Prolugue
Five Years Later
Five years.
It’s strange how much can change in five years.
Five years ago, I thought I knew exactly who I was.
I thought I knew what love was.
I thought I knew what my future looked like.
Now I’m sitting here, alone with my thoughts, trying to understand how the woman who once meant everything to me became someone whose name I can barely say without feeling something break inside my chest.
Isabella.
Even writing her name hurts.
I can still remember the way she looked at me.
The way she smiled.
The way she touched me.
The way she could make an entire room disappear with nothing more than a look.
There were moments when being with her felt like coming home.
And there were moments when loving her felt like losing myself.
Maybe that’s the difference between love and obsession.
Maybe love is supposed to make you feel free.
And maybe obsession makes you afraid to let go.
I don’t know which one we had.
Perhaps we had both.
I loved her.
God, I loved her. I still do.
But loving someone doesn’t always mean you are meant to stay together.
Sometimes love teaches you things you never wanted to learn.
Sometimes the person who makes you feel the most alive is also the person who forces you to confront every part of yourself you’ve spent your entire life trying to hide.
My insecurities.
My fears.
My abandonment.
My need to be wanted.
My desperate need to know that I was enough.
For years, I thought Isabella was the problem.
Then I thought I was the problem.
Now I know it was never that simple.
We were two people carrying things we didn’t know how to put down.
Two women who wanted each other desperately, but didn’t always know how to love each other without hurting each other.
Two people who somehow became intertwined.
Like two deer whose antlers had grown into one.
Beautiful from a distance.
Impossible to separate up close.
And perhaps that’s why letting go hurt so much.
Because when one of us pulled away, the other felt it too.
I wish I could tell you that I knew where this story was going when it began.
I didn’t.
When I first saw her, I wasn’t looking for the love of my life.
I wasn’t looking to destroy my relationship.
I wasn’t looking to fall in love.
I was simply a woman who thought she had everything.
I had Mia.
My fiancée.
My home.
Our future.
A life that looked perfect from the outside.
And yet, somewhere inside me, there was a woman who was starving.
Starving to feel wanted.
Starving to feel desired.
Starving to feel seen.
I didn’t know what I was looking for.
I only knew that something was missing.
And then I found her.
Or maybe she found me.
I still don’t know which one it was.
Her name was Isabella.
Everyone called her Isa.
But eventually, she became something else to me.
Babe.
And I became hers.
Five years later, I can finally admit something I couldn’t admit back then.
Meeting Isabella didn’t ruin my life.
She exposed the parts of it that were already broken.
And maybe that’s why I still think about her.
Not because I want to go back.
But because a part of me will always wonder who I would have become if I had never met her.
So this isn’t a story about a perfect love.
It isn’t a story about soulmates who lived happily ever after.
It’s a story about two women.
About desire.
About fear.
About attachment.
About choices.
About the things we hide from the people we love.
And about what happens when the person you never meant to fall for becomes the person you can’t stop falling toward.
This is where my story begins.
Five years earlier.
Before I knew her.
Before she knew me.
Before the first kiss.
Before the lies.
Before the wedding plans.
Before everything became complicated.
Before Isabella became Babe.
