It's weird how you can be fully expectant and prepared for something bad to happen...yet when it happens, it still hurts just as much as if you weren't expecting it at all…
Resting his heavy head against the cold windows of the taxicab, a midnight rain blurring and streaking the views of a still-busy New York City, Shawn tried to ease his growing pain by telling himself that he had seen this coming. He had seen this coming: the doubt in her eyes, the hesitancy in her rigid kiss, and the uneasy tone of her body language had more than prepared him for this moment.
However, he had been so busy readying himself for her actual actions that he had ignored preparing himself for the pain in the aftermath.
As his eyes squeezed shut and his fingers gripped his face in shame and anger, Shawn thought with a sigh, Gosh, where did I go wrong…
Was it his mistake by letting her spend a year apart from him in Europe? Or, despite his willingness and efforts to maintain connection, did he need to try even harder in communicating with her? Or maybe it wasn't anything that he could have done…
On the other side of NYC, the twilight downpour was drenching Angela and her already-dampened cheeks as she sat on the balcony of her hotel room. Both regretful tears and drops of rain slipped through her fingers, her palms muffling her shattered sobs as she shook with both emotions and chills from the cold rain.
Just like Shawn, she couldn't believe what had just happened. She was still so in love with the man, but sudden doubts and blinding fears had begun to dissolve her dreams of one day changing her name to Mrs. Shawn Hunter. The frilly, white wedding dress...slow, breathless kiss at the altar...the long-awaited honeymoon in Europe as she showed her man where she had walked: it was only part of her dreams, and unfortunately, Angela was wide-awake now.
Whatever it was that had caused them to break apart had them both feeling irreparable-and nowhere near recovery.