It has been a full year since the accident, the night Constant met death. Suffocating next to a corpse, smelly and rotten, haunts her dreams. Her nights are plagued with nightmares of _him_. It has been a year, yet she still can’t believe he is gone. She knows he isn’t; he is only waiting in the shadows for her to let her guard down, ready to slip back into her life. How poetic it would be, coming back on their anniversary to put her soul through hell again.

“Connie,” Beau mutters, careful of the lingering eavesdroppers. “You alright?”

Constant scans the crowd, searching for a glimpse of his face. “I’m not sure yet.”

Beau glances around, smiling kindly at his father’s golf buddies. “He won’t be here. He—he can’t be here.”

“You don’t know that,” Connie utters, her brow breaking into a sweat.

Beau shrugs, waving at arriving party guests. “Perhaps, but I do know he’s dead. He can’t come back; he’s not a ghost.”

She tries to smile at him, her nerves unceasing. “Yeah, you’re right.”

“I know,” Beau jokes, “now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to find the food.”

“Please don’t leave me,” Connie says, her nerves lighting on fire.

“Just go find Jacqueline. I saw her in the library last.”

“Please, I don’t feel comfortable without you.”

Beau sighs and rolls his eyes. “You’re safe. I pinky promise.”

He slips through small groups of finely dressed women and men, happily chatting away. Connie groans, fear settling into her bones. Gripping the skirt of her dress, she shuffles to the library, apologizing as she bumps into shoulders.

Beau’s house has grown familiar and comforting over the years of their friendship. The smell of his mother’s tulips and the scent of clean linen remind Connie of countless hours spent in this house. Marble floors shine under the chandelier’s glow. It comforts her, but the ghost of him haunts her, and the dark shadows in this house. The memories, shoved into dark corners of Connie’s mind, claw their way back to the surface. Small things—the faint, sickeningly sweet scent of roses, the feel of cold metal on skin, the clean marble once stained with red—remind her of those horrible nights. She can’t escape him.

Connie’s steps stop, and echoes of shoes on marble sputter to a halt. She knows those footsteps, the disgusting pattern too familiar to her.

_No._

Tears burn the back of her throat, fear seizing every muscle in her body. She whips her head around, fists clenched. Death stands only a few yards away, his dark, evil eyes shining.

“No,” she chokes out, his figure towering over her dauntingly.

Death smiles, his sharp teeth reeking of rotten flesh and stale blood. “I came back for you, love.” He reaches out and grazes her face with his corpse-like hands.

Her stomach lurches in disgust. “You’re supposed to be dead,” she says, her voice wavering.

“Love never really dies.”