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He chose us.
The lonely boy from all those years ago.
“My heart recognized you, too,” I whisper.
He brushes his nose against mine.
“What took you so long?” I ask.
His eyes turn even more soft. “It wasn’t the right time.”
“And now it is?”
“Yeah, baby. It is.”
He slides a hand behind my head and draws me into a kiss. It’s warm, slow, and sweet. I kiss him like he’s always been the one I’ve been searching for, and he kisses me like he’s finally found his way home.
We’re no longer ghosts haunting each other’s past.
He’s no longer the lonely boy searching through trash beneath a cruel winter sky.
He’s the boy who survived.
The man who conquered the world.
And the man who somehow, impossibly, conquered an Ice Princess’s heart.
Mine.
from the private journal of artemis
Age 10
I wonder if the boy from the snowstorm ever found a warm home.
Not a house.
A home.
Those are different. People don’t really understand the difference between both. A house it’s just a building but a home can be a person.
A dream.
It was unfortunate.
He looked like someone who had learned to survive before he learned how to be a child.
I hope someone makes him laugh someday.
He didn’t laugh or smile and he looked like someone who deserves to do both for the rest of his life.
I also hope he eats warm meals.
He looked so cold.
Not the cold that I enjoy. It was the kind of cold that hurt.
I wonder if he’s happy now.
