He kept his restraint that day and didn't contact her.
That night, she waited. Her phone clutched too tight, breath uneven, heart racing with every phantom buzz that wasn't him. The memory of his possessive touch, his fingers claiming her, his voice low and dark with want still clung to her like smoke.
"How could he vanish after that?
How could he act as if none of it happened?"
Sleep refused her. She tossed, turned, pressed her face into her pillow to contain the ache building inside her chest.
Finally, unable to take the silence clawing at her mind, she called him.
His voice came through the speaker detached, heavy, cold: "I'm with my parents. I'll call you back."
But he didn't.
Something about the way he said it told her, like a bitter whisper in her bones that things were shifting.
Still, she waited. And waited.
Night swallowed her whole and spit her out with swollen eyes and a chest full of unanswered questions.
Sunday came. They never met on Sundays. But he always texted and kept her updated. Called her before he slept.
This time, nothing. His silence was no longer silence; it was abandonment wearing polite clothes.
By Monday morning, a truth she didn't want to admit settled like stone in her lungs.
He was pulling away.
And the realization broke her in a way even her past betrayals never had. Because this time, she had tasted what it felt like to be wanted… really wanted… by a man who shouldn't want her at all.
She didn't feel like facing him.
If he wanted space, she would give it even if it killed her pride, even if her absence didn't bruise him the way his silence bruised her.
She messaged him:
"I know what you're trying to do. Even if you were busy, you could have informed me. But you didn't. If that's what you want, let it be. I won't be coming."
He read it. But didn't reply. He assumed she'd come in the evening.
But she didn't.
He didn't ask anyone where she was. He didn't need to. He knew it was because of him.
His heart was restless and heavy.
He missed her - her laugh, her warmth, the softness of her leaning into him, the scent of her skin that lingered in his mind long after she walked away.
He wanted to text her. God, he wanted to
but forced himself not to.
Night punished him with no sleep. Morning punished him with memories he couldn't escape.
He wore the t-shirt he had on the day of their first kiss. Maybe intentionally, maybe because missing her had dug its claws too deep into him.
Finally, the dam inside him cracked. He texted her, urging her to come.
Her reply came. Formal, cold and distant.
A wall of words that scraped against his ribs with quiet devastation.
No emotion, no softness, no warmth.
Just… duty.
It hurt more than anger ever could.
He lay face-down, trying to sleep, but every breath tasted like regret.
When she arrived, the gym was quiet and the air between them heavier than the walls could contain.
He stirred the moment she entered the room. His eyes found her before his voice did.
He tried to smile, but it wavered-a flimsy mask over a heart in chaos.
She wasn't herself. Her head lowered, smiles brief and forced like sparks struggling to glow.
He tried to reach her with small talk, teasing, light touches of conversation but she didn't let him in.
She let him feel the distance he had created. Let him taste the fear she had drowned in.
Let him feel the ache he had abandoned her to face alone.
When the last person left, the world narrowed. His patience broke before his restraint did.
He kissed her neck, fingers tracing her back in the dark; light bites, soft marks of ownership he had no right to claim.
She responded in shivers, in goosebumps, in breaths she tried to steady. But this time, she held parts of herself back.
A fortress now stood where her openness once lived. And he felt it. The shift. Her wound.
His restraint frayed into pieces.
"I tried," he whispered, voice raw with exhaustion and longing.
"I tried to stay away. But I can't."
Her world tilted. Her walls trembled.
And her eyes.... God, her eyes were a storm of hurt and longing he had caused.
When she finally let her tears broke free, it destroyed him.
He held her, helpless, laughing in that hollow way people laugh when they don't know how to fix what they broke.
She looked at him with a truth he didn't deserve. Daring him to claim her, daring him to choose her, daring him to not wound her again.
And then his restraint shattered.
He pulled her in, lips crashing against hers, desperate, starving and undone.
The hunger wasn't lust. Not just lust. It was every sleepless night. Every swallowed confession. Every moment he had tried and failed to forget her.
She clung to him, breathing him in, but even in her surrender, her heartbreak pulsed like a bruise under her skin.
"I missed you," he admitted, voice cracking, confession ripped straight from the marrow of him.
"Don't ever think you don't matter. You matter too much… that's the problem."
His words sliced her open with their cruel tenderness.
She mattered… but not enough to be chosen. Not enough to be fought for. Not enough to be held in daylight.
Every word he offered was a soft blade.
"I love you… that's why I can't hurt you, that's why I keep my distance…
that's why I can't be yours completely."
Her heart squeezed at the contradiction. He loved her enough to break her, but not enough to stay.
She answered with truth, with strength
"I never asked for forever. Only the stolen pieces of you that you had already given freely."
He kissed her again, passion threaded with desperation, but she felt the fragility underneath.
The day ended with her in his arms, but not entirely. Part of her was elsewhere; guarded, hurt, burning quietly in the shadows of what she could never have.
Her heartbreak lingered in the way she held him-soft, but not trusting. Present, but not surrendered. Wanting, but no longer believing.
And he felt it. For the first time, he felt what it meant to lose her even while holding her.
A love that couldn't bloom. A desire that couldn't be named. A bond that lived in shadows and died in silence.
Through it all, he remained obsessed, powerless, helpless before the storm that was her: his forbidden, luminous, heartbreak-carved princess.