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by
Devyn Rivers
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October 20 - October 27, 2025
For the bad girl who wants to be called “good girl” There are no heroes here— And the villains take what they want.
His eyes were bright blue, nearly the color of the glaciers I saw hiking the other day. There was something wild and almost feral about him.
This man was hardened and brutal—cut from steel and birthed from shadows. He had some demons following him and I didn’t know what that meant for me yet.
Telling a woman she was asking for it because of what she was wearing? A woman should be able to wear whatever she goddamn pleases.
“No, you like authority and dominance. And you can be controlling without being an asshole.”
“Don’t worry sweetheart,” I said as I turned my back to her. “When I touch you, it’ll only be after you beg me to.”
“Maybe you should play the lottery.” “Your sarcasm is not an attractive trait.” “Good thing you’re not attracted to me then.”
“You’re playing a dangerous game, princess,” I said, my voice strained. “I thought you were a dangerous man.”
She was a wildfire someone tried to contain in a fireplace—it just didn’t work.
It is in the breaking, we become whole again. It is through darkness, we find the stars. Somewhere between the soul and the self, we find what we’re made of.
“Don’t start thinking I’m a good man, sweetheart.”
“We’re in hell Graham. There aren’t any heroes here.” I turned away from him and tried to hide a wince as pain shot up my side. “Just a lot of broken people,”
To watch someone you care for go through torture of the darkest kind is just as bad as getting physically tortured yourself.
“I wish I could erase everything bad that happened to you in that place and replace it with something good.”
“We only break once,” he said firmly. His hands running up my arms. “So we can put ourselves back together stronger than before.”
“You deserve to feel whole,” he said against my neck. “You are gorgeous when you come. But that is your gift to give me. Not mine to take.” He kissed me again.
I didn’t dare close my eyes so I looked at Graham and my heart slammed into his. The look on his face was of a man completely in his power—a god, watching something he’d created come to life in his hands. It was intoxicating.
“Let go, pretty girl,”
His strong, unwavering gaze held mine, telling me you’re safe to fall and so I fell. And instead of shattering, The cracks in my soul grew smaller and the shadows didn’t seem quite so dark.
When a star falls to earth we make a wish Their undoing is our redemption What then does it mean when a soul shatters? If we are stardust and moon rise, fragments of the universe, surely we come undone only to be made whole again. An unraveling— of the broken and the beautiful. Just as we wish upon a starfall, Maybe our pieces that shatter, Our soulfall—are the wishes the stars make on us.
“I knew you were a force when I first saw you but now—now that I really know what a powerful woman you are—” His fingers lifted my chin, his grip firm as he lowered his mouth to mine and stopped just short. “—being the one to make you fall apart is as close to the divine as I’ll get in this life and I plan to continue. So willingly or not?—that’s up to you.”
If he was a god, I was his temple.
Why do we compare the heart to love? It’s violent if you think about it A bloody piece of me, I give to you Or you rip it from me Then it bleeds, it breaks, it skips a beat I hold the pieces in my hands and watch the road to redemption run red.
Just because your revenge is over, it doesn’t mean your grief, loss and healing journey is over.
Except now I don’t think we only break once. I think we break a thousand times, again and again, so our pieces can find the ones we fit together with and those pieces heal—refining and reshaping each time. Maybe we need to break in order to expand and maybe we need to shatter across the universe in order to find the pieces of others who fit in those spaces left behind.
