it, because the moment the words leave my mouth, he tenses and breathes hard.
I could’ve let it pass. Maybe I should’ve. But we both deserve better than that.
“I remembered enough, Khalee, ” he says, and his voice, God, his voice, isn’t playful anymore. It’s raw. Honest. Cracking at the edges.
He looks at me, and I swear I can see the guilt bleeding out of him.
“Last night… a big amount of my memories clicked back into place. Not everything. But enough to feel you in and remember you in a big part of me. Of my past,” His fingers tighten gently on my waist. “And I can’t accept that I forgot you.
That I let death steal you from me and didn’t even fight it.
I can’t accept that I failed you like that. ”
“I should’ve told you sooner,” I murmur against his chest, regret eating me inside.
“I wouldn’t have believed you. Not then, ” he says. “I felt the pull, yeah, at that party, the second I saw you. I was drawn to you instantly. But I thought it was because you could see me. And I was so fucking desperate to be seen.”
“You were alone for so long…” I whisper. “It makes sense that you thought that was the reason you stuck with me.”
“But that’s the thing, love, ” he says, tilting my chin gently so I can’t look away.
“I don’t think that’s why. Not really. Because from the moment I stepped into your life, everything changed.
The urges, the questions, the need to understand what happened to me, none of it mattered the same way.
I used to think the emptiness inside me came from lost memories.
From not knowing who I was, or why I was stuck here.
But now I see it so clearly, what I was missing was you.
I spent so long wandering through the in-between, aching for something I couldn’t name, clinging to whatever might push me forward.
But the second you came into my life… just being near you was enough.
Because now I know, deep in my bones, that all along…
I wasn’t searching for answers. I was searching for you. ”
I swallow hard, the ache in my throat tightening.
“I should’ve never left Stormhaven, ” I whisper. “If I had just stayed… maybe we would’ve found each other sooner.”
“Khalee, ”
“No, just… just listen, ” I say quickly, the words spilling too fast now, like if I don’t let them out, they’ll eat me alive.
“You were out there, Kaze. Wandering around for five years. And I keep thinking… if I had stayed, maybe we could’ve figured it out.
Maybe you’d have found peace, maybe you’d be in the next plane by now.
Maybe, ” my voice cracks, “maybe I wouldn’t have suffered the way I did.
Maybe I wouldn’t have thought you chose to leave me.
Maybe I would’ve known something had happened. Maybe I would’ve… ”
“Whoa, whoa, stop, ” he says, suddenly sharper, sitting up a little. “Stop right there, baby. Don’t do that. Don’t put that on yourself.”
His hands come up to cup my face, firm but gentle, grounding.
“I won’t let you blame yourself. I mean it, Khalee. I failed you, and although I still don’t know my reasons for it, or your reasons for leaving, I’m sure enough you are not the one to blame for any of it.” His voice is shaking now, too. Eyes glassy, jaw tight.
“You don’t know that.”
“Neither do you. So stop it and just tell me why you left.”
Oh, fuck.
That’s not how I wanted this to go.
The words hit like a punch to the chest. My breath hitches, and suddenly, it’s too much.
And just like it happened with my mother, I hesitate.
Do I tell him the truth?
Do I tell him I left because I waited for him to save me while I was too busy trying to save someone else?
That the night I lost him wasn’t the only loss I carried?
That I didn’t just lose him, I gave away a part of me that I shouldn’t have?
The truth is right there, trembling on the edge of my tongue, begging to be freed. It would be so easy, so tempting, to just let it out, to finally unload this weight and let the wound breathe in the open.
But what good would it do?
I saw him yesterday, saw the way guilt already started to carve into him, slow and merciless.
Why add to it?
Why ask him to carry more when I’m so used to shouldering it alone?
“There was nothing left for me here.”
It’s not the whole truth, but it’s the version I can give him.
So I tell him the pieces I can manage, the parts that won’t do worse than better.
I tell him how I left, how moving away had always been in the cards, long before he disappeared. How the town felt smaller after he was gone, how everything familiar became unbearable. I needed distance. Space to breathe. Or maybe just somewhere I could fall apart without witnesses.
I explain how I ended up in the city, tried different jobs, bounced from one thing to the next, trying to find something that felt like purpose. College never appealed to me, not because I couldn’t go, but because I didn’t want to sit still in one place long enough to pretend I was okay.
I tell him about the friends I made, the shallow connections I tried to deepen.
Friendly people, kind people, but no one who got it.
No one who got me. I kept my hands busy, my days full.
I threw myself into astrological studies, reading charts, mapping stars, and finding comfort in the patterns of the universe when I couldn’t make sense of anything else.
Eventually, I found a rhythm. Clients, routines, and appointments that filled my calendar, leaving behind the silence. I built something on my own, piece by piece, even if it never truly filled the space he left behind.
I tell him I traveled a bit, small trips, quiet ones, chasing something I couldn’t name. The only constant was Cosmos, always by my side, always grounding me.
I saw my family here and there, met them in different cities, and avoided home like it might burn me alive if I got too close.
And then… I tell him about the pull. That strange, persistent ache in my chest that was screaming for me to come back. I didn’t know it was because of him, not really. But I felt it, day after day, like an itch beneath my skin I couldn’t scratch.
Until I gave up trying to exist in a world that never quite fit without him in it… and came back.
Because some part of me knew, even after everything, that this is where the unfinished things waited for resolution.
“You lived, love.”
“I didn’t, Kaze. Not as I was supposed to, at least. Because yeah, I saw places, I experienced some things, but the void you say you felt being dead, I’ve felt it too, being alive.”
“I’m so sorry…” he murmurs, and I feel the guilt bleeding out of him again.
I want to tell him there’s nothing to be sorry for.
But it wouldn’t be the truth.
So I let the silence speak for me.
“What do you think happened to you?” I ask.
“I think I crashed my motorcycle.”
“The memory you had before… was that the day you died?”
“I’m not sure, ” he admits. “But it feels right. I remember being desperate, like I was trying to get somewhere, fast. I think… I think it was my mother screaming at me to stop. But I can’t be sure because I still don’t remember her fully or where I was.”
Was he trying to reach me? Please, god, don’t let it be it. Don’t let me be the reason he crashed.
“Were you drinking?” I ask gently because I’m not sure I want to know where he was going in such a rush.
He shakes his head slowly. “I don’t think drinks were the problem…”
I pause. The shift in his tone is subtle, but I feel it.
The weight behind those words.
The way his eyes flick away from mine.
The shame that settles over him like a shadow.
There’s something he’s not saying.
“Kaze, ” I say softly, reaching out and brushing my fingers along his arm. “Was it the drugs? Was that why you sold your guitar, right?”
He doesn’t answer at first.
His jaw tightens.
His breath catches.
I watch him struggle, not with me, but with himself.
With the part of his past that still grips him by the throat, heavy with shame.
“I tried, you know?” he finally says, voice low, trembling. “For you. I tried to be better because I knew, deep in my soul, that you deserved more than who I was back then. I remember fighting it. The temptation. The darkness. Especially after meeting you that day. But the reason I gave in again…”
He pauses, eyes full of guilt and something deeper, more broken.
“I don’t know, love. I swear I don’t know.”
I shush him gently, resting my forehead against his chest. My arms wrap around him tighter, like maybe I can hold together what’s still trying to fall apart inside him.
And then we stay there, silent.
Because the pieces are fitting together too clearly now.
And I’m starting to get scared of the full picture.
“Where do we go from here?” he murmurs into my hair, the words barely a breath against my scalp.
“Wherever life takes us, ” I whisper.
And for now, just for now, that will have to be enough.