Chapter 1
It's that feeling; you know the one you get when you're finally doing the right thing. It's finally the thing that will settle the uneasy qualms of your family and friends who gave you that speech for years. It was the same old story, the cliché of all clichés. The perfectionist who fell in love, lost it all, got it back, and did all over again on repeat with the glassy-eyed lost boy who knew her a little too well, too well for her own good apparently. Then again, it wasn't the same old story was it? Theirs was one for the books; it was a saga for sure, one that needed a proper ending. Didn't they deserve that much?
"You have to let me go," he said. She could've died right then and there. What? Let him go? Was he insane? It was as if she was just going through the motions for those few minutes, nodding along as he insisted that she had to do what he said. She knew what he was doing and she loved him that more for it. This was it, her rude awakening and she wanted nothing of it, but she had to listen to him.
"I will always love you."
A pang of sadness was coming over her, a wave of emotion that she couldn't have prepared herself for. She kept it in though, seeing Louis out of the corner of her eye.
"I will always love you, too." She saw it in his eyes. She loved that she had that power to see behind the façade that he always tried to keep up. He was trying to be brave for the both of them, that's love if she ever knew it.
She had to force herself to walk away or she would've stood there forever, her feet firmly on the ground staring at him.
Yep. Definitely some kind of outer body experience on her part, for sure.
The great loves are the crazy ones. She knew it. He knew it. If so, why did they let this happen to them? They were epic, they were tragic, and they were for all intensive purposes – a perfect match. They were Chuck and Blair. Blair and Chuck.
And they let themselves let it go.
Days later, she was in the same place, stuck in the same thought. She was on the brink of a new chapter. Off to Monaco for the summer, with only an ocean in between them, she wondered what would come of her, what would come of them.
She saw him for a minute or two before she left; it was like the air was sucked out of the room. She needed to come up for air. They just said a quick and simple goodbye before parting ways and yet their tension spoke volumes.
A journey back to bachelorhood for him and a royal wedding was on the agenda for her.
This was it, a clean break.