Prologue
Miguel’s POV
I never believed in ghosts.
At least, not the kind that haunted houses and lingered in shadows. Not the ones that rattled chains or whispered in the dark. No, the ghosts I knew were different. They didn’t live in abandoned buildings or forgotten graveyards.
They lived in memories.
In the way, certain places carried echoes of a voice you hadn’t heard in years. In the way time folded in on itself when you least expected it, dragging you back to a moment you swore you’d moved past. In the way a single name could split your chest open like an old wound.
Yun Xi ‘Eunice’ Suen-Gotengco.
I had spent years forcing myself to forget her. To bury the past beneath work, beneath routine, beneath anything that numbed the dull, aching space she left behind. And it worked. For the most part.
Until it didn’t.
Until I saw her again.
It was supposed to be just another day. Another errand. Another place I would step into and leave without a second thought. But fate had other plans.
The hospital smelled like antiseptic and something else I couldn’t quite name—something cold, sterile, and distant. The walls were a dull shade of white, the kind that had seen too much suffering, too much grief. I had only come to sign off on some documents for a colleague. Nothing urgent. Nothing that should have changed the course of my day.
And then, there she was.
She was standing at the reception desk, her back to me, oblivious to the storm she had just unleashed. My breath hitched. The world tilted. I had spent so long convincing myself I wouldn’t recognize her if I saw her again. That time had dulled the edges of her existence, had made her just another name, just another regret.
But there are some things the mind forgets that the heart never will.
Her hair was shorter than I remembered, a little straighter, falling just past her shoulders. She held herself differently now, her posture more guarded, as if she had learned to carry the weight of the world without letting it break her. Even from where I stood, I could see the tension in her frame, the way her fingers gripped the edge of the counter.
She looked like she wanted to disappear.
Maybe she had spent these years trying to do just that.
I should’ve walked away. It would’ve been easier. Cleaner. Five years had passed. Five years of silence. Five years of pretending she didn’t exist.
But ghosts don’t stay buried. They have a way of finding you when you least expect it.
Before I could stop myself, I moved.
I wasn’t even thinking. My body reacted before my mind could catch up, drawn forward by something beyond reason, beyond logic. I took a step, then another, weaving through the crowd, each movement slow, deliberate. And then—
She turned.
Her gaze swept the room absently at first, like she was waiting for something, or maybe someone. And then her eyes landed on me.
I felt the moment she saw me.
Her whole body tensed. Her lips parted slightly, but no sound came out. It was as if the air had been stolen from her lungs. A fraction of a second passed—barely a breath—but in that moment, everything unraveled.
She looked like she had seen a ghost.
Like she had seen me.
Something flickered across her face—shock, disbelief, something else I couldn’t name. For a second, just a second, she looked like she might run. Like she wanted to disappear all over again.
Instead, she just stood there, trapped in the weight of our past, caught in the space between then and now.
I should’ve said something. I should’ve demanded answers, should’ve asked where she had been, why she had left, why she had abandoned everything without a word.
Instead, my voice came out colder than I intended. Detached. Foreign.
“Watch where you’re going.”
She flinched.
Like she was being hunted by the very past she tried so hard to forget.
Her mouth opened slightly, her lips forming my name, but no sound escaped. She swallowed hard, her throat bobbing, her fingers curling into fists at her sides. And for a split second, I thought she might speak. I thought she might break the silence, might tell me everything I had been aching to know for the past five years.
But then, just as quickly, she stepped back.
The distance between us stretched like an open wound. Her hands trembled slightly before she shoved them into the pockets of her coat, her knuckles white. Her lips pressed together, her chest rising and falling unevenly as if she was struggling to breathe.
She turned her head away.
A dismissal.
A choice.
The same one she had made five years ago.
A sharp, bitter laugh threatened to escape, but I swallowed it down. Of course. Of course, she would run. That was what she did, wasn’t it? She left. She disappeared. She made choices for the both of us without asking, without caring.
My fingers curled into fists at my sides, nails biting into my palms. I should’ve walked away first. I should’ve left her standing there, let her feel the same hollow emptiness she had left in me all those years ago.
But I couldn’t.
Because no matter how much time had passed, no matter how much I had convinced myself I had moved on—
Eunice still had the power to bring me to my knees.
And I hated her for it.
Or at least, I wanted to.
But the thing about ghosts is that they aren’t just remnants of the past. They are proof that some things refuse to die.
Even when you want them to.
And as I stood there, watching her disappear into the crowd, I knew one thing for certain.
This wasn’t over.
Not by a long shot.
