Eye for an Eye

Chapter 37: Broken

A million different scenarios ran through my mind as Callum stared at me, his expression haunted, like he’d just seen a ghost. The room fell silent, the air thick with something unspoken, something raw.

And then, barely above a whisper, he said it.

"Freckles."

The word hit me like a punch to the chest, knocking the breath from my lungs. I never thought I’d hear it again—his name for me, the one he gave me after bumping into me in the hallway at college, right when I was running from Mason.

I never liked nicknames. When Mason called me princess, I wanted to strangle him. When Jace calls me Hermosa, it’s different—softer, beautiful, especially when it rolls off his tongue in Spanish.

But Freckles?

That was different. That was ours.

Or at least, it used to be. It should have died with him, buried the night I stood at his grave with Jace, forcing myself to say goodbye. I lost a piece of my heart that night. And now—now he was here, alive, standing right in front of me.

Part of me felt sick. I’d spent years trying to bury these feelings, trying to move on. I was engaged to Xavier, someone I truly cared about. But Callum—he was the man I had loved. The man I had mourned. And now he was back from the dead, and he remembered me.

My mind was spiraling, unable to process it, unable to figure out what to say, what to do.

What do you do in a situation like this?

The tension in the room was suffocating. West and Ryan looked uncomfortable, avoiding eye contact because they knew. They knew who I wanted back then. They knew I chose West, that I ended up with Ryan for a while. That Ryan had been in Mila’s life more than West ever was.

And Jace—Jace just looked sad.

Because he knew the truth. He knew everything. He knew his best friends loved each other, and now we were both suffering because of it.

My fingers twitched at my side, aching to reach for him, to prove to myself he was real. My voice came out in a whisper, barely audible over the pounding of my heart.

"Callum."

I reached for him.

He staggered back, his breath uneven, before shoving past me and storming out of the room. He tried to slam the door, but I caught it just in time, my fingers curling around the edge as I forced myself to push through the pain in my legs and follow him.

"Hope!" West's voice called after me, but he didn’t chase me. Someone must have held him back.

"Callum!" I raised my voice, desperation lacing my tone. "Please, stop and talk to me!"

He halted abruptly, his feet planted firmly against the ground. His shoulders rose and fell with heavy breaths, fists clenched so tightly his knuckles turned white. I stayed a few steps behind, resisting the urge to touch him. He was teetering on the edge, battling whatever war raged inside of him.

When he finally turned to face me, my heart clenched at the sight—his face streaked with tears, brown eyes glassy with unshed emotion. His lips trembled, and for a moment, I could hardly breathe.

God, I missed him.

More than anything in this world.

Losing him shattered me in ways I could never put into words. I cried myself to sleep every night, haunted by the memory of him bleeding out in my arms, whispering that he loved me, begging me to be happy. His death replayed in an endless loop, a cruel torment I could never escape. I even named my daughter’s middle name after him—Dove, a piece of him I could keep forever.