You don't know you're in love until you find yourself making a mental checklist of all the ways you'll murder someone who hurt them. At least, that was my brilliant epiphany somewhere around day seventeen of captivity—right between losing spectacularly at "I Spy" (there are only so many gray objects in a cell) and winning my fourteenth consecutive game of tic-tac-toe against Damien.
I was in love with Kieran.
Not the desperate, hormone-driven, fate-mandated attraction I'd once felt for Damien, but something quieter and fiercer. Something I'd chosen, day by day, moment by moment, in the spaces between tragedy and triumph. Love like a slow-burn playlist instead of a bass drop—no less intense, just more sustainable.
Naturally, I realized this while trapped in a glass cage with my ex-almost
