BLURB:

The town folk say I'm holding on to a ghost, to a life that was never meant for me. To a girl who wants nothing to do with me.

They're wrong.

She would want me, if she were still ali--God, I can't think of that. Of a lonely life permanently without her.

But that's what each day is.

She wouldn't have run off after coming home to me two Christmases ago, giving me the best gift ever. A second chance. I never thought I'd have gotten that. I didn’t deserve it. But after one whole year of cozy dates and proving I could be the man she wanted, not the boy she remembered, we were happy... until all those happy feelings got ripped away from me last year, on a cold Christmas Eve night when she didn't come home.

She'd been spotted on some CCTV footage, talking to a guy dressed up as Santa as she left the mall.

I reported her as a missing person, but the sheriff thought like everyone else, that she'd left me and this town behind again.

But he was wrong. We had a future planned, more cozy dates that she was looking forward to.

Everyone says I just can't let go, and in way, they're right, I can't. I've searched for this man for almost a year because no one else would. Because something inside me says the choice to come home wasn't hers. It was his.

I don't know what he did to her, and part of me is sorry I ever have to find out, but as I stand outside his house, I know I'm not leaving until he's choked out each gory detail.