The higher the stakes, the harder the fall. And God, how far we fall.

Death doesn't just steal the people we love. It leaves behind ghosts in every corner of your life, whispering in the silence, haunting the mundane. I know this. I live with it. My name is MacKenzie Rivers, and I've been grieving longer than I've been breathing.

When Jaden lost his parents, I disappeared. Slipped into the cracks like water—silent, necessary, gone. I couldn't be what he needed. Not with a mother who drinks her memory into ash and a father who thinks ignoring a thing makes it disappear. So I did the only thing I've ever been good at: I protected myself.

Until the night I saw him again.

It wasn't some cinematic reunion. Just a moment. A blink. But suddenly he was there. And all the things I buried came clawing their way back to the surface—louder, messier, more alive than ever.

He was still him. And I was still broken.

We rebuilt something that night—maybe just a memory, maybe more. And I realized I hadn't just missed Jaden. I'd been starving for him.

But here's the thing: love asks you to surrender. To tear yourself wide open and hand over the sharpest parts. And I've spent too long stitching myself back together to risk unraveling again.

So now I have to ask myself the question I've spent my whole life avoiding:

Do I have the courage to fall for the one person who could break me beyond repair?