SEVENTEEN | She Wasn't Her

[VLADIMIR]

“Did you miss me?” I asked, smirking as I slowly, but confidently, approached her.

With each step I took, her once radiant smile seemed to fade away, as if she had come face-to-face with a haunting apparition. And in a way, I couldn’t argue with that. To her, I was nothing more than a ghostly presence, a monstrous figure, a devil incarnate, and everything else that was far from good.

Her smile was truly captivating, and I longed to capture it, to preserve it deep within the pits of my heart, never to let it slip away at any cost. But her affection was off-limits to me, forbidden territory. I couldn’t make her mine, and that was an undeniable truth. I knew she despised me for whatever I had done to her, but how could I explain that I had no other choice? Making her hate me was the only way to set her free, to avoid repeating the same disastrous mistake I had made years ago.

“Because I missed you like hell!” I confessed, but I refused to show her how much I cared. Instead