Grace Note Movement at the door caught my attention. I looked over, expecting Elliott to walk back through. But it wasn’t him. My back straightened like a steel rod. Oh my god. It wasn’t him. I bolted to my feet, a breath catching in my throat. I stared in both shock and awe at the man standing on the other side of the doorway. He had always been on the other side, alone and cast out by society. But I had taken him in, loved him, and nurtured him, giving him a home inside my heart. I had given him everything. All of me. He was my first love, and if my heart had its way, he would have been my last. He was the one who got away, the OG owner of my former lovesick, teenage heart. Our eyes locked from across the room, and instantly, those long years of pining over a man I couldn't have came to a screeching halt. He was here, in the flesh. Somehow, the universe understood what I needed at the exact moment I needed it. I barely recognized the boy he'd once been. It was as if the years had zapped him of his originality. His hair, once the most vibrant and unique part about him, was long and soiled, dangling over his handsome face like a curtain, with the only openings where the strands got caught in his overgrown beard. His normally sun-scorched skin was so pale it appeared almost translucent under the harsh fluorescent lighting. And his eyes — his beautiful, soulful brown eyes — were nothing but sunken, red-rimmed misery. I thought I'd seen him at his worst, a streetwise runaway surviving with only the clothes on his back, but I was wrong. He was worse off now. So much worse.
