All these years I have been running. From the glares and murmurs. From people. From reality. From that one person I have been waiting too long to come that I have started wasting my time on shooting stars and wishing wells.

He was my safe haven, my escape from reality. He was in every bit the prince I would gladly trade everything for. It never dawned on me that perhaps I wasn’t meant to be his princess, that I could be just some transitional entity before he finds his princess, until lightning struck too close to home.

What we had was something I never experienced before. It was like laying your hand on a thing you have been forbidden to have. You are perfectly aware that you will have to face the consequences of breaking the rules but somehow, in that instant, all that mattered was the present. But before I ventured much deeper into that magical realm, fear had taken control of me. My feet led me to some place safe, away from happiness. Impossible as it seems, even from a hundred miles away, I saw destruction fall on that man I left with nothing but a crushed soul.

While I was creating a bright future for myself, time stood still for him. He was trapped in an endless loop of losing me and wishing I would return to my senses and still have some space left in my heart for him. I tried living, pretending I did nothing wrong, but deep down in the deepest darkest depths of me, his face haunts me. Yet I cannot return to his side, even when it’s the only thing to get rid of the nightmares that troubles me even when I’m awake. I deserved none of his affections for I am the coward who ran away. He deserves someone who is brave enough not to run away the moment the smokes of danger appear, who will stay by his side even when the waves of fate toss and turn the boat of life.

I once thought that whoever the Supreme Being we believed in has made someone who was meant to walk this earth with us. Perhaps our paths were meant only to cross once in this lifetime. Perhaps in another lifetime, we could be what they say the halves of the same soul. Perhaps this, maybe that. All I could think of are things that could have been but will never live to see happen because of my own doings. No matter what the future holds for us, one fact will always remain: that I am the criminal who stole his heart and threw it away believing it wasn’t worth a damn cent; the villain who ruined him and cursed his future forever.