Dancing on the Ashes

Orah

I fell in love with him the night I was supposed to die.

My Hero...

He was the man who gave me my life. And then he stole it from me when he told me no. But I couldn't forget him. Because I marked myself with Ridge. I walked away from that beach with his blood under my nails and his saliva on my tongue.

I've had years of misery without him. And years of gratitude for having once known him. Despite the fear and anxiety that still consume me, I've been brave. I've been living a life and trying to find happiness, trying to redeem myself from the guilt of my past.

It's been nearly ten years. Well, if I'm counting numbers and being precise, it's been nine years and nine months since he saved me. And it's been nine years and four months since I last saw him. There you have it. For almost a decade, he's been the invisible ghost lying next to me, filling me with dreams of his breath in my ear and his heartbeat under my fingertips.

And I've resigned myself to that. To dreams. After all, dreams are better than nightmares.

But everything changes the second he saunters back into my life.

With his fiancée on his arm.

Ridge

I fell in love with her the night I was supposed to die.

My patient.

My Brave Girl. My Little Bird...

She was my everything. My reason for living and breathing and surviving. But it didn't end the way I wanted it to. It couldn't end the way I wanted it to. Why? Because loving her was wrong. And so, I did what I always strive to do; I did the right thing. I let her walk away, and I didn't chase her.

Even though I should have. Even though I wanted to. With every fiber of my being.

She called me her hero. Nothing could be further from the truth.

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