Chapter One: The Beginning of the End
There are moments in a man’s life that never leave him. Not because they were loud, or violent, or cinematic. But because they were quiet. Haunting. Like the whisper of something unfinished. That was how she came into his life—like the calm before a storm he didn’t see coming.
A—he was no saint. He knew that. He never claimed to be. He was trouble before trouble had a name. Grew up in a house filled with silence and guilt. A father who spoke in long stares and a mother who only knew how to raise her voice. Love was never soft. It was loud. It was survival. It was pretending everything was fine when the foundation was cracking beneath their feet.
He grew up knowing how to lie without blinking. Not to others—but to himself. That he was okay. That nothing hurt. That emotions were weakness. And yet, when R walked into his life, all of that cracked. Not like an explosion. Like a leak—slow, relentless, impossible to ignore. She didn’t need to shout to be heard. Her silence said everything.
She had a kind of energy he couldn’t replicate. Light brown skin that glowed like a dusk-lit window, eyes that held both softness and knowing. And a smile that could stop a war inside him, even if just for a minute. A was chaos—unapologetically so. R was calm, not in the way the world demanded it, but in the way a storm calms once it’s already destroyed everything in its path.
The first time they met, she said his name like she’d known him before. And maybe she had. Maybe in another life, she was the same girl and he was the same mistake. But this time, she smiled at him anyway.
He remembered the first full day they spent together like it was tattooed in his mind. It was simple—town, walking, talking, laughing. But something in the air felt heavy in a way he couldn’t explain. A weight he didn’t want to put down. They were young. Dumb. Reckless. She was perfect, he was trying to hide how imperfect he was.
And still—she chose him. Over the guys who had more, looked better, lived easier. She chose him. And he didn’t know how to accept that without fearing it. Because when you’ve never felt deserving, love starts to feel like a setup.
The days bled into nights, and those nights turned into the kind of memories that you only realize were important when it’s far too late. She would lie next to him, sometimes silent, sometimes laughing about nothing at all. And he would just look at her—really look. Trying to memorize every freckle, every line of her lips, every second that felt like something he would lose.
But A had always been good at pushing people away before they got too close. It was a defense mechanism dressed as control. He had never been submissive to anything—not even love. So when the cracks showed, when he got jealous, when he picked fights out of fear, he did what he always did—he shut the door before she could walk away first.
They broke up. It wasn’t tragic. It was quiet. Like two ghosts nodding at each other across a room they used to call home.
But she came back once. Showed up at his place, like maybe the universe still had time to fix things. They didn’t talk much that night. They fucked like it was the last time—which it was. It rained. But it wasn’t the weather that soaked them—it was all the love they never said out loud.
And then she left again. This time, for good.
It broke something in A that never quite repaired. He pretended. Slept with others. Played the dominant game with women who didn’t matter. He chased the feeling, the control, the peace—but never found it again. Because R wasn’t just a girl. She was a mirror. And without her, he didn’t like what he saw.
Now he sits in a different life. With someone else. In a relationship built on routine and phone screens. She’s there, but not really. He’s there, but only in body. And every now and then, in the silence of his nights, he hears her—R. Not her voice. Not even her ghost. Just the echo of what could have been.
There’s a field, by the sea, in a small town far from everything he knows. He dreams of it sometimes. She’s there. Laughing. Spinning around barefoot in the grass. And he’s there, too. Not the man he became, but the boy who didn’t know how to love her right.
He wants to scream into the wind, “Come back!” But instead, he writes. Because the truth is, this isn’t a love story. It’s the story of what happens when love isn’t enough—and a boy lets go of the only girl who ever really saw him.
And now, maybe she’s reading this. Maybe not.
But if she is...
Is it too late to come home?
Chapter Two: The Hollow Hunt
The first anniversary without her was like falling through ice—cold, dark, and endless. A felt the weight of everything he had lost and everything he had done to push her away. The dishonour, the stupid mistakes, the silence between the spaces where love used to live. He was drowning in a sea of regret but desperate not to sink completely.
So he sought escape. Not in meaning or connection, but in the chase—the hunt. Every girl, every moment was a game, a distraction from the emptiness that clawed at him from inside. Sex without feeling. Pleasure without love. Dominance without trust. It was hollow, but it was something.
He remembered one night, looking into the eyes of a woman who, like him, was broken. She was on her knees, silent but screaming in the way only pain can speak. Two lost souls meeting in the dark, searching for pieces they thought they’d never find again. But it was never the same. Nothing could replace her.
In his current life, the routine dragged him down. The woman beside him was there, but so distant—busy in her phone, lost in her own world. He felt trapped, not by her, but by the not knowing. Should he stay? Should he leave? The uncertainty was a cage tighter than any bars.
Memories haunted him—the silhouette of her standing by the radio, changing the music, with a subtle dance, tapping her feet to the rhythm, the echo of laughter that refused to fade. Those ghosts whispered in quiet moments, reminding him of a love that was real and fierce.
And yet, with every passing day, trust eroded. He saw the games he played with other women, how they broke down what little connection there was from the inside out. He knew, deep down, that everyone was replaceable—but no one ever replaced her.
The hunt continued, but the prey was gone.
