All I wanted was to merge with the same person who had broken me, thinking that he was the only one who could fill in all the little crevices making me feel whole again.

As I observed him sitting there, a heavy look in his eyes, I longed to reach behind that barrier and pull out the warm, sensitive, passionate man I knew was trapped inside. There was nothing worse than feeling someone’s potential.

She felt a wave of fury overtake her as she looked at him standing there naked. She loved him with everything she had, but the love ripped her heart right out.

She averted his eyes, but not before he recognized the pain in them, a tormented and languished gaze, a stare preserved for people who were able to love deeply enough that they could be destroyed by it. For a moment, he knew that gaze intimately, remembering it from a time long gone. The ache of a shattered belief once known. He knew that feeling.