Prologue

Ophelia

There are some memories you never truly let go of. Some stay buried so deeply they only drift to the surface in fragments—edges blurred, voices muffled, like a half-remembered dream. But others remain vivid, piercingly clear, refusing to blur or fade.

Keane Stone is like that for me.

Even in my quietest moments, he’s there—not as a ghost, exactly, but as a part of me that I can never quite shake, a permanent imprint on every corner of my heart.

I remember the way he laughed, a sound that could light up any room and reach right down into the lonely spaces inside me. I remember the warmth of his hand in mine, steady and certain, grounding me in ways I never thought I needed. And I remember the promises we whispered to each other, spilling softly into the stillness of the night with the stars as our only witnesses. In those moments, the world was just ours. It was the kind of love that makes you believe in forever, that gives you the courage to believe nothing could ever touch it.

But then came that night.

One moment, he was there—my everything, the axis my world turned on. And then, in a heartbeat, he was gone. Taken from me, left hovering between life and oblivion in a coma that kept him breathing but stole everything else. For weeks, I held on to a fragile hope, imagining he’d somehow wake up and come back to me. But then, one day, he was gone. Slipped away in the night, just like that.

There was no goodbye. No last look, no final words, no whispered “I love you.” Only a silence that felt endless, and the memories that wrapped around me like a blanket—memories of who we were, of everything we were supposed to become.

Now, in the quiet spaces where he used to be, I feel him as a wound that never heals. His laughter, his warmth, the promises we made—they linger, haunting me with the life we almost had, with all the things we could have been. And sometimes, I wonder if this love, this aching, unfinished love, will be enough to keep him with me. Even if only as a memory that refuses to let me go.