Suddenly, our eyes met, and it felt like all the air in my lungs was sucked out of the room itself. Herr eyes were sharp and telling. All I could do was stare at her. I knew it was her from the moment I looked in her eyes. Lienna? Has it really been six years since I first met her? Has it really been that long? Jesus.

I should've worn my better black suit tonight. Shit. All those years ago, she was eighteen, almost nineteen. She was fast and reckless with her fighting style, but what I remember the most was how she was absolutely beautiful. She was super scary, and that night in the park, she was very determined to kill me. I still remember her saying that she didn't like bullies before she attacked me. I knew I was a goner from the moment I saw her. Her eyes bored right into my soul from across the bar, like she knew exactly what I had seen, and she wasn't scared of the darkness I carried because she had that same darkness. I knew she had a file on me that had all of the jobs I had done in the last eleven years. I can hurt her if I want to. But I knew she'd break my nose before I even got the chance.

But she still came after me that night, her knife flashing under the street lights. And when her knife sank into my shoulder, I still vividly remember that she had looked right into my eyes when she stabbed me. I can still feel the heat from the fire that was in her eyes and how mad she was.

But most importantly, I remembered the way her body had shuddered against mine while I was kissing he, not just once, I kissed her twi,ce actua, because I wanted to, and she made it too easy for me. I placed my hand on the shoulder that had the larger scar that she had given me. I should have killed her a long time ago. I know that all my problems would go away if she were dead, I would be happy, and my father would be proud of me. I almost died. But let her go, and I was fully aware of the circumstances, and I did it anyway, like a dumbass, and I used the excuse of her stabbing me in the shoulder as a way of convincing my father she had disappeared completely. Like in some fucked up kinda way, I was trying to protect her from the one man who has made my life a living shit show for the last twenty-one years of my life.

And now she was owning the space that was full of smoke, like the night belonged to her. Which, in my head, it did.