The Garden That Lied
“I love you. Not with chains. Not with words stolen from someone who only knew how to consume.”
– Rhys
Sometime before dawn. Somewhere I didn’t recognise but somehow knew. I was walking barefoot through a garden—or at least, something pretending to be one. The kind of dream logic landscape where every detail felt a little too vivid to be fake, and too impossible to be real. White roses grew wild from tangled vines, curling upward like they were trying to reach me. Their thorns caught the moonlight and gleamed silver, delicate and lethal. The stone beneath my feet was smooth, cold, humming faintly like it remembered footsteps that had come before mine.
The air smelled like jasmine. Of course it did. Thick. Sweet. Cloying. Like grief dressed in perfume.
There was no wind. No noise. Nothing but my breath.
And his voice.
“I always knew you were built from more than bone.”
I stopped. Every hair on my body went stiff. The voice came from behind me, and even before I turned, my spine locked into place with the kind of dread that doesn’t need confirmation. Because the cadence was unmistakable. The rhythm of a man who once wrote poems into my skin with teeth and blood and dared to call it devotion.
Bryan.
I turned.
He stood at the end of the path. Barefoot. Shirt unbuttoned at the collar. Moonlight bleeding over him like some twisted benediction. One hand idly brushing petals from a rose that shouldn’t have been blooming in this kind of night. His face was in shadow, that same deliberate tilt of his head—half invitation, half threat.
“Even gods envy what you survived,” he said, and his voice—oh, that voice—was made of velvet and razor-wire. Beautiful in the way arson is beautiful.
I didn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. My body had turned traitor again. I wanted to scream, you’re dead. I wanted to run, to break the spell, to snap this dream’s neck and wake up sweating in Rhys’s arms.
But I just stood there.
And he kept talking.
“I wasn’t meant to hold you. I was meant to burn in your wake.”
One step forward. Two.
The roses at my feet shifted. Moved. Coiled like they knew me. Like they were listening.
“You weren’t meant to stay,” I whispered.
He lifted his head.
And that’s when I saw him.
Not Bryan.
Rhys.
Rhys standing in the same place, under the same light, wearing Bryan’s voice like a fucking mask. Rhys with his heartbreak eyes. Rhys with my husband’s face and my abuser’s words. Something inside my chest twisted violently, like my ribs had turned into a bear trap.
“No.” My voice broke. Shaking now. Sharper than the air. “No, no—”
His lips moved. Those same lips that had kissed bruises into promises and whispered forever in the space behind my ear.
“You let me in.”
And I screamed.
Shot up in bed, lungs punching upward like I’d just clawed my way out of silk-wrapped drowning. The sheets were a mess around my legs, my skin damp, breath stuttering hard and fast and broken.
The room was dark. Safe. Quiet. But my hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
Rhys moved beside me—he’d been in the chair again, watching like he didn’t trust the night to leave me untouched. He reached out, slow, breath caught in his throat.
And I—I flinched. Just for a second. Just a breath. But it was enough.
His hand froze mid-air. His face shattered. Those beautiful eyes wide and wrecked like I’d stabbed him without touching him. And god—I felt it. That low, cruel twist of grief that never quite goes dormant. The guilt that climbs up your spine when your trauma punishes the people who love you.
“I’m sorry,” I rasped, voice scraped raw. I didn’t even know who it was for. For flinching. For dreaming. For not being free. Still.
The room was quiet in that awful, heavy way that only follows a scream. Still. Dim. Loaded with the aftermath of something my body hadn’t stopped living through yet. The nightmare clung to me like silk across my throat, elegant and suffocating. Thorns in my lungs, wrapped tight. I couldn’t inhale without suspicion. Couldn’t exhale without grief.
And in front of me—Him. Rhys. On his knees beside the bed.
But my body didn’t believe it yet. Didn’t know what the hell was real. Because in the dream? He’d been Bryan too. Bryan’s words in Rhys’s mouth. Bryan’s ghosts carved into Rhys’s face like a sick impersonation. And my heart—God, my traitorous, thunderous heart—didn’t know which version to flinch from. Or fall for.
I blinked hard. Once. Twice. Tried to shake it loose, like that would flick the nightmare out of my system and land me somewhere back in truth. Back in him.
“Jasmine.”
Just one word. My name. But the way he said it—low, reverent, like it had been stolen from his lungs and he was afraid to ask for it back—God. It sounded like a prayer he wasn’t sure he deserved to whisper. Not tonight. Maybe he didn’t. But he didn’t reach for me. Didn’t try to fix it. Just knelt there. A sinner at the altar he helped build. Asking silently, quietly—please let me stay.
My hands stayed clenched in the sheets. My knuckles white. My nails half-mooned into cotton and fear. I stared at him. Took him in piece by piece like I had to rebuild him with my eyes. The shadows under his eyes, the rain still caught in his hair like he’d walked through that dream garden to find me. The scar over his heart.
Bryan never had that scar. Bryan never earned it.
My breath hitched. My chest fluttered with that horrible, aching guilt of wanting him even while I wasn’t sure I could trust what I was seeing. My body—stupid, loyal, confused thing—still didn’t know who it was safe to ache for.
And then—his voice again.
“If you want me to hold you, you’ll have to come to me.”
Not a demand. Not a plea. Just a man laying himself bare. No weapons. No pride. Just hands open and heart bleeding in front of me.
God, it hurt.
And still—I didn’t move. Not right away. Because the voice in my head was louder than his. What if it’s him? What if you step into the wrong arms? What if love isn’t enough this time?
My throat locked. My eyes blurred. And the tears that rose weren’t for the dead. They were for the maybe. The what if. The grief of doubt. The kind that eats you alive.
But he didn’t move. Didn’t push. Didn’t even breathe louder. He just waited.
So I moved. Slowly. Carefully. Like a truce. Like glass might shatter if I breathed wrong. I crawled forward, knees barely working, muscles twitching like they didn’t believe in safety anymore. And when I reached him, I stayed up on my knees, just high enough to meet him where he was still breaking. I reached out—slow, cautious, unsure. My fingers brushed under his chin. Lifted his face.
His eyes met mine. Not Bryan’s. Rhys’s. And it was all there. The guilt. The wonder. The wrecked, unbearable devotion. Like loving me was still the holiest thing he’d ever survived. And I—God—I felt it again. That quiet exhale of being seen.
I swallowed. My voice a whisper, raw and unsteady.
“Just stay here. Don’t speak. Just… be mine again.”
I slid my hand into his. Laced our fingers like I was threading my breath back into place. And for the first time since I tore myself out of that dream garden—That temple of roses and lies—I knew. I was safe. Because I had chosen him. Again.
And he had waited. Exactly where I needed him to be.
When he whispered “Always,” something inside my chest didn’t break—it unlocked. A soft internal click, deep and low and terrifyingly tender. Like some rusted-over vault I hadn’t dared touch for months. The one I’d barricaded shut with fear and fury and the kind of grief that doesn’t scream—it waits.
But he was there. Still there. Not battering down the door. Not demanding to be let in. Just kneeling. Just waiting. Eyes wet, shining like he’d bled every apology in silence. Hands steady and open, not reaching—never assuming—just there if I chose to reach back. The purest kind of offering. One I didn’t know if I deserved. One I didn’t know if he did either. But it was his.
I blinked. Hard. My lashes stuck together, salt stinging behind them. I tried to speak—tried to say something—but my voice wasn’t ready. It was still bruised from dreaming. So instead, I leaned forward. Slowly. So fucking slowly. Breath hitching with each inch, because some part of me still whispered What if it’s him? What if you’re wrong again? And then I pressed my forehead to his. Just that. No kiss. No gasp. No fix. Just skin. Warm and real and Rhys.
We stayed there. Breathing. Existing. Me, on my knees in front of the man who never stopped waiting. Him, kneeling in front of the woman who never stopped fighting. And nothing else moved.
“It wasn’t your voice in the dream,” I whispered finally, barely air. “It was your mouth.”
My forehead still resting on his. My truth raw and naked between us.
“And that’s what scared me.”
Because the voice? You can write that off. But the mouth? The way he looked when he said it, the way it felt—God, that haunted me.
He didn’t flinch. Didn’t pull me closer, didn’t try to protect me from it. He just let it land. Let the truth fall between us like ash. Let it stay.
And I breathed. Shaky. But mine.
“But I know it’s not you now. I know who you are.”
And then—slowly—I moved. Shifted. Let my body remember what my soul hadn’t forgotten. I slid into his arms. Like coming back to gravity. Like muscle memory finally finding its purpose. Like nothing and everything at once.
And when he held me—arms wrapping around my body with no urgency, no cage, just presence—I let go. I let go of the roses. Of the moonlight. Of the ghost with his face but none of his soul.
“Bienvenue chez toi, mon amour.”
His voice folded around me like silk pulled through fire—soft, low, French, and full of that impossible tenderness that only he could make sound like a spell. The words landed somewhere deep in my chest, right where the last pieces of the nightmare had been hiding. And they scattered.
Just like that.
His arms were already around me. Solid. Warm. Reverent. Like he knew he wasn’t holding a woman—he was holding a war survivor who hadn’t stopped bleeding yet. My head rested against his chest, and beneath my cheek, his heart beat steady and slow. Not calm. Not quiet. Just certain.
And I didn’t want to move. Not for air. Not for light. Not even for the future. I just wanted to stay right there. Wrapped in Rhys Llewellyn like he was both sanctuary and reckoning. Because in that moment, I wasn’t haunted. I wasn’t hunted. I wasn’t broken. I was home. And he was the only place I still believed in.
