This story goes well while listening to Duncan Laurence - Arcade (Lyric Video) ft. FLETCHER.
Love felt like a game—an endless arcade of hope and heartbreak. And for Avery Calloway, Elias Moreau was the prize she never thought she'd win.
He was everything she wasn't supposed to love. He was reckless, untamed, the kind of boy who never belonged to anyone. And yet, when he looked at her, it felt like the world stopped turning.
Their love was the kind people envied. The kind whispered about in dark corners, feared for its intensity. He made her laugh until her ribs ached, kissed her like she was something sacred.
And when she fell apart, he held her together.
But love—love was never meant to last forever.
Elias was sick. A heart condition he never told her about until it was too late. His body was a time bomb, ticking away moments she thought they had forever to live.
She spent months in hospital hallways, fingers trembling, voice breaking as she begged him to fight. But how do you fight against fate?
And the worst part? He knew.
He had known from the start. Yet he let her love him anyway, let her build a future out of something that was always meant to crumble.
“You let me believe we had forever,” she whispered through her tears one night, curled up beside him in his hospital bed.
“I wanted to believe it too,” he murmured, his fingers tracing slow circles on her skin, memorizing the feeling of her warmth. “I wanted to be greedy with you.”
She stayed until the end. Until his heartbeat slowed beneath her palm, until his lips parted with his last breath, whispering her name like it was the last thing he ever wanted to say.
And then, he was gone.
But love doesn’t die—it lingers, like a song stuck in the back of your mind, like a dream that fades when you wake.
She saw him in every sunset, heard him in every love song, felt him in every cold gust of wind that made her shiver.
She had given him everything. And in return, he left her with an empty arcade—a game she could never win.
But if love was a losing game, she would have played it a thousand times over.
For him.
For what they had.
For what they lost.
