She wanted to die.
He wanted to live.
•••
A hand grabbed onto my wrist, yanking me back just as the train rushed past, before I'd even had time to comprehend whether or not I'd carry out the action. I stumbled back into the person's chest, my hear...
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To be loved.
I think that was all we really wanted. To have someone see us and want us and need us and accept us - to be valued for simply being who we were.
It was the very thing I despised after having seen the demise it lead Romeo and Juliet to, hating the thought of being consumed by something to the extent where you found purpose solely in the other person. I had never wanted to love or be loved in the way Romeo and Juliet loved one another, but Fate was intent on making me empathise with the couple that Romeo and I seemed to share circumstances with.
Being with Romeo didn't feel like the supposed love that Romeo and Juliet had shared, though: it didn't feel like I lost who I was to stay with him. Rather, I felt as though I was finding myself the more I allowed myself to fall; like I was discovering how to feel without the limitations of being defined by my pain. I was still me and he was still him, but the two of us could also be who we were learning to be together.
My thoughts were scurrying at a taunting pace while Romeo stood before me, unable to calm the palpitations of my heart as the very air around us teemed with the myriads of truths that had been revealed. To be loved was virtually unimaginable when I had barely thought I would be alive twenty-four hours ago, but it wasn't the actual premise of being loved that left me so speechless, or the transient time we had gotten to spend together.
It was that I hadn't responded – I had barely even processed his words, let alone figured out how to verbalise the feeling of the floor falling out from underneath my feet in the most blissful way – and Romeo seemed completely unfazed by my lack of response.
Perhaps he just knew, with or without my confirmation.
Maybe he could read it in my eyes: in the way I hadn't taken my attention off his dark brown gaze, and how I was yet to refuse his absurd request, and how each passing second presented an opportunity for me to do or say anything to suggest otherwise, yet I didn't take it.
"You want us to run away together?" I repeated at last, a loose smile across my lips despite trying to force myself to contemplate the severity of the situation. "What about Theo, and your parents, and my parents..."
My best friend had just had his heart broken, yet my feet seemed to fail me as I remained standing here before Romeo, unable to act on the futile words that lacked any vigour. The sane part of me knew to shut this down immediately; to tell Romeo it was unreasonable and that we ought to try and patch things up with Theo, and face our parents who were probably questioning our whereabouts at this very second.
It was unimaginable to fathom how crushed Theo might be feeling, but ultimately I knew that there truly was nothing more to say to him. I could only apologise so many times, and perhaps time would be the only healer for him until eventually he would learn to be okay with Fate's interference in our lives.
"They are all still going to be here when we get back, though," Romeo pointed out, reaching to hold my other hand as though he was intent on crumbling my resistance. "I'm not saying I want to completely avoid our problems, Cass, but can we just face them a little later?"
