The Years Between Us

There are children who grow up believing the world is exactly what they see.

She grew up believing the world was whatever she chose to see.

The apartment she lived in stood on the fourth floor of a building that had long forgotten what it meant to be new. Its walls carried cracks that no one bothered to repair, the paint peeled away a little more every summer, and the staircase always smelled faintly of damp concrete after the rain. To anyone else, it was just another ordinary building.

To her, it held a window.

A small one.

Just large enough for a little girl to rest her chin on the sill and watch a world that seemed kinder than the one behind her.

Every morning, before putting on her school uniform, she would push that window open.

The first thing she looked at was never the sky.

She looked down.

The road below glittered.

Thousands of tiny silver and golden pieces caught the morning sun and shimmered as though someone had scattered treasure across the street. From four floors above they looked magical, dancing every time the wind stirred.

She never questioned what they were.

She simply smiled at them.

Years later she would learn that they were nothing more than discarded tobacco sachets, crushed beneath passing feet and carried around by the breeze.

It amused her.

Not because she had been wrong.

But because even after knowing the truth, she couldn't remember them as anything other than gold.

Perhaps that was the first thing life taught her without meaning to.

Sometimes beauty has very little to do with what lies before our eyes.

It has everything to do with the heart that is looking.

When evening arrived, the same window became a different world.

The glitter disappeared.

The city dimmed.

She would tilt her head upward until buildings gave way to sky, waiting for the first star to appear. It never disappointed her. One by one they arrived, patiently, followed by the moon that always seemed far too calm for a world that made so much noise.

She liked to imagine the moon knew every child who looked for it.

So every night she looked back.

Inside the apartment, another evening unfolded.

Voices travelled through walls long before footsteps did.

Some nights began with silence so heavy it made breathing difficult. Other nights began with shouting that echoed through every room before dinner had even been served. She learnt very young that arguments have a rhythm of their own. First came the raised voices, then the sound of something hitting the floor, then the silence that somehow hurt the most.

She stopped asking why.

Children who ask too many questions eventually learn that answers are not always waiting for them.

Sometimes they are waiting for them to stop asking.

She watched her mother carefully.

Not openly.

Just enough to notice the bruises hidden beneath sleeves, the smile reserved for neighbours, the tiredness that settled in her eyes after everyone else had gone to bed.

Some mornings, while brushing her own hair, she would notice faint pink marks across her arms.

She never spoke about those either.

There are homes where love is spoken loudly.

There are homes where survival learns to whisper.

She belonged to the second.

Yet something inside her refused to become bitter.

She still smiled at butterflies.

She still slowed down to watch rain collect on leaves.

She still believed sunsets were beautiful even if no one else stopped to look.

The world kept offering her reasons to stop believing in gentle things.

She quietly refused every one of them.

School became a place she passed through rather than belonged to.

She wasn't lonely because no one spoke to her.

She was lonely because friendship asks for time, and time was something she was never allowed to own.

Birthday parties became excuses she couldn't attend.

Evening outings ended before they were ever planned.

If she asked to stay back after school, the answer travelled home before she did, and home always answered with another argument.

Eventually she stopped asking.

People assumed she preferred being alone.

The truth was simpler.

She was protecting herself from becoming someone people would eventually stop inviting.

It hurt less to leave before anyone else had the chance to.

The journey between school and home slowly became her favourite part of the day.

It belonged to no one.

Not to school.

Not to home.

Just to her.

She watched flower vendors arranging marigolds into neat circles of yellow, tea shops filling the air with the smell of ginger and cardamom, old men reading newspapers outside tiny stores, children racing each other through narrow lanes, and stray dogs sleeping as though the world had never frightened them.

She noticed everything.

Not because she had nowhere to go.

Because she was quietly collecting reasons to believe life was still beautiful.

That habit would stay with her long after childhood ended.

And perhaps that is why, when everyone else saw litter on the road, she continued seeing gold.

Perfect. Let's continue in the same voice. We'll let the story breathe. We won't rush to him. The reader must first know her, so that when he arrives, they understand why he changes everything.

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Chapter One (Continued)

The tuition centre was the only place that existed between two worlds.

One world waited for her at home, where every evening carried the possibility of another argument. The other waited in school, where she learnt formulas, memorised answers and quietly occupied the last few benches without ever becoming part of anyone's story.

The tuition centre belonged to neither.

It was simply an hour where nobody expected anything from her except to learn.

She liked that.

The building itself wasn't particularly beautiful. The classrooms were small, the ceiling fans complained more than they worked, and the blackboard was so old that every lesson left behind a faint ghost of the one before it. Yet, for reasons she could never explain, she looked forward to going there every day.

Perhaps because, for those few hours, nobody knew what her evenings looked like.

She was just another student carrying a notebook.

Nothing more.

Nothing less.

She rarely spoke unless someone asked her a question. Even then, her answers were short, almost apologetic, as though she feared taking up too much space. She sat near the window whenever it was empty, not because she wanted the breeze, but because looking outside had always been easier than looking at people.

There was a strange comfort in watching the world without being noticed by it.

He studied there too.

He was older than she was by a couple of years, and unlike her, he never entered a room unnoticed. Conversations seemed to rearrange themselves around him. Someone would call out his name from across the corridor, another would ask him to explain a problem, and before long there would be a small circle of people laughing at something he had said.

She never looked at him for long.

Not because she was shy.

Because she had no reason to.

From where she sat, he was simply someone who seemed good at everything. He answered questions without hesitation, remembered things effortlessly and smiled as though life had never given him a reason not to.

She noticed these things the way she noticed rain on leaves or birds resting on electric wires.

Quietly.

Without trying to own the moment.

One evening, while the teacher was solving a problem on the board, laughter rose from the back of the classroom. She looked up instinctively.

He was smiling.

Not loudly.

Not the kind of smile that demanded attention.

Just enough for a small dimple to appear on his cheek.

It lasted only a second before he turned back towards the board.

She lowered her eyes again.

It wasn't the dimple she remembered.

It was the ease with which he smiled.

She had never met someone whose happiness seemed so uncomplicated.

For the next few weeks, nothing changed.

He remained one among many faces she saw every evening.

She remained invisible, exactly as she preferred.

Life continued with its familiar rhythm.

Then one afternoon, on the way home from school, something happened that neither of them had planned.

The school bus crawled through traffic as lazily as it did every day. She rested her forehead against the cool glass and allowed her thoughts to wander. The roads outside had become familiar enough that she no longer looked at them. She watched them the way one watches rain from a window—not really seeing, only feeling.

A movement beside the bus caught her attention.

Someone was cycling.

The bicycle stayed beside the bus longer than anyone else's usually did.

She turned.

It was him.

The wind kept brushing his hair away from his forehead. He looked up, saw her looking at him and smiled. The same dimple appeared. Only this time she noticed something she hadn't before,a tiny beauty spot beside his lips that somehow made his smile look even gentler.

For a moment, neither of them looked away.

She did the only thing her heart knew.

She disappeared.

Almost instinctively, she slid down beneath the window until she was hidden behind the seat in front of her.

The girl sitting beside her looked confused.

She didn't explain.

She wasn't sure herself.

Was she hiding because she had been staring at him?

Or because he had caught her?

She waited for a few seconds before cautiously lifting herself back up.

He was still there.

Still cycling beside the bus.

Still smiling.

He didn't wave.

He didn't try to get her attention.

He simply stayed there, matching the speed of the bus as though the road had nowhere else it needed him to be.

Every time she looked, he was already looking.

 When the bus finally reached the school gate, he slowed down. He lifted his hand in a small wave, turned his bicycle around and disappeared into the afternoon traffic.

The bus came to a halt.

Children rushed out.

Teachers called after them.

The world continued exactly as it always had.

Only she hadn't.

That evening, for the first time, she reached the tuition centre hoping someone would already be there.

He was.

Standing near the entrance, surrounded by the usual crowd.

Someone was borrowing notes from him. Another was laughing at a story he was telling. A younger student interrupted to ask a doubt, and he answered without making the boy feel foolish.

She watched from a distance.

There was something unusual about him.

It wasn't that people liked him.

People like many things.

They liked him because he liked them first.

He had the kind of warmth that never announced itself. It quietly reached people before he did.

She could also see that life had been generous to him.

His clothes always fit well.

His watch looked expensive.

The ease with which he carried himself spoke of a childhood where love had never been rationed.

Yet none of it had hardened him.

Privilege had given him comfort.

It hadn't taken away his kindness.

He noticed her standing near the staircase.

Their eyes met.

He smiled.

Then, without any hesitation, he walked towards her.

"Hi."

She looked around instinctively, wondering if there was someone behind her.

"There isn't," he laughed softly. "I'm talking to you."

She looked back at him, unsure whether to smile or apologise.

"I've wanted to tell you something for a few days."

She waited.

"I like you."

She blinked.

He smiled, almost amused by how seriously she was taking the moment.

"I think..."

He paused.

"...we should like each other."

She had imagined hundreds of conversations in her head over the years.

None of them had prepared her for this one.

Words abandoned her completely.

All she managed was a quiet,

"Aha..."

He laughed.

Not because her answer was funny.

Because it was so perfectly her.

Time has a quiet way of moving. It doesn't announce itself, it simply keeps walking, and before we realise it, the classrooms we once hurried into become memories, uniforms disappear into wardrobes that are never opened again, and the roads we travelled every evening begin leading us somewhere new. The tuition centre slowly became a chapter they had finished without noticing. School came to an end, college began, and while she was still learning who she wanted to become, he had already stepped into the working world.

Life changed around them, but never between them.

The railway station still knew their footsteps. The road from the station to her home remained their favourite part of the day. It wasn't because there was anything extraordinary about those streets. There wasn't. There were small shops, familiar faces, a restaurant they visited far too often, and roads they could have walked with their eyes closed. Yet those streets quietly held the happiest conversations of her life. They spoke about everything that crossed their minds. Some evenings they discussed dreams that seemed impossibly far away, some evenings they argued over films, and on others they laughed over things that would make no sense the following day. The conversations never needed a destination. They simply wandered, just like they did.

By then, he had become the first person she wanted to tell everything to. If she saw something beautiful, she wanted him to see it too. If something upset her, it somehow became lighter after speaking to him. She never told him this, but somewhere along the way he had become the safest place her heart had ever known. She had spent most of her life searching for somewhere that felt like home, only to realise that home was sometimes a person.

His first job became her celebration too. She still remembered the excitement with which he had called her, speaking so quickly that his sentences almost collided with each other. She had never been happier listening to someone else's achievement. Watching him grow felt strangely personal, as though every milestone he crossed quietly became one she celebrated too.

A few weeks later, he asked her to meet him after work. She waited outside the building where he worked, watching people leave in neatly ironed shirts, talking about meetings, deadlines and tomorrow's plans. She had never been inside a corporate office before, and everything about that world looked unfamiliar. Then she saw him walking towards her with the same unhurried smile that had first caught her attention years ago.

"I want to take you somewhere," he said.

She simply followed.

A few minutes later they stopped outside Barista.

She stood looking at the glass doors for a moment. Until then, coffee had always meant the steel tumbler waiting for her at home every morning. A café belonged to another world, one she had only seen through advertisements and passing glances. The warm lights, the smell of freshly brewed coffee, the quiet conversations around them—it all felt new.

He noticed her hesitation without making her feel conscious about it. He picked something for both of them, found a corner table and began talking as though they had done this a hundred times before. She hardly remembered what they ordered. Years later she wouldn't remember the taste either. What remained with her was the feeling of sitting across from him, quietly taking in a world she had never known before. Some places stay with us not because they are beautiful, but because of the person who first held our hand while introducing us to them.

Their lives continued to grow around each other. His work became more demanding, her college days became busier, but evenings still belonged to them. They still walked from the railway station, still stopped at the little restaurant near the corner whenever they were hungry, still bought whatever caught their attention at the bakery, and still found endless things to speak about. It amazed her how two people could meet almost every day and still never run out of conversations.

One evening, while they were sharing dinner at their usual restaurant, he suddenly laughed to himself.

"What happened?" she asked.

"I just remembered something."

"What?"

"The day I told you I liked you."

She smiled.

"I wasn't actually supposed to."

She looked at him, puzzled.

"Our mutual friend liked you. He kept asking me to tell you, but I never did. The day I came to speak to you, I had rehearsed the whole sentence in my head. I was supposed to say, 'He likes you.'"

He paused, smiling at the memory.

"But the moment I stood in front of you, I forgot I was carrying someone else's words."

"And?"

"I said mine instead."

She laughed, but inside her heart another thought quietly bloomed.

Of all the things he had forgotten in his life, she silently thanked fate for making that one sentence disappear.

Time was kind to him. Every passing year seemed to make him more confident, more accomplished and even more handsome than before. People noticed it too. One afternoon a mutual friend looked at her and said with complete honesty, "He's becoming so good-looking. I don't think he'll stay with you for long."

The words lingered with her for a while, not because she believed them, but because she understood why someone would say them. He carried himself with a confidence that came from being deeply loved all his life. His parents celebrated every little achievement of his, and she loved watching that. Every promotion, every success, every new opportunity filled their home with pride. She would often sit quietly, listening to him speak about work, smiling more than she spoke. She never envied the family he had. She simply felt grateful that someone she loved had grown up surrounded by so much affection.

At home, things had become harder. Her parents had learnt about them. Restrictions slowly replaced freedom. Questions became arguments, and arguments became silence. Her mother even met him once and asked him to stay away from her. He listened with respect, but he never stepped back. He never argued with her parents, never raised his voice, never tried to prove anything. He simply continued to stand beside her with the same quiet certainty he always had.

One evening her father looked at her and said, "Wait. One day he'll leave you."

She heard him.

She simply didn't believe him.

Because every evening, when she stepped out of the railway station, he was already there waiting.

And to her, that was all the proof she needed. I think this chapter should become quieter than everything before it. Up until now, love has been a place of comfort. Here, the reader should feel that comfort disappear almost without warning. I also kept in mind what you asked—continuous prose, no repeated emotions, no one-line paragraphs, and letting the reader feel instead of telling them what to feel.

Life had settled into a rhythm so familiar that she had stopped imagining it could ever be different. The evening walks, hurried dinners at their favourite restaurant, conversations that stretched far beyond what the clock allowed, his growing career, her college days—everything seemed to move together, quietly finding its place. She had begun to believe that this was how life would always be. Not perfect, but certain.

Then, one afternoon, her phone rang.

It was him.

She answered with the same ease with which she answered every one of his calls, expecting another ordinary conversation, another story from work, another reason to laugh. Instead, there was silence. Not the comfortable silence they had grown used to sharing, but one that felt unfamiliar, as though he was searching for words he had never imagined he would have to say.

When he finally spoke, his voice startled her. She had known his laughter better than anyone, his excitement, his impatience, the way he spoke too quickly whenever he was happy. This voice belonged to none of those versions of him. It was low, almost fragile.

"I'm not their son."

For a moment she didn't understand.

"What?"

"I'm not my parents' son."

She smiled instinctively, convinced he was saying something impossible.

"What are you talking about? You look exactly like your mother. You're her carbon copy."

She waited for him to laugh.

He didn't.

A few seconds later, the call ended.

She remained looking at the phone, replaying those few words again and again, trying to understand what had happened. It felt incomplete, like a page torn out of the middle of a book. The next time they met, she watched him carefully. He smiled, teased her, spoke about work, laughed at the same little things that usually made him laugh. Whatever had weighed on him that afternoon had disappeared from his face. She wanted to ask him about the call, but every time she tried, something inside her stopped her. Perhaps he would speak when he was ready. She decided not to force open a door he had closed himself.

Days passed.

Life returned to what it had always been.

Or at least, it appeared to.

Then came another evening that looked exactly like every other evening.

She met him expecting another walk home. The roads were familiar, the traffic impatient as always, people crossed the street carrying bags of vegetables, children chased each other along the pavement, and somewhere in the distance a train announced its arrival. Nothing in the world suggested that this day would become different from the hundreds they had already lived together.

He stood quietly for a while before looking at her.

She had seen that look only once before.

The day he had said, "I like you."

This time, the words that followed belonged to another life.

"I don't think we should be together anymore."

She heard him.

She simply couldn't understand him.

There are moments when the mind refuses to accept what the ears have already heard. She waited for another sentence, another explanation, something that would place those words back where they belonged. None came.

He had once walked into her life without asking for permission.

Now he seemed to be walking out of it just as quietly.

She wanted to stop him.

She wanted to ask what had changed.

She wanted to remind him of every evening they had walked together, every conversation they had left unfinished because tomorrow was waiting.

But no words arrived.

She stood there long after he had gone, watching the crowd slowly swallow the only person she had ever learnt to depend on.

When she finally began walking home, she realised she had nowhere else to go.

For years, every difficult day had ended with him. If something hurt, she waited until evening because she knew she would see him. If life became unbearable, she carried it until their walk from the railway station. Somehow, by the time she reached home again, the weight had always become lighter.

That evening there was no one waiting to take it from her.

By the time she reached home, the front door was already open. The familiar voices escaped into the corridor before she stepped inside. They had always been there, but she hadn't really heard them for years. Somewhere between his phone calls, their evening walks and the certainty that he would be waiting for her tomorrow, the noise at home had slowly faded into the background. It had never disappeared. His presence had simply become louder than it.

Tonight, it returned.

Every raised voice reached her.

Every accusation echoed through the rooms.

Every slammed door sounded exactly the way it had when she was a little girl standing at the window, searching for pieces of gold among discarded tobacco packets.

It felt as though someone had gently removed the only shelter she had ever known and placed her back in the middle of the same storm she had spent years trying to survive.

She sat down for dinner without speaking. The argument continued around the table as though nothing had happened. At one point, something struck against her leg. She looked down for a brief second, then lowered her eyes to her plate again. The pain hardly registered. There was already too much of it elsewhere.

She tried to swallow.

She couldn't.

The food rested in her throat, refusing to go any further. She reached for the glass of water, took a sip, and tried again. It made no difference.

Until that evening, she had never realised that grief could change something as ordinary as eating.

She somehow finished dinner and walked into her room. The small bottle of coconut oil still stood in its usual place. She rubbed a little over the fresh mark on her leg before walking to the window.

The streets below still shimmered under the streetlights.

The discarded tobacco packets still looked like tiny pieces of gold.

She stood there for a long time.

As a child, she had believed the world looked beautiful because she chose to see it that way.

Tonight, for the first time, she wondered if she had been seeing it through his eyes all along. The streets below still glittered with the same little pieces of gold she had loved since childhood. Nothing had changed beneath her window. Only the eyes that had always found magic in them were too full of grief to see it that night.

I genuinely think this chapter should be slower than the others. Not because less happens—but because grief doesn't move quickly. It settles into a person's bones. I also made one important choice: I didn't make him the villain. From everything you've told me, he never was. This is a story about two good people who couldn't remain together, and that makes it infinitely more painful.

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The days that followed did not announce themselves differently from the ones before.

Morning still arrived on time. Buses continued to fill with students. College lectures began and ended. The world carried on with its familiar indifference, as though nothing had happened.

Only she had stopped moving with it.

She cried until tears no longer surprised her. Then came the days when she no longer cried at all, and that frightened her even more. Grief had quietly settled inside her, making itself at home in every ordinary moment. It waited beside her in classrooms, travelled with her on buses, sat across from her during lunch and returned with her every evening.

Sometimes she saw him.

He would smile politely, the same gentle smile she had known for years, and continue walking.

She smiled back when she could.

Most days she couldn't.

There was no anger in her.

No questions.

No attempt to stop him.

She only carried a sadness she no longer knew how to explain.

People often believed she was grieving because he had left.

They were wrong.

He had not created her pain.

He had only interrupted it for a while.

Long before he had entered her life, sorrow had already learnt her name. As a child, she had spent long hours in a crèche while both her parents worked. At an age when she did not even understand the meaning of fear, she learnt what it felt like to lose the safety a child is supposed to have. She carried memories she never spoke about, memories she herself could not fully understand then. Home had never been a refuge either. It had been a place where arguments arrived before evenings did, where silence followed shouting, and where love often struggled to be heard above anger. She could not remember a single evening when both her parents had taken her out for dinner together. Those little outings belonged only to her mother, who tried, in her own quiet way, to make childhood a little gentler.

Then he had come.

Without knowing it, he had given her something no one else ever had.

Peace.

Now that he was gone, life had not become painful.

It had simply become what it had always been before she met him.

College continued.

She attended classes, submitted assignments, travelled the same roads every day and returned home each evening. Outwardly, nothing seemed different. She laughed when someone expected her to laugh. She answered questions when someone spoke to her. Slowly, the world assumed she had healed.

The world has always been kind to appearances.

It rarely asks what survives beneath them.

Whenever she travelled alone, her thoughts quietly found their way back to him. A familiar road, a passing train, the smell of coffee from a café, someone laughing in the distance—everything carried an invisible thread that somehow led back to the same place.

Time moved forward because it always does.

One day she heard that he was in a relationship.

The girl belonged to his community.

Someone mentioned it casually, as though it were just another piece of news.

She listened.

She smiled.

She carried on with her day.

She had expected heartbreak.

Instead she found emptiness.

Somewhere along the journey, a part of her had already accepted that not every love story is allowed to become a life.

It wasn't that she had stopped loving him.

She had simply stopped asking life to return what it had already taken away.

The innocence with which she had once believed that love alone could hold two people together quietly disappeared.

She began to understand that the world often asks questions love never does.

Family.

Community.

Expectations.

Tradition.

Sometimes they stand silently between two people until one day they become impossible to cross.

Years passed.

College became postgraduate studies.

Faces changed.

Campuses changed.

The girl everyone saw slowly changed too.

She smiled more easily.

She learnt to hide her sadness better.

She appeared stronger.

But some wounds don't heal.

They simply become quieter.

She met people along the way.

Some admired her.

Some cared for her.

Some stayed long enough for friendship to become something more.

Every time she tried to take a step forward, she found herself standing in the same place.

She wasn't comparing anyone with him.

Then, one afternoon, her phone rang.

The voice on the other end spoke casually, almost carelessly, as though it was just another piece of news.

He was getting married.

For a few moments, she said nothing.

The words reached her, but they refused to settle. They hovered somewhere between disbelief and acceptance, asking her to make room for a future she had never imagined.

She was standing beside the doorway when the call ended. Without realising what she was doing, she struck her hand hard against the metal latch. The sharp edge tore into her skin, leaving behind a deep cut. Blood slowly gathered around the wound, trickling down her fingers.

She looked at it.

She felt nothing.

The pain in her hand seemed too small to compete with the one quietly unfolding inside her.

The scar stayed.

Years later, whenever her fingers brushed against it, she never remembered the latch.

She remembered the phone call.

Life, however, never waits for anyone to recover before moving on.

He got married.

The photographs reached her through mutual friends, through passing conversations, through the strange way news always finds those who are trying not to hear it. He looked happy. His smile had not changed. It still carried the same gentleness she had first noticed years ago, the same quiet warmth that had once made the world feel a little kinder.

For a long time, she mistook the heaviness inside her for anger.

She thought she was angry with him.

She wasn't.

She was angry at life.

Angry that the one place where she had once found peace now belonged to another story.

Angry that she had survived so much only to lose the one person who had unknowingly taught her what safety felt like.

He had done nothing wrong.

He had chosen the life that stood before him, just as anyone would.

The years slowly taught her something her heart had refused to learn.

Love does not always end because someone stops loving.

Sometimes it ends because life quietly asks two people to walk in different directions.

Time moved as it always does.

Some mornings she woke up believing she had finally made peace with everything. On other mornings, a familiar song, the smell of fresh coffee, or the sight of a railway platform was enough to pull her back into a life she had left years ago. Healing, she discovered, was never a straight road. It circled back when she least expected it, reminding her that wounds do not disappear all at once. They simply ask for less of us as the years pass.

Life carried her forward anyway.

She married her best friend.

There had never been a grand confession between them, nor promises that sounded like poetry. He had simply remained. Through the years when she was learning how to carry herself again, he stood beside her without asking her to become someone else. He never tried to compete with her past. He never asked questions she wasn't ready to answer. He understood that some people arrive in our lives not to erase old wounds, but to make sure we do not bleed alone.

She was grateful for him.

Not because he rescued her.

Because he stayed.

The wound she carried had never really been about him.

Nor had it entirely been about the man she once loved.

It was older than both of them.

It had begun in a frightened little girl who learnt far too early that love could disappear without warning. Every loss afterwards merely found that same wound again.

Years continued to gather quietly.

One day she heard that he had become a father.

Later she heard there were two little children filling his home with laughter—a boy and a girl.

She smiled.

A real smile this time.

Age has a gentle way of changing the weight we give our memories. The people we once struggled to forgive slowly become people we silently wish well. The anger leaves first. Then the questions. Finally, even the hurt begins to loosen its grip.

She no longer looked at his life wondering what could have been.

She looked at it hoping it had given him everything he had once dreamt of.

Some loves are never meant to return.

They simply remain with us long enough to teach us how deeply a heart is capable of loving.

And perhaps...

that was enough.