She was the girl who was afraid of love. Terrified of it. It isn't permanent, she believed, it leaves you and it leaves you broken.
He was the boy who desperately needed it. Love--the only thing that could've rooted him to this world.
Ophelia and...
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Another day or so passed by with no contact from Alastair. He was fine, though. Maria updated me the next night, telling me he was discharged from the hospital. That's all I got to know.
Mrs. Hawthorne said I should stay away from him. I didn't want to. That was the last thing I wanted to do. But who was I to decide? Alastair didn't need me. Perhaps I made things worse for him when I was there with him. And maybe staying away from him wouldn't be as selfish as spending these last few days with him.
I promised I'll be there for him when he needs me. And it seemed like he didn't need me these days.
So I kept it that way. I stopped texting him or calling him and I stayed away. That didn't stop me from thinking about him though--which I constantly did.
And that's exactly why I found myself going into the woods that night, at the lake. I thought that would make me think about him a little less. I thought that would lessen the craving inside me to see him, to see how he was doing.
It didn't help, however. If anything, when I reached there, I just found myself feeling lonelier than ever. Because he wasn't here with me. Not to forget the last time I was here, I had fallen through the ice and nearly drowned.
The lake was frozen again. So it didn't nearly scare me as much as it should have. Besides, I was too busy thinking about Alastair.
I sat there for the rest of the night, looking over at the icy blue lake and the faint reflection of the moon against it. I sat there thinking about all those times I came here with him, all those happy times when things had been easier. When I hadn't realized that I loved him.
How ironic it was though, that I was scared of falling in love and when I did fall in love, I messed things up as well. Perhaps I should have warned myself of this when I had made plans to visit Luce during my vacations. Perhaps I should have been more careful and not cared when Nadia had sent me with those files to room 221 at the sanitarium, to that one room that changed so much for me.
Maybe I could've stopped it from happening, only if I had been expecting it.
Falling hopelessly in love with someone was the last thing I expected when I came here.
And it was too late now.
I went back to my apartment somewhere around midnight and did the exact same thing the next night, and the night after that. Took a casual stroll in the woods, went by the lake and stayed there for the rest of the night.
It was helping in a way. Because when I got back home, I was way too tired to think about things and it took me much less time to fall asleep. It didn't, however, lessen the want inside me to see Alastair, see his beautiful grey eyes, or hear his voice. But it helped.
