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The Man Who Didn’t Run
Last Updated:
2025-07-17 18:48:07
Latest chapter
Surrendered Desires What Safety Never Gave Me
Ariana’s POVThe word sat in the air between us. Stay. It wasn’t a command, it wasn’t an invitation. It was a risk. Because letting someone stay meant opening the door, even just a little, to possibility. And possibility was dangerous when you’d once built your identity around survival. Luca didn’t respond right away. He simply wrapped both hands around the tea cup and nodded — the smallest movement, the most grounded promise. Then, gently, “May I ask something?”I hesitated. “What?”He studied me. Soft eyes. Steady voice./ “How do I love you now… without hurting you more?”I blinked. It wasn’t a romantic question. It was a responsible one. A man who had wrecked me once now asking if there was a version of love I could receive without bleeding again. And that? That was the most intimate thing anyone had asked me in years.“I don’t know yet,” I whispered.“That’s okay,” he said. “I’ll wait until you do.”******The next morning, I found a stack of folded notes on the hallway table. Se
Surrendered Desires The Man Who Didn’t Run
Ariana’s POVThe next morning, he was still there. Luca. In the kitchen, making coffee, not trying to explain and not hovering. Just there. Moving around like a man who knew how to exist without taking up too much air. That was new.Once, Luca had been all heat and hunger — rushing in like a storm that refused to be tamed. Now, he was quieter. Still strong. But intentional. He didn’t try to kiss me. Didn’t ask how I slept.He just poured a cup of coffee, slid it across the counter to my side, and said, “There’s almond milk in the fridge if you still drink it that way.”Still. That word. It hung in the air like a memory wearing new skin. I took the coffee and sipped. Then looked at him.“I need to tell you something,” I said, voice low.He nodded. I didn’t wait.“I didn’t just break when you left. I… collapsed.”He swallowed hard but said nothing.“I stopped writing. I dropped a campaign pitch mid-presentation and cried in the bathroom stall for an hour. I stopped trusting my instincts
Surrendered Desires Wanted to Hate You Longer
Ariana’s POV I didn’t go far.Just down the block, to the little rooftop garden above the café where I used to journal when Daniel worked late and I needed air. Funny how it came back to that place. Full circle. I sat with a bottle of water and my phone off, watching the city glitter and hum beneath me like it didn’t care who was heartbroken or healing or somewhere in between. I tried to breathe.But every time I exhaled, his voice came back.// “It was Daniel.”Like a detonator. Like he’d said the one name that still lived under my skin like shrapnel. I had imagined so many reasons Luca might’ve left me. Fear. Immaturity. A sudden loss of love. But never this. Never that he was warned. Never that Daniel had orchestrated it all. And what stung the most? That Luca hadn’t told me. Not after one year.Not after five. Not even when he came back. He waited until I forced him to. And now I didn’t know whether to cry… Or burn the whole truth down.I stayed on the rooftop until the sun dippe
Surrendered Desires What It Took to Return
Luca’s POVThey say time heals all wounds. That’s a lie. Time doesn’t heal. It hides. It buries. It teaches you how to function with pain tucked into the folds of your spine, how to smile while bleeding inside, how to explain away nightmares like bad sleep and heartbreak like coincidence.But healing? Healing is a choice. And it’s loud. Messy. Exhausting. I didn’t begin healing the day I left Ariana.I began healing the day I realized I had become the man Daniel said I would be — the one who stayed gone. And that broke me more than any threat ever could.For years after I disappeared, I chased art like it was oxygen. I moved across Europe, photographing shadows instead of people.Graffiti. Old stairwells. Shattered windows. I told myself it was “urban contrast.” But the truth was simpler. I was only drawn to the things that looked ruined.Because I saw myself in them. I told myself Ariana had moved on. Told myself she had probably married someone better. Safer. And when I found out sh
Surrendered Desires The Summer Before the Silence
Luca’s POVFifteen Years Ago – The BeginningThe summer I met Ariana Cole, I was broke, sunburnt, and convinced I didn’t believe in fate. I had just lost a contract with a media startup in Florence and was squatting in a borrowed beach shack on the southern coast, doing low-budget photography gigs for tourists and wedding guests with names I couldn’t pronounce. I was 22, hungry, and angry at everything.Then she walked into the café across from the pier — high ponytail, bare shoulders, notebook in one hand, camera in the other — and ordered a hot tea in the middle of a 34-degree afternoon. I laughed without meaning to. She turned, looked at me like I’d interrupted a sacred ritual, and said, “What?”I pointed to the steam rising from her cup. “You’re drinking fire.” She smirked. “Maybe I’m built for it.”I didn’t know it then, but that was the beginning of everything. Not just the love. The undoing.The rewriting. The quiet war we didn’t see coming.*****We spent the next few weeks l
Surrendered Desires Luca’s Story Begins
Luca’s POVFifteen Years Ago — Summer. It’s strange how a single moment can divide your life into before and after. For me, it was a phone call.It came late—past midnight—while Ariana slept curled beside me on that motel bed we had rented with cash from my last freelance job. Her hair smelled like sea salt and vanilla lotion. Her breathing was steady. And I had just whispered I love you against her shoulder minutes before. Then my phone buzzed. Unknown number. I should’ve ignored it. I should’ve stayed in that moment, pressed my face into her skin, and promised her again that I wasn’t going anywhere. But I answered. And everything after that became after.*****The voice on the other end was low. Measured. He didn’t give a name. He didn’t need to./ “Luca. You care about her?”I sat up slowly, my body already tense.“Who the hell is this?”A pause. Then:/“If you want Ariana Cole to live the life she deserves, you’ll leave her. Tonight. No notes. No explanation.”My blood chilled.“Y
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