Bodies shift, lights flicker, and the IceHouse returns to its usual noise—but nothing about me is the same as it was five minutes ago.
I stand frozen in the middle of the dance floor until someone bumps my shoulder. Then another. The world keeps shifting around me, even though I'm stuck in place.
It feels like I missed a step in time—like everyone else moved forward and I stayed behind, caught in the echo of something that hasn't finished happening yet. My skin hums, not painfully, just…wrong. Like it's tuned to the wrong frequency.
How do you miss someone you've never met?
The lights burst white across the dance floor, and I flinch. A DJ announcement rattles the air. A cheer rises. People throw their hands up.
The sound hits me a half-second too late, like thunder arriving after the lightning already split my chest open.
A hand lands on my shoulder.
I launch backward—heart in my throat—but it's only Shelby, glitter-smeared and breathless from dancing.
"Whoa! You okay?" she laughs.
I swallow. "Yeah. Just… a lot."
She pauses. She sees me—she always does—and her smile dips into worry.
"Is it the nightmare thing again?"
I nod once.
Shelby squeezes my arm. "Come sit with us."
Evan joins us. He notices the look on Shelby's face and throws his arm around her with a grin that probably melts her spine on contact. They sink into the booth together, oblivious to everything else—and for a moment I swear I envy them so deeply it aches.
They fit together without effort. No static. No vertigo. No sense that the universe is leaning in to listen.
They are two people who met in this life—normal, beautiful messiness.
I wish I had that.
Instead, I'm here, looking for the man who believes I belong to him.
The realization lands cold. I don't like how easily the thought forms. I don't like that it doesn't feel absurd.
I tell myself I imagined it. That adrenaline does strange things to the brain. That people project meaning onto strangers when they're already raw.
I've done it before. Everyone has.
I pick up a wing and force myself to bite down, chew, and swallow—proof of gravity, proof of appetite, proof that I am still just a girl in a bar with sauce on her fingers and no business inventing gods where there are only men.
The food tastes wrong. Too sharp. Too real. My stomach twists anyway, accepting it like an apology I don't mean.
I poke at my wings without appetite while Evan rants about someone from his soccer league who kept tripping people on purpose. Shelby gasps and laughs in all the right places.
They don't notice that I'm not eating. They don't notice that I keep glancing toward the dance floor.
But when Will returns, I feel him before I see him.
A pull under the ribs. A shift in the air. A memory without a memory.
My breath stutters. The noise around me dulls, like someone turned the volume knob down without warning.
I turn slowly.
Just watching me with that impossible focus—the kind of attention that feels like he's tracking a star he's been navigating by for centuries.
He doesn't slide into the seat across from me.
He sits beside me again.
His knee brushes the edge of the table leg. The booth creaks.
It's such a normal sound that it almost breaks the spell. Almost.
Close enough that our arms almost touch—and that almost is torture.
No one reacts to it. Not really.
Not when every nerve in my body is hyper-aware of him. Not when the space between us feels like a wire doused in gasoline.
My hands go numb. Not cold—heavy. Like gravity suddenly doubled just for me.
The waitress drops off more drinks. Will thanks her with perfect politeness—and then turns toward me like we're alone.
"I didn't mean to disappear."
His tone is quiet. No bravado. No seduction.
Just truth.
"It's loud in places like this."
The way he says it—like noise is something that hunts him, not something he seeks.
I blink. "Then why come?"
He exhales once—slowly. Controlled.
"Because tonight felt… necessary."
My pulse stutters. "Necessary for what?"
He doesn't answer right away.
His jaw tightens, like the words are already there and he's choosing which ones are allowed to live.
His gaze dips to my hand, resting on my thigh, and before I can process it, his fingers slide into mine—slow, confident, and unforced.
He's searching for recognition.
And the worst part?
Something in me recognizes him back.
Not as a stranger. Not as a possibility.
As an answer to a question I don't remember asking.
I try to pull away. He lets me—just watches, like he's waiting for me to admit the truth.
"I don't…" My voice breaks. "I don't know what you think you know about me."
"I don't know what you are," he says quietly.
The words land hollow and heavy at the same time, like a bell rung underwater.
His eyes soften, and that is somehow more devastating than his intensity.
"I meant it, Angela." His thumb brushes once across my knuckles. "I've missed you."
The contact sends heat racing up my arm, then vanishing so fast it leaves cold behind. My breath comes shallow, wrong.
My breath shatters. "We've never met."
"Not here," he says.
And suddenly, I'm not sitting in a bar—I'm standing in heat and blood and fire.
I jerk like I've been burned.
The vision disappears.
But Will saw the change in my face—every flicker, every crack.
"What did you remember?" he asks softly.
"I didn't—"
He leans closer, voice a whisper only I can hear. "Don't run from it."
My heart is sprinting, but my voice is ice. "I'm not letting a stranger rewrite my reality."
He studies me—not frustrated, not defeated. Almost…grateful.
"I wouldn't want to rewrite you," he murmurs. "Just remind you."
The word "remind" curls low in my stomach, dangerous and intimate, like a hand reaching for a scar it already knows the shape of.
The noise feels too sharp all at once, like every sound is scraping the edge of whatever woke up inside me.
"Tell me something real," I demand, desperate for logic.
Will thinks for a long, heavy moment.
Then he says, "The nightmares started again four weeks ago. The same night you got the invitation."
My stomach caves in.
"How could you possibly—"
"Because I got mine too."
The symmetry hits like a punch. Not romantic. Not destined. Engineered.
"You're guessing," I say. "Throwing words around until something sticks."
His mouth doesn't change. But his eyes do.
"No," he says. "And that's a very specific truth to throw out to see if it sticks."
I go still.
Completely still.
"What invitation?" Evan asks, oblivious, mouth full of chicken.
My eyes snap to Will—warning him not to answer—but he doesn't need the warning. He doesn't break my stare.
"Nothing important," he tells Evan.
His restraint is deliberate. Meant for me.
I look at him—really look—and something settles low in my stomach.
He isn't flirting. He isn't guessing. He isn't chasing.
He's already chosen.
And whether he's right or wrong—whether he's safety or disaster—I can't tell.
Shelby pops a mozzarella stick into her mouth, humming happily. Evan scrolls his phone, oblivious.
Will watches me like fate has both hands on the back of his neck.
"Why me?" I whisper before I can stop it.
His answer is barely sound. Barely breathe.
"Because you are mine. Forever and always..."
My whole body goes cold.
Not fear—cold. Recognition—cold. The kind that settles into bone.
Something old flashes behind his eyes. Not just memory—loyalty. Regret. Hunger. Hope.
I rip my hand from his before I drown in it.
"We're done here," I whisper, stumbling out of the booth.
For half a second, I almost turn back. Almost ask him to say my name again—prove this is real, or prove it isn't.
I don't.
I don't look back—I can't—but I hear Shelby shout my name and Evan swear and Will's chair scrape back as he stands to follow.