The stag hunt with the scarlet heart

Chapter 22 "Everyone has a sorrow"

I have something to say, I have to tell you what's on my mind, but first I have to explain some things to you so that you might understand me. A long... a long time ago I understood that life is not only about today, when I was young I understood time can make you forget the pain I went through was not the biggest pain and the happiness you feel isn't the biggest of it, at the end of the day you are those memories that come with a stomach ache and tears in your eyes. They hurt you and they make you mature. The important thing is not to forget that everyone has a sorrow.

Now you know it, but here is my secret... I feel like I never knew how to put this pain somewhere that would work, that I never took it and exploited it, that I let it consume me, and I've spent my whole life hiding my heart, I called him home, and he was. The sad reality is that he's not anymore, I've let the pain rain inside me forever, I'm hiding from that love, I'm looking for that love, I've been looking for him.

I'll never find it; don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't think I can fall in love. I know I can, I can feel, and that's the fucking problem...sometimes I feel too much. But at this point, you can see it and accept it, as I did a long time ago. What I had with Atlas I will never have again, he was more than just a touch and his lips made my heart explode, he was so much more. It's the heart of the deer that I will always carry within me, but kissing Callum, seeing his eyes when we were parting, the flames in them. They made me see beyond what I am living.

His lips on mine, the looks he has been giving me for weeks, and his skin touching mine... it took me a few seconds to remember those moments. My psyche has been weakened over time by a rollercoaster of ups and downs such as acceptance, love, hope, rejection, contempt, violence, and abandonment. As often as I told myself in the mirror that good hair, a perfect face, and perfectly toned muscles don't define me, I was often paralyzed by my mother's words, whispered or shouted directly into my ears to imprint the need and anguish she felt every time she saw my face. Just because I've lost hope... lost the desire to fall in love, doesn't mean I'm immune to joy or someone desperately wanting me, I knew all of this when I walked into the house.

Finding Ryan in my room almost made me piss myself, the black-haired man sitting on my windowsill giving me his back and my room fucking cold, like a horror movie.

I need a break, but it seems like I'm not going to get one.

"I saw you and Callum." He affirms without looking at me.

"You saw us?" I ask, confused, more because of his tone than anything else.

"You looked happy. I haven't heard your laugh in years. The real one." There's something strange in your voice, apart from the surprise... there's something else, and I'm afraid to know what it is.

"You haven't heard my laugh in years?" I don't know if my mind is going too slow, or he's doing it too fast.

"Bonita, repeat something different from what I said, it's called dialog." He says ironically, and I giggle, my face hurts. "You're glowing, Saffron."

I don't feel ready for this conversation, this morning the only thing I was ready for was to take off that damn boot, not to fall down the rabbit hole and enter this world where it looks like everyone has smoked a psychedelic joint... or I did, I walk slowly, buying myself time to answer him, I freeze when I see myself reflected in the window. The person I see in the mirror isn't me, or rather I don't recognize myself, it's Callum; I'm changing. He made me admit things I would never have admitted, even at gunpoint.

"Ryan, Atlas still hurts." The answer we both needed.

"It's okay to hold on to him. It's okay if you never move on. It's okay if you never find that kind of love again because Atlas was the one and no one else will ever come close." My eyes fill with tears at the truth in his words. "Take wise advice from someone who knows... threesomes don't work. If your heart can't let him go, then you will take him with you and even if he's dead and no one can see him... they will feel him". He says sadly. The only man he ever fell in love with lost someone. And he couldn't let that someone go. That's the look he saw in his eyes before he left him.