The first time I saw him, I should have known better. There was something in the way he looked at me—like I was a game, a conquest waiting to be claimed. But I was young, foolish, and desperate to be loved. I let him take my heart, not realizing he would carve his name into it like a hunter marking his prey.
Now, staring into the abyss of our love, I wonder—was it ever real? Or was I just another girl for him to break?
Chapter One: The Beginning of Us
I met Nathaniel on a rainy autumn night, the kind of night that whispered promises and painted the world in muted shades of grey. He was leaning against the bar in a dimly lit club, cigarette dangling from his fingers, lips curled in a smirk that promised nothing good.
“Little lost lamb,” he murmured when I stumbled into him. “Do you even know what you’ve just walked into?”
I should have walked away. But I didn’t.
Instead, I let him pull me under.
Chapter Two: The Price of Loving Him
Nathaniel was everything my mother warned me about—reckless, dangerous, and dripping with charm that concealed something much darker. He whispered sweet nothings into my ear, his hands tracing patterns of possession across my skin.
But love with him wasn’t soft. It wasn’t kind. It was bruises hidden beneath lace, apologies wrapped in kisses, and devotion tainted with manipulation.
“You belong to me, Lena,” he said one night, his fingers tightening around my wrist. “No one else will ever love you the way I do.”
And for a while, I believed him.
Chapter Three: Cracks in the Illusion
The first time I caught him with another woman, I told myself it wasn’t real. That I had imagined the way she leaned into him, the way his hand rested on the small of her back.
The second time, I confronted him.
“You’re being paranoid, Lena,” he laughed, cupping my face like I was something fragile. “You know I love you, don’t you?”
I nodded. I always nodded. Because love made me blind.
Until it didn’t.
Chapter Four: The Breaking Point
It was a text message that shattered everything. A single sentence from a woman I didn’t know, confirming what my heart had been screaming for months.
He was never yours alone.
I confronted him that night, my voice shaking, my hands clenched into fists.
“Tell me the truth,” I whispered. “Was it all a lie?”
Nathaniel didn’t even look ashamed. He tilted his head, considering me like I was an old toy he was tired of playing with.
“You were convenient,” he said, and those three words sliced through me like a blade.
Convenient.
Like an accessory, something to be discarded when no longer needed.
Chapter Five: The Ghost of Him
Leaving him was supposed to set me free. But ghosts don’t fade easily, and Nathaniel was the kind that lingered in the shadows, whispering in the dead of night.
I saw him everywhere. In the way a stranger smiled at me, in the scent of his cologne that clung to my pillows. He wasn’t haunting me physically, but the weight of his love still sat heavy on my chest.
But I wasn’t the same girl anymore.
I had learned that love shouldn’t be a leash. That I wasn’t meant to be caged, used, and discarded.
I was more than what he had reduced me to.
And one day, I would make sure he knew it.
Epilogue: The Reckoning
They say revenge is a dish best served cold. But I wanted mine to burn.
Nathaniel thought he had won—that I was just another girl left shattered in his wake.
But he underestimated me.
Because while he had spent his life taking from others, I had learned how to take back.
And now, I was coming for him but I wasn't really prepared about what was waiting for me in the future.
And then the unexpected calamity of my life occurs.
