My fantasies consisted mostly of rewritten pasts.
I dreamed of a world in which I’d left with Cillian when he held out his hand and asked me to go.
If not that, then one in which Tristan never existed and Cillian had always stayed in Dublin.
Or if not that, then one in which I got on that flight to Los Angeles a couple days ago and Tristan never caught me. Never dragged me home. Never forced me back into the cage he’d built for me the day we’d exchanged rings.
All those alternatives felt easier to process, easier to absorb.
But this?
This feels almost… cruel.
Cillian is back. And yet I still feel trapped. More than I ever have before.
Because what I want is right in front of me.
And I know I can’t have it.
Tristan is right. He was right all along. I was just too stubborn, too proud, too defiant to see it.
I am his.
And there’s no escaping him.