Broken Strings

C H A P T E R S E V E N T E E N

And he took in every little detail about her.

If it was the last time he was going to see her, he would remember every bit of it.

The light purple shirt, it was her favorite color. Her jeans were loose, proof of the weight she had lost. Her hair was pulled up into a ponytail. Her face was pale and her eyes were tired, both clearly hinting at how sick she was and how much she had suffered.

He rubbed his eyes, refusing to cry. He was trying to be strong for her. He was trying to give her hope. He was trying to give her hope to fight.

But he was breaking on the inside. He couldn't help it.

He just couldn't. How could he?

After all, he was watching the girl he had loved, still loved, always would love, fade and dull right before his very eyes.

He watched as she stared at her hands, heavy teardrops falling onto her hands. She wiped her tears and rubbed her nose, still refusing to look at him.

And he ran a hand over his face and looked back down on the floor, his own regrets hurting him.

And he wished he had fought harder for her. He wished he had fought harder for her to give him a second chance. A second chance to love her, a second chance to show her how much he still fucking loved her.

But she had moved on. She had been happy.

And he couldn't take that away from her.

He couldn't. Because he had let her go so she could be happy. So she could be happy and she could find someone better.

And she had. She had been happy and she had found better.

Sebastian Knight had never thought that some twenty years later he would be sitting here, crying over the girl he had let slip away from his grasp years ago.

And letting her go was the one mistake tearing him apart.

Because he still did wonder about it. He did wonder how life would've been like if she had been his. How life would have been like if he hadn't left her and cut her out of his life. How life would have been like if he had fought for her, or at least begged for a second chance.

But she had moved on. And so had he.

Exactly one semester after they had broken up, he had dropped out of college. It just wasn't his thing. And he just wanted a break from everything. Including her.

Slowly, her calls stopped coming. There were no more voicemails, there were no more texts. There was no more begging for him to answer her. There was no more begging for him to come back.

She had moved on.

And so had he.

And he didn't meet her again until a year after when he enrolled again. And he had seen her near the science building and then asked her to join him for some coffee.

And he didn't realize how much he had missed her until then.

It was her last year and she was already getting accepted into Medical School.

She was seeing someone else. And they had already moved in together. They had been living together for a while. And he guessed they would soon be getting married. Or so he had heard.

She was happy, happy with someone else. But he was happy for her. Because she was happy.

And so he moved on. There were a few girls he dated. And he was even serious about one of them. But he just wasn't ready to be actually tied down yet.