When you love someone – really love someone – and you can't find one memory that does not include them, one photograph without them in it – that's when you know you can't let them leave.

And Lissa did. She let Rose leave.

Oh, she came back. Eventually. After years of pain and rage and tears, she came back.

And ironically enough, she had thought that everything would be fine, then. That she was over him. Lissa had Christian and Rose, what else could she want?

But it wasn't about her. Not anymore.

She saw the difference in the little things – unimportant things, really, things only she noticed, but it hurt all the same. She never wore heels anymore, never tied up her hair. Earrings and necklaces vanished, as did anything that even remotely resembled a coat. Western music became unendurable, and the gym was no longer visited.

Rose. Darling Rose.

Everything Russian had to be avoided at all costs. The chapel faded into an unwelcome memory. The walks she had always enjoyed taking in the forest became another form of torture.

Why she refused to even look at the tiny guard cabin that had been their hideout during their last year in school was truly beyond Lissa. What had happened there? She never told, and so Lissa never knew.

So many secrets she kept, and so little of them were shared with her. Not like before him. It would never be like it was before him.

And she hated him then, really hated him. Lissa, who was always full of love and warmth and smiles. But she did, and it couldn't be denied.

And Adrian, her happy-go-lucky Adrian – that was a lost cause. He was almost as bad as Rose was.

Almost. Because no one could get as broken as her.

Lissa took the picture down from her wall and sighed. They were both fifteen, disguised as fairies for Halloween. And she looked so happy. So very, very happy.

The photograph smashed against the wall.

She was not her Rose anymore. He had shattered her into a million pieces, and he hadn't even meant to.

Idiot.

Rose's secrets had drowned with Dimitri Belikov. Because she wasn't hers – she never was.

Broken or not, she was his.