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He sighed loudly when she didn’t even smile. “Oh, man! At least pretend to smile,” he said.
“Your jokes are as sad as you are, Damien,” she said, sniffling.
After hearing Lena say one night that she used to write and that writing was one of the things she loved most, he looked over the notebook he had given her months before. He thought that writing would help her get over what she had been through, so he hurried to a store and purchased her a nice notebook and a pen right away. Sadly, it stayed empty for days until one day, she eventually took up the pen. He opened the journal quietly on a cloudy morning. But after reading the one page she had written in her beautiful handwriting, he didn’t know if he should be happy that she was finally doing what she loved or cry because the words showed how much pain she was in.
Damien held Lena and breathed out, hoping to take some of her agony away. “Your baby would hate to see you crying like this, no matter where they are right now.”
“I know.” Lena shook in his arms, and her throat felt like it was closing up. Damien could see she was getting herself together by the way her shoulders straightened and the long, quivering breath she took.
She was suppressing all the agony and battling them until she was too tired to resist anymore.
The open window let in a very chilly wind that made her shudder. The wind made her hair dance, which showed a deep scar. It started at the edge of her jaw and made a long line that went down her neck and vanished. This scar was one of the things that reminded her of that night. There were a lot more of them, but they were buried deep in her heart, still bleeding, still suffering, and very much permanent.
Kellen didn’t get stiff with worry on his journey back to his flat because the road was congested or because his flight was delayed and his first appointment with the possible purchasers was pushed back.
It was how he felt in his chest.
The instant he stepped out of the airport and into this little but beautiful city, the breeze around him seemed filled with power.
Velden.
He could only think of the one person he didn’t want to when he looked at the city’s splendor.
Lena.
She loved nature and would have liked to relax by the various lakes and parks he saw while traveling.
His hands tightened.
A memory came before his eyes: Lena in the passenger seat with a calm grin on her lips, one of her hands stretched out the rolled-down window.   She had closed her eyes for a minute as if attempting to take in the moment’s essence. She looked so heavenly. He was enchanted by her.
Kellen grumbled and shook his head. He was thinking about her again, but the memory faded, and bitter ones took its place. He quickly pulled up his window and chased her away. He chanted over and over in his head like a bleeding spell, reminding himself of how terrible she was, how she had cheated on him, and how she had betrayed him. So far, it has just made him more angry. Every day, this pain inside him would only get worse and worse. The goal of forgetting her was nothing near being reached.
Standing against a tsunami and yet being alive is like forgetting love.
Kellen felt like he was on fire, and nothing could stop this hellfire inside him until he was dead.
His phone rang out of the blue, waking him up from the black depths of his imagination. He raked one hand through his hair in annoyance after quickly looking at the name on the screen. He was trying to forget someone, but this woman kept contacting him all the time, which made him quite angry. It was hard to deal with Selene’s moaning and nagging while trying to be friends with her.
At first, he thought Selene would help him forget Lena. But he always ended up comparing the two when he was with her. And now, after that one night of drinking and being stupid with her, the tabloids were following his love life, and her father wanted to see him for some reason. Kellen was just one inch away from doing something really bad. He didn’t even worry about what would happen as a result of those dramatic acts these days.
He had lost his mind and didn’t care anymore.
It may be because he felt dead within every second.
He knew he was colder than he had been before Lena. It was nearly too much to handle.
He was used to being hurt by the games and lies of everyone around him. But Lena made that pain too much to bear. He should have known better. She had blinded him with her kindness, hopes, aspirations, and brightness, but he should have realized that no one in the real world was so innocent. There was gloom in everyone. His parents had, as they cheated on each other and split up not long after.
Lena was the same. Finally, it was proven. And with that, the single thing that made him happy was suddenly gone.
He loathed everything and everyone in his life at that point. He was like a black hole, and all the hate and pain took over his life.
******
Lena scooped up the complete pile by folding the next cardigan and placing it on top of the others. Now, it was so big that it blocked most of her vision, making it hard for her to see where she was going. Lena didn’t really mind that, though. She was quite familiar with every part of the store. She could even go around here and perform all the jobs without looking.
But there was only one thing that made it hard for her to stroll about without seeing: the angry shop manager, Lola.
Lola, the human bulldozer, was the most clumsy person ever.
Lena screamed in amazement, “Aaaaahhh…” when Lola dashed into her out of nowhere. All of the cardigans she was holding flew away in separate directions.
Lola was also screaming as they both fell into a rack, and the handbags that were on it fell down around them and hit them on the heads.
“What the hell, Lola?” Lena said as she pushed herself up to sit up.
Lola probably was struck too severely. She sat up next to Lena on the tiled floor and groaned in pain. “Oh, Lena, I think that new purse is made of rock.”
Lena rolled her eyes. She couldn’t help but smile. “I would have told you to be careful where you were going,” she remarked, rising up and looking about at the chaos of cardigans and handbags on the floor. “But since I’ve already told you that a few hundred times, I would just ignore the whole thing.”
After moaning some more, Lola sighed and climbed in to help Lena gather everything up and put it back in its proper place. “I have this gut feeling, Lena, that someone put a voodoo spell on me. Otherwise, why do I keep tripping over things, running into people, and making things fly around? Do you get what I’m saying?”
Lena grinned and rolled her eyes again.