Ten Years Ago
loved her too much to touch her.
That was the truth he never spoke aloud.
She crossed the school's hallway every morning at exactly 8:12am, sunlight catching in her hair like it belonged there.
She always carried the same leather bag. Always walked with her friends. Always looked so carefree and composed.
And every day, he watched.
Not because he wanted to own her.
Not because he believed she belonged to him.
But because loving her felt like breathing — unavoidable, quiet, and dangerously necessary.
He knew what lived inside him.
The intensity.
The depth.
The way his thoughts wrapped around her until she became the centre of everything he never dared admit.
If he spoke to her, he wouldn't want a piece of her.
He would want all of her.
And that terrified him.
So he stayed in the shadows of lecture halls. In the corners of cafés and libraries. In the background of her life.
He noticed the way she bit her lip when she read. The way she laughed softly, the way her eyes looked like spikes whenever she encountered a bully. The way she sometimes stared into nothing, like she was an olympic game.
And he stood still — not because he didn't want to claim her…
but because he knew he would never love her lightly.
He was not built for casual affection.
He was built for devotion.
For ruin.
For forever.
And she deserved more than a man who loved too deeply to be gentle.
So he chose distance.
Every day, he told himself he would speak to her tomorrow.
Every night, he promised himself he was doing the right thing.
Until tomorrow ran out.
She graduated.
She disappeared.
And he was left with a love that had never been spoken — but had lived inside him like a permanent storm.
Ten years later, he would see her again.
And she would no longer be the girl in the sunlight.
She would be the woman who carried the same quiet storm he had always recognized.
And this time…
He wouldn't survive loving her from a distance.