LOVE'S QUAGMIRE [18+]

Chapter 61: Madness

Zephyr's POV~

Six years, eight months. 

I drag the chalk across the wall, marking each day. My fingers, stained with dust and chalk, tremble slightly, but I keep counting. Keep marking. 

The seconds feel like hours, the hours like days. 

Time is a sick joke when you're stuck like this, isolated, no way out. 

I scrawl the numbers—day 2,438.

I chuckled, the number felt wrong, but I wrote it anyway. 

The seconds, the minutes, the hours—they don't matter anymore. I'm just waiting. Waiting for her. Waiting for the moment she comes back to me.

 I need her. I need to see her. I need to touch her. I need to taste her. I need to feel her. 

The drawing I made of her is rough and chaotic—it's ugly, but it's all I have left of her.

 I can still see every detail as if she's standing right there. Her hair, that dark, I used to love running my fingers through—it's scribbled carelessly, the lines jagged and uneven, but I know it's her. 

 I look at her eyes—those damn eyes. I can feel them on me, even now. I try to capture the way they used to sparkle, the way they looked at me like I was everything. 

But it's not perfect. I draw them wide, but somehow the depth is missing. 

Still, I can't stop trying. She is too vivid in my memory. The way her lashes would flutter when she laughed, the way they softened when she looked at me in the quiet moments.

 Those eyes, those eyes, that's what's killing me.

I drag the chalk down to her small, delicate nose. I try to recreate it, the little bump on the bridge she hated, but it's too hard to get it right, too hard to make it real. 

Her lips—her soft, full lips, the ones that smiled at me, kissed me, told me everything without saying a word. I try to draw them, but they end up looking too thin, too harsh. It's never enough. It'll never be enough. 

The lines, the curves—nothing I do can make it perfect. Nothing I do can bring her back.

 And her damn eyebrows—arched just the right way, expressive even when she didn't speak. I try to draw them high, like how she used to raise them when she was skeptical, but they just look wrong. It all looks wrong.

But it's her. It's her, and I won't stop. I won't stop until I get it right. I can't let go. 

Every line, every inch of this sketch is a part of me—frantic, desperate, obsessive. It's the only thing keeping me tethered. So I keep drawing it every day. Keep trying to fix what's broken, even when I know I'll never be able to.

I wipe my hands on my dirty shirt. My fingers feel thick and heavy. My skin is crawling, and I'm so fucking tired of it all. 

I'm tired of being stuck here, tired of the fucking loneliness. Tired of counting. 

But I can't stop. No. I can't. 

It's all I have left. That, and this fucking obsession. The only thing that makes sense in this madness is her. She's my reason for breathing, and without her? I can barely even exist.

 I need her.

I need her so fucking much.

I lean in closer, my breath hot against the wall, staring at that imperfect face. I swear, I can feel her like she's right there, behind me. Watching me. Laughing at me. And I fucking hate it. I hate it, but I love it, too. I love the way she haunts me.