I love her.
It didn't come in words. It came in a flash, a vision so appealing and beautiful it took his breath. Blinded momentarily by a glint of sunlight his mind had taken him somewhere else. Given him a vision of somewhere else. Where it took him was her. Always her. And he knew; it would never be anyone else but her.
His sight returned and he blinked as the scene of the busy street returned. He paused, confused. Revelations weren't supposed to happen so quickly, they weren't supposed to appear out of nowhere. Not there one minute, the next taking his life down a path he had never contemplated.
His whole life had been about knowledge; how much he could hold, how much he could process, how much he could produce. He felt himself instantly trying to deny, to explain away, to hide this new truth as far out of his sight as he could. But he knew before he even tried that he would fail.
Struggling against something so huge was like trying to reverse the tides. It was gravity, it was inevitability and there was only so long you could deny it.
There was only one way his life wouldn't go down this new path he saw opening up before him like a hidden doorway. One that only he could see, and one only he could go through. Like a picture in a magic eye drawing all he had to do was change his perception and out of the chaos there appeared as if from nowhere an image, complete and beautiful. Only one thing would return him back to the familiar life he knew.
Her rejection.
It seemed so certain to him. She had given it to him without hesitation in the past. Why would she change her mind this time? There was nothing more he could say to her. He felt certain he would receive her dismissal as he had at every attempt he had made to reach for her.
And yet, why didn't it comfort him? To know that he would soon be returned to his life as it was now.
He sighed, because…
He loved her.
And as scary as that was. The life he saw before him, the one that held her, was beautiful.