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And I damn sure wasn’t throwing random shit together at the last minute. If I was going to a party, I wanted to look good… real good. I wasn’t about to walk downstairs looking like somebody whose sister had guilt-tripped her into attending a Halloween party against her will.

“Whatever.”

I opened the bathroom door, then I stopped.

Something about my bedroom was different.

It wasn’t the furniture or the walls; it was the floor. Black flower petals were scattered across the carpet, forming a beautiful dark trail from the bathroom doorway toward my bed. For several seconds, I simply stood there staring.

“What the…”

I followed the trail with my eyes, and when I saw what was lying across the bed, my heart nearly stopped.

A long black dress had been arranged carefully across the comforter.

I stepped out of the bathroom slowly, my bare feet brushing the petals as I bent down and picked one up.

A black rose petal.

Caspian’s favorite color.

That man used to bring me black roses all the damn time. Sometimes he ordered entire arrangements, sometimes he showed up with one single rose, and sometimes he had them delivered to my job simply because he knew it would make me smile. I used to tell him he was the only man I knew who could make black flowers look romantic instead of depressing, and he would laugh and tell me that was because everything looked better when it came from him.

I swallowed and looked toward the bed.

“No.”

I moved closer, almost afraid that if I crossed the room too quickly, whatever I was seeing would disappear.

The dress was long, black, and fitted, with long sleeves and a low neckline.

I knew that dress… every inch of it. It was the dress I was supposed to wear the night to the party.

I ran my fingers over the shoulder until I found the tiny alteration where the seamstress had adjusted the fit for me.

The same alteration.

The same dress.

I stumbled backward. “No. How…”

I still remember one of Caspian’s reaction when I mentioned what I wanted us to dress up as.

“So basically, you want me to put on a suit and act like I’m obsessed with my woman?”

I had told him yes.

He laughed. “Shit, I do that every day.”

I remembered laughing so hard. Then he asked what I planned to wear, and after I showed him the dress, that man suddenly became very interested in Halloween.

A small smile tried to form through the tears filling my eyes, but it disappeared when my fingers moved over the fabric again.

Crazy thing is, I had thrown that dress away… years ago.

I couldn’t stand looking at it after Caspian disappeared. Every time I saw it hanging in my closet, I remembered getting ready that night, doing my makeup, waiting for him to pick me up, checking my phone, calling him, waiting some more, and eventually realizing the night was ending without him.

I had put the dress in a bag with several other things I couldn’t bear to keep, tied the bag shut, and cried afterward. Yet the exact same dress was now lying across Caspian’s bed.