A LEAP OF THE EARLY BIRD

So her heart was free to love...

The pain of rejection can burn for eternity. Especially when you realize that the love you feel takes up all of your being. Especially if you feel like you have never felt before. Especially when your heart screams at you that the person who rejected you could not have been telling the whole truth...

Can sat in his office. Work made no sense. The words he was reading combined into long sentences so incoherent that he may as well be reading them upside-down and backwards. The because each word he read sounded like the word "Sanem" in his head. SanemSanemSanem... One would easily loose his mind if he kept going like this. But he was powerless against it. His heart felt something that it never felt before. The feeling was so powerful that his head surrendered to it without any doubt. His head knew it was pointless to fight the heart, because all it thought of was Sanem. She was in his mind at work, in his car, in the park, at home. Whereever she went with him, that's where she remained. She went with him to the cottage, now she would remain there. Likewise, his car, his home, even the printshop. She was everywhere, because she went everywhere with him in his heart...

He wanted to let Sanem know how much her help in clearing up his name meant to him. He also wanted to make sure her name was also cleared off any negativity because of her association with him and the photoshoot campaign. He did both. But speaking with the reporters, which always made him uncomfortable, was the easy part. The hard part came when he needed to speak with Sanem. About how he felt. About how he felt about her. About how he might feel about them. He gathered his courage, and took the first step. He never thought he might need courage to reveal how he felt about someone. He was a confident man, who always did as he planned, and did not need any courage to really speak his mind. But now he did. And that was so new to him. Reaching out and holding her hand shot  bolths through his body. Now his hand holding hers was not that of a boss and an employee. It was not that of a friend grateful for help. It was a hand holding the hand of a person dear to his heart. A hand of a man holding a hand of a woman. And it was so much deeper than that...

When he looked at their hands holding one another, he realized that that's where his hand belonged. That's where it wanted to remain. Holding hers. But she was frightened. He saw it in her eyes. She was afraid, but he did not know why. When he stood up and came face to face with her, he could not believe how much restraint he needed to keep his hands from reaching for her face. She fled the room, visibly shaken, visibly affected by what he revealed to her. And then it hit him. How ignorant could he have been? How inconsiderate, how selfish he may have seemed to Sanem. Yes, he cared for her, yes, he made his feelings known. But she was engaged. And yet, she was drawn to him too. She could not deny it anymore to herself than to him. And that's what he realized just then. She would need time to think. Time to understand. And a time to realize that he meant what he said.

With his head still filled with Sanem, he left his office looking for her. And he found her. Speaking with Ceycey. What he heard made his heart spin cartwheels in his chest. It also changed his mood from the darkest of grim to the brightest rays of sunlight. He hid from their sight, fully knowing that if Sanem saw him she would not speak any more words to Ceycey. Because the words he heard were exactly what he hoped to hear deep down inside. He just hadn't expected he would hear it so soon. She broke off her engagement. The chaos he felt and heard in his head just a moment ago was replaced with the sharpest and keen understanding of each word he heard. Osman no longer mattered. Because there was another. At least that was his original assumption. There was the Albatross. His head swam. And then it spun. The Albatross mattered, but not as much as the man she fell in love with. She fell in love with. Those were her words. And they floaded into his heart like the sweetest of melodies ever created by man.

So she was in love. That was no question, now that he thought about it. Her eyes told him so. Her smile told him so. Her hand holding his told him so. So why hadn't her mouth found the courage to tell him so? What was the reason she kept stopping her heart from revealing the truth? The truth that her heart was free to love? Free to love him?