Epilogue OneTwo Years Later
Epilogue One
Two Years Later
"Everything will be fine. This will work."
His voice was so steady. Like stone polished smooth from years of weathering storms.
Unwavering. Certain.
I wanted to believe him. God, I wanted to let those words be enough.
But they weren’t.
“Reich…” His name broke on my tongue, softer than I meant it to be, laced with hesitation. “How can you be so sure? Given everything, you can’t possibly know that.”
I forced myself to hold his stare, though my chest ached under the weight of doubt, under the unbearable pressure of what if.
“What if it doesn’t work?” I whispered.
The question hung between us like smoke, thick and clinging, refusing to dissolve.
And for a moment, just a moment, he was quiet.
Then he exhaled slowly, like a man carrying the weight of the world but somehow still standing tall beneath it.
“Then I’ll figure it out,” he said, low and unshaken. “Like I always do.”
The conviction in his voice made something deep inside me twist painfully. A longing, a grief I hadn’t known I was holding until now. Because I wasn’t sure how many more times he could figure it out. How many more battles he could fight and still come back whole.
Still come back to me.
I dropped my gaze to the ground, swallowing hard as my heart thundered in my chest. I could feel it—fear, thick and relentless—curling like smoke in my lungs, making it hard to breathe.
Then I heard it.
The quiet shift of his boots against the worn wood floor.
The subtle brush of his coat as he moved closer.
Soft. Unhurried.
His presence loomed in front of me before his fingers reached for my chin. Warm, rough from years of scars and callouses, yet gentle as they tilted my head upward.
And when my eyes met his, something inside me cracked.
His gaze was everything I remembered. Everything I needed. A storm of intensity, tempered by something softer, something that only ever existed for me.
“Don’t tell me,” Reich murmured, voice dropping to something just above a whisper, as if sharing a secret only meant for the two of us, “that after all these years, you still don’t believe me.”
He said it like he was smiling, but it wasn’t smugness or arrogance. It was a quiet knowing. A steady confidence that had carried him through so many impossible things. A certainty I used to be able to breathe in like air.
My lips parted to answer, but the words tangled behind the tightness in my throat.
And then he smiled.
God, that smile.
Soft, barely there. Just the faintest curve of his mouth, but it shattered me all the same.
It was the kind of smile that said I’ve got you. The kind of smile that could pull me back from the edge of anything.
His thumb brushed along my cheek, tracing the skin like he was memorizing it. A slow, reverent drag of calloused skin over softness, leaving a trail of warmth I didn’t know I was desperate for.
I leaned into it, closing my eyes for the smallest moment. Letting myself fall into the simple act of being touched. Not because I needed to be comforted, but because I needed to be reminded that he was real. That this was real.
That there was still something left of us to hold onto.
When I opened my eyes, he was still there. Close. Steady. Like he’d never let me go.
“I do believe you,” I said, my voice shaking but honest. “But sometimes… sometimes I believe in you more than I believe in myself.”
His brow furrowed, and he shook his head, his hand slipping to the back of my neck, pulling me closer until our foreheads touched. The warmth of him, the steady rhythm of his breath, the weight of his fingers tangled in my hair—it was almost enough to quiet the storm inside me.
“You don’t have to believe in yourself all the time,” he murmured. “That’s what I’m here for.”
***
And then I woke up.
Always. Just before he kissed me.
As if even in my dreams, I wasn’t allowed to have him. As if the universe, cruel and calculating, was determined to deny me even the smallest taste of what it might be like to be his—to really be his.
I woke up reaching for him. Always reaching. Always empty-handed.
It was like some vicious game my subconscious played, teasing me with fragments of a life that could never belong to me.
A life where his lips met mine, where his hands didn't hesitate. A life where he stayed.
But I was never allowed to live in those moments. Only on the edge of them.
Always so close, and then gone.
And every time I woke up, I was hollow again. Grasping for something that slipped through my fingers like sand and all it left behind was the sharp ache of longing.
Since he left, I searched for him everywhere.
In the shifting blur of crowded streets. In the quiet hush of shadowed alleyways. In every low voice that might carry his name, his laugh, his warmth.
But it was never him.
It never would be.
And even knowing that, it didn’t stop me from looking.
I still searched.
Like a fool. Like a woman with hope stitched into her arms, even though it bled her dry.
Not that it was any different from the night we first met.
Back then, I wanted him too.
Longed for him in ways I never fully understood. Thought about him constantly, obsessively. Even when he wasn’t mine. Even when he was never meant to be.
And then, for one impossible, fleeting moment—it felt like he was.
For one moment, I belonged somewhere. To someone. To him.
And now he was gone again.
The cruel irony of fate played its melody in my ears, soft and sharp, threading its way through my days.
A song of what-ifs and never-weres. A song that never reached its crescendo.
It just… faded. Slow and silent, into something I couldn’t quiet. A song I was beginning to think would outlive me.
Sometimes I wondered how things would have turned out if I had never left Sanele. If I had never taken that road that led me to Providence. To him.
Had I stayed, would life have been simpler? Would I have found peace? Would I still be alive?
Or would I have merely kept drifting—empty, silent—haunted by a hollow I never knew existed until I met Reich.
I told myself I didn’t regret it. That I wouldn’t change any of it.
Not a single second. Not even the hurt.
Because he healed me more than I ever thought I deserved. He put me back together in places I thought would stay broken forever.
But the truth was…he also carved something out of me when he left.
Something vital.
And I couldn’t fill the space he left behind.
The emptiness that clung to me.
A ghost that followed each step I took. A shadow that whispered his name in the silence between my heartbeats.
It was quieter than grief but heavier.
It was the kind of absence that hurt because I could still feel him—in every corner of my space. In every thread of my skin. In every memory I wasn’t ready to surrender.
So, I knelt and I begged.
Begged that somehow, some way, our paths would cross again. That the same stars that cursed us might show mercy and guide him back. That the universe might give me one more moment.
A breath. A look. Anything.
But those pleas tasted bitter in my mouth.
If there was any gods, I had cursed them for bringing Reich into my life only to rip him away when I finally learned how to live.
I cursed the stars for aligning so cruelly, for weaving our souls together, only to unravel them the moment I began to believe in something more.
He healed me but he also took a piece of me with him.
And I was left empty. Wandering. Searching for the one person who had made me feel alive and wondering if I would ever feel that same way again.
This loss was different than losing my father.
Losing my father left a gaping wound—raw and visible to the world but able to be filled with other things that gave me purpose.
But Reich?
He left something quieter. Crueler.
Because with him, there was anger.
A fire that burned so hot it could consume me from the inside out.
But it was his choice to leave that made it unbearable. That made it a special kind of devastation.
A quiet grief that was consuming and persistent with no understanding of the why.
One that didn’t scream or demand, but hollowed me out slowly, leaving me an echo of the person I used to be.
And after waiting too long, I made the decision to find him.
I left a note behind that day.
I pressed fragile hope onto paper, hands shaking as I wrote the words. The ones I didn’t think I’d ever have the courage to say to his face.
But pleading, nonetheless, that one day he’d find it.
That somehow, against all odds, fate would be kind enough to place it in his hands.
I didn’t know if it ever would.
If he’d ever see it. If he’d ever think of me again.
But I had to believe he might. That maybe—just maybe—he would read the words and remember us.
It was all I had left to offer.
My last tether to him. A whisper in the dark. A soft plea
In case my journey to find him, never led me home.
Reich—
You’ve always been my safe haven, even if only in my heart, where our playlist still echoes the way you loved me back together.
Thank you, always.
—Sage