After New Years Eve, and the meeting with Aslo, January passed by cold and dreary, with February nipping at its heels with bitterly cold fangs. Before long, the bar had been decked to the nines for the Bloody Valentine Ball which Kelly threw each year. A homage to every epic rock ballad or alternative serenade throughout the ages. It was the perfect excuse for the house band to play amped up covers of the love songs they secretly adored.

It had been a welcome distraction from the absence I felt.

I wrestled with my coat and juggled the bag of gifts I'd finally remembered to bring home. The Ball tonight had been the climax to a busy week at the bar. One that had seen Valentines Day come and go and with it a handful of gag gifts given to me throughout the week.

Nightmare chirped as I flopped onto the sofa and emptied the bag onto the coffee table in front of the sofa. The thumb sized vibrator Callum had bought both me and Emma, buzzed and bounced across the wooden surface.

I grinned as I reached to switch it off and remembered the way Callum had cackled at Emma's scarlet face when she opened the present.

Callum's gift hadn't been the only crude present. Kelly, too, had flashed a wicked smile as she handed over a packet of Love Hearts, each one customised with crude obscenities in place of the usual sweet phrases.

I plucked the sweets from the pile and smirked at the annotation before savouring the sweet and sour sherbet taste.

As I flicked on the TV to some late night re-run of an American sitcom, I scanned over the cards that had been snuck into my coat pocket. Most were jokey cards, like the Galentine's one from Emma, but another had been marked from a mystery admirer. The calligraphic question mark and 'guess who' had piqued my attention at first, but by the look Keiran had been giving me all night, I could guess fairly easily who it had come from. And knew all too well who I had hoped it had been dropped off by.

It was the same person I'd been thinking of when Emma joined me at the bar at the end of the shift. My elbows had been propped against the stainless steel while my finger swirled through the bowl of Skittles, hunting down the last green one I'd spied earlier. The sugary shells had clinked against the ceramic, as my finger meandered through the sea of red, purple and orange.

"I know it's super cheesy," she'd said. "But I thought he might have come by today. You know like one of those romantic moments in the movies when the guy comes to sweep the girl off her feet."

I'd stopped looking for the green Skittle as soon as she'd said it, because, as I looked down at the bowl I'd been snacking from, and acknowledged the disappointment I'd been ignoring all week, I realised that my sub-conscious had been thinking the same thing. It was why Aslo's words 'gone away for a while' had made me feel the way they did, and why my heart skipped a beat every time the door rang out across the bar. Not out of fear, like it used to, but out of hope, excitement. Years of having my brain addled by romantic comedies had left me thinking that maybe, just maybe, he'd walk through the door at the bar.

And when he did, in that Rom-Com world of rose tinted glasses, I'd stand with wide eyes and a fluttering heart while he told me all I'd ever wanted to hear. Then, he'd take me in his arms and kiss me in a way that was wholly indecent for the public setting we were in. And, after all these months, I'd let him. Because, if his absence had told me anything, it was that I'd missed him, and if I'd known then what I knew now, I might have paused before walking away. I might have given him another moment or two to explain, where he could, and I might have told him some small snippet of everything I'd had in my head that day.

And what a fucking cliché that was. To only know, once it was gone, how much it meant to have him in my life.

With a deep breath, I cleared Emma's words from my head and picked up the plastic bag of Skittles from the table. I'd meant to throw them in the bin after what she'd said, but some buried sentimental part of me recoiled from the finality of it. Instead, I'd brushed off her words with a callous joke and left to clear down tables. When I was sure she'd finished her shift, I snagged one of the clear take away bags Kelly used for customers and poured the bowl inside.

Now, I added them to the Love Hearts Kelly had given me, and the chocolate Emma had shared with us from the gift Max had given her.

With heavy legs, stiff from being on my feet all night, I took my stash to the kitchen and added it to the cupboard with the leftover Christmas chocolate. There, poking out from under the box of Jellybean roulette Callum had bought me, was the page Book Boy had left behind.

I carefully pulled it free, the page sighed as it slipped against the cardboard. I couldn't remember hiding it there after returning from the Fire Festival, but it made sense that I'd put it somewhere I rarely looked.

Those days seemed like a haze now.

I'm sorry.

The words blared from the page.

My fingers ran over the writing, feeling the slight indent the pen had made on the thick paper. Longing tugged at the hole in my chest, so real that I wondered if I would see it there if I looked down. Some scarred, gnarled, space, healed over but not as it should be.

Nightmare danced around my feet, her silky black fur brushing against my jeans, leaving a trail of hair in its wake. Her tail trailed around my calf, curling and twining as she watched me with bright expectant eyes.

"Do you want the window open?" I asked as I bent to run my hand over her back, running her tail through my fingers as I stood.

She gave a brrp in response before hopping onto the kitchen counter. I reached to open the window, and she purred in thanks before disappearing through the opening.

I watched her go, remembering how I'd stood in the same place two years ago and seen her hop down into my yard for the first time. Even though her movement had been tentative and considered back then, she'd still had her tail up. As if her whole body was at attention. Except back then it had drooped to one side, like she was unable to straighten it. Now it was poker straight.

If I wanted to heal something it might cost me a page or two...

My fingers tensed on the page as Aslo's words drifted through my head.

My heart hammered in my chest. With slow, unsure movements, I lifted the page and sniffed the surface.

If Gina could see you now, she'd tell everyone you're mad.

I smirked at the thought, but it dropped the second I smelt the sweet, musky scent drifting from the page. The subtle fragrance threw me back to Halloween, and the night I found Nightmare lying motionless on the kitchen floor, exactly where I stood now. I had lost her then. I had known it in the pit of my stomach. Despite her wet rasping breaths and juddering movements, I had felt her life ebbing away under my hands. I had known then, that even if I'd gotten her to a Vet, it would have been too late.

But then there was that incense lacing the air, and all those fears had evaporated at the sight of her brushing herself against Book Boy's leg.

He had wanted to help, and he had in a way only he could.

Tears prickled at my eyes, and the realisation of what he'd done, what he'd kept to himself, came to the fore. He'd sacrificed pages from his book, just to save Nightmare, just because she was important to me. And more than that, he'd never uttered a word about it. Even though he'd had countless opportunities to.

A shaky breath shuddered through my chest. He'd done this selfless thing and that day on the field I'd called him soulless, like I had any authority on the matter. He could have thrown this back in my face, but even then, he hadn't used it to talk me down. Instead, he'd taken it all and let me rip him to shreds.

After Aslo confirmed how intrinsic Book Boy's change had been, I'd wrestled with the sting of knowing Book Boy had loved me, in his own pure, authentic, way, and I'd thrown it back in his face. But eventually, I'd rationalised that I'd experienced that kind of love before, in a handful of different ways. It was the kind that existed only in words, never actions. Like just saying the words somehow made it real and gave them the excuse to call me their own, to dictate how I should act, how I should feel. Like saying 'I love you' negated any need to show it. I'd convinced myself that Book Boy was like every other person who had said those three words to me:

My parents, on the night before I ran away from home. The words had been so empathic, so wrought with emotion that it seemed impossible for them not to truly mean it. Yet, the actions that followed proved otherwise.

Mr R, countless times, in all sorts of ways. As an apology after he'd hurt me, or as an excuse for his rancid behaviour. And when he had the chance to show it, to really mean it, when I needed it the most, he'd laughed instead and left me to figure it out alone.

The litany of people I'd had relationships with since Mr R. Some leaping to say it, far too soon and far too freely. Others dropping it into the silence between us while we lay panting in bed, like some anchor designed to secure their place in my bed.

All of them had said it, but it had never meant anything. I didn't imagine that it would be any different with Book Boy.

Yet here it was, the truth of those words. One piece of paper which proved that, unlike all of the others, he'd meant what he'd said.

"I've been a fucking idiot," I murmured into the silence as the tears started to fall.

"You have," whispered behind me, an ominous response.