Constant and Changing (kryber)

Chapter 24: You Are My Destiny

"Because I took a break from you in the past." Amber's odd confession hung in the air between them. Krystal looked at her in confusion, but Amber looked down and offered no further explanation. With that little piece of information, Krystal tried to understand.

"How have you already taken a break from me?" Krystal asked. "We only started dating two months ago, and we've been together the whole time."

"Do you remember when I twisted my ankle a few years ago and went back to the US for six months to recover?"

Krystal nodded, remembering Amber's long absence following their "Nu ABO" promotions during mid 2010.

"I never told anyone," Amber admitted softly, "but my ankle healed in about two months."

"What? You said it was a bad sprain," Krystal slowly remembered. "You were still healing even after you came back to Korea."

"I know, it's called lying. Try to keep up," Amber said weakly, attempting a joke.

"But why did you lie?"

"Because after I went back to L.A. for a while, I suddenly felt like I could think again. When I was with you in Korea, I was happy and anxious and confused and a million different things all at once. I knew that I liked you a lot at the time, but I couldn't really understand yet that I was in love with you."

"Did I make things hard for you?" Krystal asked softly. She put a hand on either side of Amber's face and stroked her cheeks gently. "I'm sorry that I hurt you."

"I wasn't hurt," Amber said firmly, "And me being confused wasn't your fault either. It was because I wasn't able to understand my own feelings for you. Being away from you for a while helped to give me perspective. It gave me a chance to think about my feelings without having to deal with my heart exploding whenever I was with you, which was basically all the time."

Krystal wrestled with how to handle the information. Guilt was at the top of her list, along with regret. "It makes me feel really bad when you talk like that," Krystal admitted.

"Don't apologize, and don't even feel bad," Amber said, smiling gently at the remorseful girl. "I've never felt this way about anyone in my life, guy or girl. No one's ever made my heart race like this before, and I hope no one else ever does. But when I realized that I was in love with you, I... I didn't know what to do. It felt really weird being in love with a girl, for starters. And I was ashamed of that for a while. I know I'm a tomboy, but I had only ever had crushes on guys before you. And to have fallen in love with someone who was as beautiful and perfect as you, who was way out of my league, it felt surreal for the longest time."

A soft smile crosses Krystal's lips as Amber called her "perfect". It brought back a fond memory. "You said I was closest to your idea of a prefect women in one of our first interviews," she recalled fondly. "I can't believe I never realized how you felt all this time." She kissed Amber's forehead gently. "So what changed after 6 months? What made you come back to Korea?"

"More than anything else, time made me realize my love for you wasn't so strange. Even though it was weird to admit to myself that I loved you at first, each day that passed as I thought about it made it seem not so weird. And each day that passed without you made me miss you more and more to the point where I realized that I didn't need you to love me back to be happy. I just needed to be with you and to be able to see you smile. And so I came back."

"That's so sweet..." A humbled expression played on Krystal's face. Amber's heart was more pure than Krystal had ever imagined. She was so selfless and kind that, in many ways, Amber was too good to be true. Krystal was grateful to have earned Amber's love even though she felt that she didn't deserve it. "How were you able to fall in love with someone selfish and spoiled like me?"