I couldn’t get back to sleep after that dream.

No… that memory.

That haunting, painful memory.

The image of Kieran’s eyes filled with so much hatred still weighed on me. Everything from the way he spat my name, to the way he looked at me… it was as if he despised me more than anything else. And I could understand why, given what I’d put him through.

But just like the memory of those burning hazel eyes, another detail had lingered with me as well.

The rejection.

The searing pain of having my soul torn in half, a hole forming inside that threatened to make me lose my sanity. Why had I told Clarissa that the pain wasn’t so bad over time? I couldn’t imagine that feeling ever granting any respite. Yet this was a process I apparently started to initiate first in every timeline. Rejecting him immediately before doing much else.

I willingly put myself through that pain… and I’d promised to do so again in this one.

‘…Whatever it takes.’

That was the rule I’d said in the memory, and so