Winter's Kiss (Summer Rain #2)

|| Prologue ||

    We danced into the sunset in times gone by, and I felt the heat of a Summer love fade into an empty chill. I had savoured every sunlit morning since, wishing he was lying beside me, but instead I felt only the sun reminding me of his absence. We loved with a light so bright it lit up the darkest corners yet in the light his presence-less shadow only seemed to taunt me—a reminder of the ghost who no longer walked at my side.

    That summer painted my life in vivid colours that never seemed to fade. No Summer could quite live up to the one that changed it all. I watched as the colours he painted around what once was grey, burn into an Autumn fire that he was not there to witness.

    He had planted a seed every time we danced together, a strength building inside of me that helped me to grow, but he was gone before I began to bloom like the spring of that first year. It left a sadness, a nostalgia for the things we never got the chance to do. He wanted to live, and I wanted to soar. It seemed logical that we should part, but when life seemed to sew us together in love, tearing away those threads was like losing a part of me.

    Time healed the scars of the severed ties, and soon they did not ache so often. I no longer waited for the phone which never rang or the text which never came. I no longer yearned for the memories of a Summer gone by. I no longer felt the sun kiss my skin in the same euphoric way, as though I could feel nothing of the heat which once left me breathless. I felt nothing anymore.

    I lived a life of melodies without a harmony and cadences for which ours was certainly imperfect. An ending which did not feel finished and I longed to find the next page of the music to at least find if it was destined to end truly. I heard the whispers in the chill which enveloped me, stilling my blood and depriving me of warmth, that he lived a life under spotlights and was fed with endless applause and thundering praise. I cried tears of snowflakes as the face that had once been engraved on the insides of my eyelids faded, blurring at the edges, disappearing over time.

    And just as hope had been covered by an endless Winter -- There he was, standing before me with such blinding clarity that struck me to my core. I forgot the light that he brought into my life when all I came to see around me was darkness. I forgot the touch when all I could feel was an icy numbness. I forgot the sound of his love when I could no longer hear it. Yet this warmth shone on my life which now had moulded with the changing season, no longer waiting for a Summer day's return the way I did before. 

   "Thaw my heart", I begged. "It always belonged to you."

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