Chapter 4: Mine to Break

The silence between them was the loudest thing in the room.

August stood still, every cell in his body screaming to run, but rooted by something colder recognition. His mind flipped through old shadows, half formed memories, faded echoes of someone he might have once known but had forgotten on purpose.

Sebastian stood too close.

Not close enough to touch but close enough to control.

“You don’t remember, do you?” Sebastian asked softly, voice barely more than breath. “But your eyes did. When you saw me.”

“I don’t know you,” August said, even though a part of him was beginning to feel like that might be a lie.

Sebastian smiled an edge of cruelty to it this time. “Liar.”

August’s fists clenched. “Why are you doing this to me?”

Sebastian stepped back slowly, like he was granting mercy. His expression changed into something unreadable cold calculation softening into quiet ache. “Because I waited for you. And you forgot me.”

“I didn’t forget,” August said sharply. “I escaped.”

That made something crack in Sebastian’s gaze.

He turned his back.

Walked to the window.

His voice, when it came, was flat. “You escaped your name. You escaped your family. You even escaped yourself. But not me.” He turned his head just slightly. “You never escaped me.”

August’s heart pounded so loud it hurt. “Who the hell are you?”

Sebastian’s silence stretched. Then quiet, steady:

“I was the boy they never noticed. The one behind the camera when you laughed. The one they forgot because they were too busy watching you suffer.”

August’s mouth parted, words catching in his throat.

“You used to sit at the edge of the library window,” Sebastian continued, voice like a spell now, pulling memory out of hiding. “You used to read Sylvia Plath with a flashlight when the power cut out at home. You used to cry when you thought no one was looking. But I saw it all. I saw you. And when you were gone, I couldn’t forget.”

August’s throat tightened.

That boy

That lonely, pale faced boy who used to stare too long from the corner of the hallway at school…

No. No, it couldn’t be.

“But I got tired of waiting,” Sebastian whispered. “So I made you come back to me.”

August’s voice cracked. “By pretending to be me?”

Sebastian turned then, stepping forward again, each word growing heavier, darker.

“You don’t get it yet, do you? I didn’t just want your name.”

He stopped inches away, eyes burning.

“I wanted everything.”

August’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Why me?”

Sebastian leaned in, breath brushing his cheek.

“Because broken things don’t run when you touch them gently. And I knew one day you’d break in my hands.”

August flinched. “You’re sick.”

“I’m yours.”

“No, you’re not.”

Sebastian reached out, fingers brushing August’s wrist. “You say that now.”

August ripped his arm back like it burned. “Stay away from me.”

Sebastian only smiled. Not angry. Not hurt.

Just confident.

As if August’s resistance was a part of the plan.

“Eventually,” he said, stepping back toward his bed, “you’ll realize you were always meant to be mine.”

That night, August didn’t sleep.

He sat on the floor with the desk lamp on, staring at a blank page of his notebook. Not writing. Just breathing. Just being. Because he needed to remind himself that he still existed, even if someone else had stolen the outline of his life.

But when he closed his eyes just for a second

He saw another memory.

Faint.

Blurry.

A boy sitting in a broken playground, staring at him through the cracked slats of the fence.

Eyes too bright.

Hands too still.

He’d forgotten that boy.

And now he’d come back wearing August’s name.