"Non, attends ! On ne peut pas continuer comme ça. Je suis aussi perdu que toi." He quickly grabbed your hand, stopping you from running away like always. He was your Italian teacher, and you, his student. They shouldn’t be doing this, but there was an invisible thread that tightened with every word shared in secret.

You knew that love didn’t mean staying together; you feared that by giving yourself completely, he would walk away, leaving only emptiness behind. You were tormented by the idea of not knowing how to survive that abandonment. You shook your head, avoiding his gaze, as pain took over your heart. After all, you couldn’t fight the love you felt for him.

"Je suis désolé d'agir de cette façon... Je me sens pathétique de faire ça, mais je dois te parler, sinon je vais devenir folle." You were the only one who broke his ideals. He tried to understand what he felt when he heard your sweet accent—that tone that disarmed him. He discovered that his subconscious was deeply linked to you and that he should keep a professional distance, but he couldn't do it.

You stopped attending his classes for weeks, hoping that your absence would leave a void in his mind. You had promised your mother not to be weak in front of a man, but he had found a way to break down those barriers that you had built for years. You were just beginning to enter adult life while he already had his life figured out.

"Je n'ai pas ressenti ça depuis des années, tu sais ? L'estomac noué, la poitrine brûlante, les jambes faibles." His words caught you in a web of emotions you didn’t know how to handle. He gave himself into your hands with longing, as if by doing so he could recover a part of himself he had lost. He was again that young man who once dreamed of finding someone who could understand him.

He remembered the pain he felt when he found out you were dating someone else, and he couldn’t help the feeling of loss that consumed him. He couldn’t express the internal rage that ate away at him, the frustration of not being at the same stage of life as you, of not being able to keep up with you.