Shadow of Myself

Internet sleuths ripped apart the sheet music my boyfriend wrote, only to expose that the entire melody was an homage to his first love. Overnight, I became the internet's favorite punching bag.

[The song is an absolute banger. Too bad it's not about you.]

[He's held onto her memory for seven freaking years. What about you? Think he'll even remember your name next year?]

[I guarantee you, the ghost of another woman is living rent-free in his head.]

I could stomach the endless mockery and grip onto him like a lifeline, all for one simple reason. He had the exact same eyes as a dead man.

Chapter 1

While unpacking boxes at my boyfriend's place, I found a piece of sheet music shoved in his drawer. I snapped a quick pic and posted it online, never expecting it to blow up.

[Found this in my boyfriend's desk. Any music majors know what this is?]

Right now, the top comments sitting in my notifications read:

[Oh man, I've heard this before.]

[The hottest guy on campus played this for his girlfriend at the spring formal.]

Obviously, this legendary girlfriend wouldn't be the one posting the sheet music on Reddit asking for answers. In a matter of hours, my comment section turned into a total warzone. People mocking me, pitying me, or getting outraged on my behalf.

When Callum pushed the door open, I was still mindlessly scrolling through the endless thread. He wrapped an arm around my waist, pressed a kiss to my jaw, and asked what had my attention. I pointed at the comment glued to the center of my screen.

[If he kept the sheet music all these years, your guy is definitely still obsessed with his ex. Way more than he's into you, babe.]

His gaze locked onto the screen. After a heavy second, he reached out, his long, sculpted fingers pressing the power button to black out the phone.

"Why are you posting my sheet music online?" he asked. "Stop reading that garbage."

I tilted my head up, refusing to break eye contact. "Do you still love her, Callum?"

A suffocating silence filled the space between us. He had this tiny beauty mark right at the corner of his eye. It always looked like a stray star caught in his orbit. Finally, he raised his hand and lightly pinched my cheek.

"What do you want for dinner? I'll go make it."

God, I really wanted to tell him his subject-changing skills were absolute trash. I leaned against the kitchen doorframe, watching his broad shoulders as he moved around the counter. Honestly, he wasn't exactly like him. For one, Callum actually knew his way around a kitchen.

And his personality wasn't completely frozen over.

But they were still so painfully similar. The way he moved, the subtle shift in his postureit was identical. That was the exact reason I had spent the last two years sticking to him like a stage-five clinger.

I could still remember the sixth time I ambushed him after his shift. I shoved a massive bouquet of bright daisies right into his chest.

"Professor," I had said, "I still can't get that Chopin Nocturne right."

He let out a heavy breath, his fingers absentmindedly plucking a white petal from the bouquet. "How exactly do you want me to teach you, Clara?"

I clasped my hands behind my back and stepped into his personal space, hovering just inches from his lips. "I read somewhere that kissing speeds up brain function," I shot back, totally unfiltered. "Wanna test that theory, Professor?"

The tips of his ears burned a deep red, but his eyes were so bright. He actually leaned down and captured my lips.

"Like this?"

Back then, I had no clue how much I resembled his untouchable ex-girlfriend. I also didn't know the faded scar cutting across his wrist was put there because of her.

"Callum, if she called you right now, would you drop me and run to her?" At dinner, I pressed my silver fork hard against the porcelain plate, staring dead at him.

He didn't answer. He just pushed a plate of perfectly sliced steak across the table toward me. I stared at the bloody, medium-rare meat, a surge of bile rising in my throat. The absolute humiliation of being nothing but a placeholder swallowed me whole.

I was actually starting to fall for Callum. And that was a massive problem. They say whoever catches feelings first loses the game. We were supposed to be using each other as convenient stand-ins.

It was safer that way.

I choked down the rest of my meal in silence. He acted like nothing had happened, sitting at his grand piano later that night to prep for his classes. He wore these thin gold-rimmed glasses, his sculpted fingers gliding effortlessly across the keys. It was unfairly captivating.

Chapter 2

I quietly slipped behind him, wrapping my arms around his solid waist. "Callum, did you teach her like this too?" I intentionally leaned in, my breath brushing against the shell of his ear, pure provocation.

His hand snapped out, clamping down on the back of my neck.

He slammed me down against the freezing black and white keys, his brutal kiss instantly sealing off all my breath.

My elbow hit the heavy bass keys, sending a dark, dissonant chord echoing through the room. I shoved against his chest.

"Not here. Your piano it's too damn expensive."

He stared down at me, his gaze dark and heavy. "I don't care." Then his mouth was on my jaw, trailing heat down my throat.

Later, as I arched my neck and clung to his shoulders, my eyes caught on the frayed dreamcatcher dangling dangerously close to the edge of the piano. He took it everywhere. It didn't take a genius to figure out who gave it to him. My fingers hooked around the tarnished white feather.

"This thing is falling apart," I rasped, my voice thick. "Can we just throw it out?"

Even now, completely tangled up in me, he refused to give me what I wanted. A long, agonizing beat of silence passed. He pressed his forehead against mine.

"No."

My Reddit post was still blowing up. By the next afternoon, a new DM popped into my inbox.

[Hey, I don't know if you can handle this, but as one of his old frat brothers, I think you need to see this. You're completely in the dark about him and his ex. Honestly, right now, you look like a pathetic placeholder.]

It was Pandora's freaking box. Even though I knew opening it would end in a bloodbath, I couldn't stop myself. So I sat on the curb outside a 7-Eleven that afternoon, absorbing every single word about him and her.

[They were campus royalty back in the day.]

[He was the piano prodigy, she was the gorgeous literature major. They grew up together. Childhood sweethearts.]

[He played that exact song on stage at the spring formal. Wrote it specifically for her.]

[A label even tried to buy it, but he shot them down. Said it belonged to her, and only she got to hear it.]

[Every guy in the house was jealous. Then, right before graduation, she demanded to move abroad.]

[It got messy. They broke up, and word is, he literally nearly killed himself trying to get her to come back.]

[She left anyway. Long story short, your guy is still deeply, completely obsessed with his ex.]

[That kind of love doesn't just fade. I mean, look at what he did for her.]

I dragged in a sharp breath. A numb, static sensation spread through my chest, radiating outward until my fingers went cold. It made sick, twisted sense. This was exactly the kind of unhinged devotion Callum was capable of.

He had been looking right through my eyes to see a ghost.

I always knew it.

I typed out my reply, my thumbs stiff against the glass screen.

[Do you have a picture of her?]

[Hold up, I think she's in one of our old tailgating photos. Let me dig it up.]

Twenty agonizing minutes later, a slightly grainy photo hit my screen. Even through the low resolution, the girl circled in red was undeniably stunning. Long, flowing hair. A brilliant smile.

Her head resting perfectly on a younger Callum's shoulder.

My thumbnail dug into the phone case. I looked up, catching my reflection in the dirty convenience store window. No wonder.

My bone structure, the sharp curve of my browI was a walking, breathing replica of her. I don't even remember how I made it back to his apartment.

Chapter 3

I stormed into the bathroom, grabbed a pair of shears, and mercilessly hacked off the long hair that made me an identical copy of his ex.

Staring at the chaotic mess on the floor and the stranger in the mirror, a cold, harsh laugh escaped my lips. I didn't look like myself anymore. More importantly, I didn't look like her.

I sat in the dark living room, patiently waiting to see Callum's reaction. But the clock struck midnight, and the man who finally stumbled through the door reeked of stale liquor. Must have been a brutal department dinner. The second he stepped inside and his eyes landed on my chopped hair, he froze.

I braced myself for an explosion. Instead, he just stood there, swaying slightly, before his heavy frame collapsed against me. He slurred my nickname.

"Claire"

His hot breath splashed against my neck, the sharp stench of alcohol tangling with his usual crisp cedarwood scent. He wrapped his arms tightly around my waist, his dead weight dragging us both down onto the living room sofa.

Claire. But the inflection was completely wrong. The vowel dragged out, heavy with a suffocating, desperate kind of longing. It wasn't Claire.

He was saying Clara.

I remembered the DM from this afternoon. That was her name. Clara. His lips crashed against my collarbone.

He was completely out of it, his long fingers blindly hooking into my freshly chopped hair as he chanted her name over and over like a prayer. Clara. I love you. I miss you.

Every single word physically bruised. Even though his dark, glazed eyes were staring right into mine, I knew he wasn't talking to me. Pinned beneath his weight, my fingers dug into the thick wool of his coat until my knuckles turned white. I tilted my head, staring blankly at the dim amber light bleeding from the entryway.

"Callum, open your damn eyes and look at me," I spat out. "I'm not your precious dead ghost, so stop treating me like her freaking replica."

His pupils dilated, completely swallowing the ambient light in the room. He stared at me, his gaze dark and heavy. Then, he crushed his mouth to mine, swallowing my protests. Just like that.

He wouldn't even let me speak.

I lost track of how long his brutal, desperate possession lasted into the night.

I was a notoriously light sleeper. Sometime in the brutal, early hours of the morning, my eyes snapped open. A heavy rainstorm hammered against the bedroom windowpanes. Right, the weather app had warned about a flash flood.

I was trapped against his solid chest, a thick weighted blanket thrown over us. My body ached so badly from the exertion that I didn't even remember him carrying me to the bed.

Staring at the ceiling in the dark, a sharp, piercing ring of the doorbell suddenly shattered the ambient noise of the rain. At first, I thought I was hallucinating. But thirty seconds later, it chimed again. Relentless.

I squinted against the dark, my limbs feeling like lead. I shoved my palm against the warm skin of the man sleeping next to me.

"Callum. Someone's at the door."

He let out a low groan, blindly reaching up to stroke my hair before dragging me right back against his chest. He was completely out of it.

But the doorbell kept ringing. I kicked his shin under the covers.

"Callum. Get the damn door."

One major difference between the Professor and the man from my pastthe Professor didn't wake up angry. Roused from his sleep, he just blinked his heavy, hooded eyes at me for a second before silently pushing off the mattress. He did exactly what I told him. Sometimes, he was almost suspiciously obedient.

Curled up in the suffocating warmth of the bed, my brain spun in circles. Who the hell was banging on the door in the middle of a torrential downpour? Ten minutes passed. Then fifteen.

He never came back upstairs.

A cold spike of anxiety pierced my chest. I threw off the covers, grabbed one of his oversized hoodies, and gripped the wooden banister as I crept down the stairs.

"Callum? Who is it?"

The next second, my bare feet froze on the hardwood. The front door was wide open, the violent storm lashing rain across the threshold. Standing there, completely drenched in a thin white dress, was a girl with flowing dark hair.

It was terrifyingly instinctive. The exact millisecond my eyes locked onto her, I knew exactly who she was. It was her. The ghost Callum worshipped.

Clara.

Her pale, fragile face was tilted up, staring at him with pathetic desperation.

"Callum please stop hiding from me," she choked out, her voice trembling. "I won't leave this time. I swear I won't."

"Please just stop being with other women. Okay?"

Through the violent sheet of freezing rain, the ghost from the photograph and I locked eyes.

Chapter 4

Her eyes were perfectly clear, stripping me down in a pure, calculating sweep that made one thing painfully obviousshe didn't see me as a threat. And why would she? Callum had practically bled out trying to keep her. She held all the winning cards.

My fingers clamped down on the wooden banister until my knuckles ached.

"Looks like someone you know, Callum." I forced a dry laugh, trying to play it cool. "Aren't you going to invite her in?"

I thought playing the unaffected girlfriend would stop the violent twisting in my gut. But the pathetic tremor in my voice gave me away. As if my voice finally snapped him out of a trance, Callum slammed the heavy door shut.

I stared at the thick wood, genuinely shocked. He actually locked his precious first love out in the storm.

I coldly watched the rigid line of his jaw. I deliberately reached out to twist the brass doorknob. "Since your true love is freezing out there, why don't we invite her in? The three of us can finally clear the air."

Before my fingers could even brush the metal, his hand clamped down on the back of my neck. His skin was damp from the rain. He pinned me flush against the door, his lips pressing a shockingly soft kiss to the corner of my mouth. I stared up at the tiny droplets of water clinging to his dark eyelashes.

"Be good. Stop talking."

Callum's voice was a jagged rasp against my collarbone. But the ragged heat of his breaths washing over my skin betrayed his unraveling composure. He wasn't unaffected by her standing out there. He was losing his damn mind over it.

For the next few days, her ghost haunted every corner of Callum's life. On his commute, outside our apartment building, waiting by his studio. It was a relentless, suffocating ambush.

"Callum, please just forgive me?"

"How much longer are you going to play house with that woman?"

"You expect me to believe you don't love me anymore? I'm not stupid."

I should have told him to go to hell weeks ago. We were just playing a twisted game of convenient stand-ins. But I was so damn deep in it now. Until this afternoon.

I brought two iced Americanos to his studio, only to freeze outside the glass door. There she was. The girl in the white dress.

Callum was always gentle with me, but his face was pure ice around her. Yet I knew that icy front was just proof of how much he still cared. Proof of how deeply her leaving had destroyed him. Someone once told me that hate burns way hotter than love.

My fingers clamped hard around the plastic coffee cups. I pulled out my phone and shot him a text.

[Callum, what are you doing right now?]

Standing just a few feet away behind the glass, I clearly saw that woman tilt her chin up at me in pure provocation. Then, she deliberately placed her hand right on his thigh. He was always quick to reply to me. Just like now.

I watched him glance down at his screen, his thumbs moving.

[Taking a break.]

[By yourself?]

The man lowered his eyes, staring at his screen for a long, agonizing time. I waited too, my eyes glued to him through the window as my heart pounded a violent rhythm against my ribs. Finally, a single word popped up.

[Yeah.]

Look at that. The professor who never lied just fed me a massive one. All because of the woman clinging to him. Even if he treated her like absolute ice, he couldn't fight his desperate, subconscious instinct to protect her.

I slammed the two melting iced Americanos brutally into the nearest trash can.

The sharp crack of shattering ice couldn't even drown out the dull, heavy ache in my chest. Just last week, he was in my bed, promising me a trip for the holidays. And now, he was letting that woman blatantly mark her territory all over him.

Chapter 5

I didn't know how long I had been sitting on the freezing concrete steps of the apartment building. When I finally snapped back to reality, a low, magnetic voice cut through the heavy silence.

"Why do you look like that?"

I looked up, straight into those deep, liquid eyes. He reached out, his long fingers lightly brushing against my cheek.

"Who pissed you off?"

Before I could answer, he simply scooped me up into his arms, kicked the door open, and the second we were in the entryway, he pinned me against the wooden shoe cabinet.

Soft, lingering kisses dropped onto the exposed skin of my neck. It felt like a perfectly fabricated illusion of gentleness. My fingers dug into the fabric of his sleeve.

"Callum," I rasped, "do you still love Clara?"

The moment her name left my mouth, his pupils contracted into sharp pinpricks. Yes or no. It was the simplest question in the world. But the suffocating silence that followed dragged on for an agonizing eternity.

Long enough for me to realize I was never getting an answer.

"Claire, let's talk about something else."

The fading sunset bled through the window, casting harsh, cruel shadows across his profile. I hooked my index finger around his cuff, my voice dropping to a whisper.

"Then are you going to leave me?"

"No."

This time, there wasn't a single fraction of hesitation. But I think I want to leave you, Callum.

He started spending more and more time with her. She was a constant, suffocating presence, clinging to his orbit. And he acted like his hands were tiedunable to push her away, letting her drag him deeper in.

I went to the university to track him down again, only to stop dead outside the practice room. The girl in the white dress was already sitting right beside him on the piano bench. A harsh breath scraped my throat.

My hand hovered over the cold metal of the doorknob for a long moment before I dropped my arm and walked away.

I wandered aimlessly across the campus. Honestly, the memories of my own college days were a faded blur. The only thing permanently burned into my brain was the boy who consumed my youth. He used to watch me from a distancetall, untouchable, never smiling, barely speaking.

His name was Callum. Callum died. He died in a desolate, blinding expanse of snow. Six years ago, we went to a ski resort.

There was an accident. He threw himself in front of danger to save me, and he was buried under the ice forever.

The man I was dating now looked exactly like him. They both had that exact same tiny beauty mark resting at the corner of their eye. The only difference was that the professor smiled, and my Callum didn't. That was why the absolute second I laid eyes on the professor two years ago, my heart practically stopped.

Even knowing he was just a replica, I was willing to bleed just to stay near that identical face.

But now look at the absolute wreckage I was sitting in. A bitter, self-deprecating smirk pulled at my lips. I didn't even have the right to face my Callum's memory anymore.

If he knew I had genuinely fallen for his placeholder, he'd probably be furious, staring at me with that dark, lethal scowl of his.

But I also knew my Callum was gone. The dead don't come back. I was the one who signed the papers and arranged his funeral. My feet dragged me toward the large lake in the center of campus.

The midday sun was violently bright, casting mottled shadows through the oak leaves onto the passing students. The shrill, piercing cry of cicadas echoed in the heat.

And then, the absolute impossible happened.

In a fraction of a second, my brain completely short-circuited.

The dead don't come back, right? Then why the hell was I staring at the exact silhouette I had been grieving for six years, standing right there on the arched stone bridge?

The professor was on the complete opposite side of campus, and he was glued to Clara. It was physically impossible for him to be here. He was a distance away, but I had memorized every harsh line of that silhouette a thousand times over. I couldn't be wrong.

Just then, a massive, loud crowd of students returning from a field trip swarmed across the bridge, completely blocking my line of sight.

Chapter 6

The silhouette turned, vanishing into the thick wall of bodies.

I didn't even stop to think. I sprinted forward, aggressively shoving past the laughing packs of college students. I couldn't be wrong. It was absolutely him.

But how the hell could it be him? He was dead. I finally broke through the wall of bodies and slammed to a halt.

There was nothing in front of me.

The spring wind ripped through the oak trees, sending a shower of dead leaves skittering across the concrete. I stood frozen, the blood roaring in my ears drowning out the rest of the world.

I practically dragged myself back to the apartment, completely hollowed out. Two pristine postcards were sitting in the metal mailbox. It took my frozen brain a long time to process them. They were from our road trip up the coast three months ago.

We had visited this historic basilica on a cliff. The local legend claimed that whatever you wished for inside those walls would come true the exact day the postcard arrived at your door.

The edges of my card were slightly frayed, but the ink was perfectly legible. Forever with Callum.

And his? I hadn't checked what he wrote back then. His postcard was resting quietly at the very bottom of the metal box. My fingers moved on their own, flipping the heavy cardstock over.

Right then, my phone vibrated in my pocket. Callum's caller ID flashed on the screen. I swiped to answer, my eyes glued to the back of his postcard.

"Claire, the department meeting is running late tonight," his voice came through the speaker, carrying that usual, lazy gentleness.

My thumbnail dug viciously into the edge of the paper. My throat completely closed up. After a suffocating silence, I forced out a single, rigid syllable.

"Okay."

He must have taken my silence for anger, because his next words dropped into a low, coaxing register.

"Order some takeout for now. I'll cook you something amazing the second I get back, yeah?"

I ended the call. I stared blindly at the handwriting on the postcard until a drop of water hit the heavy cardstock, permanently blurring the black ink. They said the wish on the postcard would manifest the day it arrived.

I vividly remembered that afternoon. I had finished writing mine, walked over to Callum, and looped my arms around his neck. When he lowered his head to press a soft kiss to my lips, my eyes had caught the scrawl of his pen.

Bring Clara back to me.

I stood in front of my closet and dragged my clothes off the wooden hangers, dumping them into a duffel bag. I didn't actually need much. I loved photography, so I grabbed my vintage camera. I dropped my apartment key onto the entryway console and walked away from the place I had called home for four years.

The lock clicked shut.

The spring wind slicing across my bare calves was freezing. I had walked out with absolutely zero plan. I wandered the city streets, a completely aimless ghost. I had nowhere to go, and no idea what to do next.

I didn't want to go back to that apartment. I didn't want to see Callum. I already knew exactly how he would play it. He always thought he could just use that low, gentle voice of his to reel me right back in.

And the sick, twisted truth was, I had actually fallen for him.

That was why the ache behind my eyes was so unbearable. My feet carried me to a small neighborhood park. The night wind violently whipped the dead leaves across the pavement. Freezing rain suddenly began to lash against my face.

I had grabbed random things on my way out, but completely forgot an umbrella. I sat on a freezing iron bench, letting the icy water soak straight through my clothes. My phone started going crazy in my pocket, notifications aggressively lighting up the screen. Callum.

He finally realized I wasn't at the apartment.

[Where are you?]

[It's pouring out and you didn't grab an umbrella.]

[Claire?]

Sometimes, life violently rips the ground right out from under you. Just like right now. My phone was still vibrating against my thigh, the texts relentlessly popping up. But the freezing rain suddenly stopped hitting my face.

A massive black umbrella blocked out the streetlights. Someone was standing directly in front of me.

I slowly tilted my head up. The breath was physically ripped from my lungs, leaving me entirely mute. That cold, apathetic gaze dropped heavily onto me. The sharp, ruthless angle of his jaw.

Exactly as he was six years ago. I hadn't hallucinated this afternoon.

Chapter 7

The man who had fallen off a glacier to save me six years ago was standing directly in front of me. His hands were shoved deep into his pockets, his cold, apathetic gaze dropping heavily onto me. After a suffocating silence, he finally spoke, his voice slicing through the rain.

"These years I was gone, did you have fun playing with my replica?"

"Claire