I FORGOT HIM BUT MY HEART DIDN'T

Chapter 1: The Boy in the Smoke The fire was back. It always came back. The screams. The suffocating smoke. The boy. "Ava!" His voice tore through the roaring orange flames, sounding small, terrified, and completely desperate. I couldn't see him. The smoke was too thick a heavy curtain of black and gray that stung my eyes and burned the back of my throat. I couldn't reach him. But his hand small, trembling, and covered in dark soot stretched desperately toward me through the falling, burning debris. "Don't let go!" he sobbed. His fingers clawed at the empty air, reaching for mine. I tried. God, I tried so hard. I lunged forward, ignoring the heat blistering my skin and the wooden beams cracking around us. I stretched my arm out until my muscles ached, my fingers just barely brushing against his damp, sweaty palm. "I've got you!" I tried to scream, but the smoke choked the words right out of my mouth. Then, the ceiling collapsed. A deafening roar of falling timber swallowed his voice entirely. The weight of the burning world crashed down between us, severing the tiny connection we almost had. I woke up screaming. I bolted upright in bed, gasping for air as if the smoke were still trapped inside my lungs. My chest heaved violently. My heart hammered a frantic, erratic rhythm against my ribs. My palms were slick with cold sweat. I sat there frozen, my eyes darting around my dark, quiet bedroom. I pressed a trembling hand tightly against my chest, waiting for the phantom smell of ash to fade away. It was just a dream. It was always just a dream. Every single night since I was sixteen years old, the exact same nightmare played behind my eyelids. I was twenty-three now. Seven years had passed, and yet I was still completely haunted by this missing piece. It felt like a real memory that had been violently ripped from my brain, leaving behind a jagged, hollow ache. A persistent void that reminded me every second that someone vital had been erased from my life. It made me guarded. It made me isolated. Whenever people tried to get close to me, I pulled away. How could I give my heart to someone new when I constantly felt like it already belonged to a shadow? How could I move forward when my soul was still trapped in a burning house? Sighing, I reached under my pillow and pulled out my old, battered sketchbook. My fingers traced the frayed cardboard edges. Pages upon pages were covered in charcoal drawings. And they were all of the same man. I’d never met him in my life. At least, not that I could remember. But my hands knew him perfectly. He had a sharp, aristocratic jawline. His eyes were intense, piercing, and deeply guarded. Even in the rough sketches, his posture looked incredibly heavy, as if he carried the weight of the universe. I didn’t know why I drew him. But every time I picked up a piece of charcoal, my fingers naturally bled his face onto the paper. It was as if my hands remembered the exact details of a person that my mind had locked away. "Who are you?" I whispered to the empty room. The drawing, as always, didn't answer. An hour later, I was behind the counter at the small bookstore downtown. The shop was quiet, and the soothing scent of old paper and vanilla coffee usually helped calm my racing thoughts. It was a gloomy, rainy afternoon. The rain tapped a soft, rhythmic beat against the glass display windows, blurring the outside world into a smudge of gray. I had my sketchbook open on the wooden counter, absentmindedly shading the jawline of the mystery man. The brass bell above the front door suddenly chimed. Instantly, the air pressure in the room seemed to shift. The temperature dropped, and a sudden, violent shiver ran straight down my spine. A rich, heavy scent washed over the room. It smelled of crisp rain, expensive cedarwood, and something deeply, terrifyingly familiar. My hands froze. I looked up from the counter. A man stepped inside the shop, shaking the rain off his long, tailored midnight-black coat. He was tall, with a broad, powerful build that commanded the entire room. He exuded an intimidating aura of immense wealth, power, and absolute isolation. My breath hitched as I realized who he was. Lucien Blackwood. He was the reclusive billionaire who lived all alone in the decaying, massive mansion on the hill. He rarely came into public, and when he did, people stared. The older townspeople always whispered about him in dark, accusatory tones, calling him arrogant and dangerous. But as he turned his head, his eyes locked directly onto mine. The charcoal pencil slipped from my numb fingers, rolling across the counter and dropping to the floor with a soft click. I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. It was him. The sharp jawline. The guarded, piercing amber eyes. The tragic, heavy aura. He wasn’t a shadow in my head anymore. He was standing right in front of me. Lucien froze the exact moment our eyes met. The cold, arrogant mask he usually wore completely shattered. His dark eyes widened. A raw, agonizing flash of recognition, desperate longing, and terrifying vulnerability tore through his expression. He took a sharp, instinctive step toward the counter. "Do... do I know you, Mr. Blackwood?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper. Lucien stared at me. Something shattered in his amber eyes. He laughed—a broken, hollow sound full of so much pain it made my own chest ache. "No." His jaw clenched tightly. "You forgot me." My stomach instantly dropped. "What?" Lucien looked suddenly horrified, as if he hadn't meant to say the words out loud. His face shut down instantly, the icy mask locking back into place. "I mean... we've never met," he muttered coldly, looking away. "Excuse me." He turned abruptly, pretending to browse a nearby display of old hardbacks just to escape my gaze. Shaking, I bent down behind the counter to search for my dropped charcoal pencil. As I did, my elbow caught the edge of my book. The battered sketchbook slipped off the counter, hitting the floorboards with a loud thud and splaying wide open. Before I could reach it, a long, elegant shadow fell directly over me. Lucien had crossed the floor in a split second, intending to help. He bent down, his hand reaching for the binding—and then he froze dead in his tracks. His breathing completely stopped. Staring back at him from the open page was a perfect portrait of a twelve-year-old boy. The drawing perfectly captured a distinct, jagged scar running through his left eyebrow. It captured the tiny, dark mole just beneath his lower eyelid. And around the boy's neck was a unique, heavy silver crest necklace. Things a random stranger could never possibly know. Lucien dropped heavily to one knee, his hands visibly shaking as he forcefully grabbed the edge of the notebook. "Where did you get this?" he demanded, his voice dangerously low. "Excuse me?! That's mine!" I gasped, reaching out to yank it back. He didn't even hear me. With frantic, trembling fingers, Lucien began to flip through the pages. Ten pages. Twenty pages. Fifty pages. Hundreds of drawings. All of him. His amber eyes began to glisten, tears finally spilling over his thick lashes. Not because I had forgotten him, but because, subconsciously, some deep part of my soul had never let him go. Then, a tiny, tightly folded piece of paper slipped out from a hidden slit in the fabric lining of the back cover. It was old, yellowed with age, and brittle at the creases. Lucien caught the paper before it hit the floorboards. "Stop it! Give that back to me!" I yelled, aggressively snatching the paper out of his trembling grip. I pulled it to my chest, but my eyes caught the messy, faded ink written on the outside. The handwriting belonged to a child. A young girl. Most of the words were smudged and ruined by time, but I could clearly make out three broken, fragmented lines: If you're reading this... ...forgot again... ...remember you, Lucien. A violent muscle in Lucien's jaw twitched. He slowly rose to his full height, standing over me like a tragic shadow. "What is this?" I whispered, my voice cracking. "Who wrote this? Why does it have your name on it?" Lucien swallowed hard. Then, he took a sharp step back, tearing himself away from the counter. "No," he choked out. "What do you mean, no? Tell me what this is!" "You can't remember," he whispered, shaking his head frantically. "I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT I'M SUPPOSED TO REMEMBER!" My voice exploded, echoing loudly through the quiet bookstore. The rain outside suddenly felt deafening. Lucien looked at me for a long, agonizing moment, fighting a brutal war inside his own soul. Then, he stepped backward into the shadows of the doorway. He whispered a final sentence, his voice cracking completely down the middle: "Because if you remember... you'll hate me forever." Before I could force another syllable past my lips, he turned around and burst through the front door, losing himself in the torrential downpour outside. Leaving me standing there entirely alone. Holding a faded note with his name on it, and absolutely no idea why the sight of his retreating back made me want to drop to my knees and cry.