Keanu beats me to Starship Point. When I walk up, he's already sitting on the ground, holding his knees to his chest as usual, his dark eyes staring off into the distance. I wonder what he's thinking about.

Once, I would've been able to tell just from the tilt of his head and the curve of his mouth what was on his mind, but now, I have no clue. He used to be the person I knew best, but now he's a stranger.

All because I thought the worst of him and pushed him away.

Sunset touches my knees with its long, weak orange fingers, but they give me no warmth. Luckily, I grabbed a cardigan from Ellery's wardrobe before coming to the park today. Still, I shiver, less from cold and more from what I have come to Starship Point to do.

Keanu turns to me with his ready smile. My breath catches.

Even if a UFO crosses the sky, he will still be the brightest thing in sight.

Doesn't Keanu know that when he shows me the kindness in his eyes, I feel even worse about how things ended between us? Doesn't he know his grin transforms him into the high schooler who gave me my first kiss in this very spot, the kid I set my heart on spending the rest of my life with?

He can't, because if he did, he wouldn't smile at me like that. He wouldn't hurt me intentionally, and I wish it hadn't taken me so long to see it.

"I take it you have a confession for me too." He raises his eyebrows, expectant.

I take a breath. My words want to rush from me in a flood, but I push them back.

I want to do this properly, not with the haste with which I had run from Keanu all those years ago and destroyed a love more perfect than anything I had ever known.

My nerves clog up my throat.

I do have a confession, but I don't know how Keanu will take it. All the same, that's not what matters. I must say what I want to say, or our breakup will haunt me forever.

I didn't fight for Keanu before, but I will fight for him now. And whatever happens, I will know that I tried.

After a long moment of silence, my ability to speak returns, pressured by my purpose. "I'm sorry."

Despite the painful twinge in my chest, I meet Keanu's eyes. Within them are years of memories, memories I'd always be glad for even if he and I don't make any more.

I bite my lip so that Keanu doesn't see it trembling. "I was so floored by what you said yesterday that I didn't get to apologise. I'm so, so sorry. I should've waited for you to explain the situation with Lorraine before I ran off like that."

I have always been too quick-tempered, the girl shooting from her hip. If I slowed down on that day, Keanu would've told me that it was an honest misunderstanding. We'd have gotten married, as planned, and Lorraine and I would still be friends.

Keanu wouldn't have known the heartbreak of my desertion, and I wouldn't have known this pain that turned me harsher and more bitter than I ever thought I could be.

He watches me, and even in the fading light, even in the face of the years we've been apart, I can see that devastation in his eyes. It lives within him, just like my pain does in me.

My voice shakes as I continue. "I broke your heart by not trusting you and taking my assumption as the truth. I'm so sorry, and I hope you can forgive me."

My words seem pathetic, inadequate to capture my feelings, but they're all I have to apologise to Keanu.

When I worked at my mother's florist, I used flowers as a language too. With the cheerful friends and loving boyfriends requesting custom bouquets every day, it had started to become the voice of commitment and endearment, but there's none of that between me and Keanu, not anymore.

There's no space for any grand gestures of undying love, not when he has a fiancée.

Keanu takes my hand, the gesture gentle and guarded and painfully platonic. Still, I savour the feel of his palm against mine. It's rougher than I remember, from hard work and age, but the warmth is familiar.

"I forgave you for hurting me years ago, Acacia. I never blamed you for the misunderstanding between us. I'd have told you so if you had let me." There's a light teasing in Keanu's voice, but it turns serious when I sniffle.

"It's all in the past now." His eyes soften as he squeezes my hand.

The gesture should give me comfort. It should set me on the path to making peace with Keanu and my past, but it only sends me in the other direction, hurtling towards despair and desperation.

I wish I could hold Keanu close forever. I don't want to settle for one last time.

"But I still love you."

I have been in some difficult situations before, but none as tough as confessing to the man I dumped after a misunderstanding that I never stopped loving him.

I was lucky he was even listening to me. It was more than I deserved, but an opportunity I'd take advantage of, nonetheless.

This man has been in my thoughts for years. I haven't loved anyone the way I love him.

He's worth putting my heart on the line for no matter the stones or arrows he'd send flying towards it.

It has been a while since I let myself be this vulnerable. It led me to heartbreak before, and I have never known a worse feeling. That's why every man I've been with since Keanu left. When I tried to protect myself from the hurt I knew was inevitable, they said I didn't let them in.

How could I, when the last time I let my love bloom, its petals had been pulled away with coarse, careless hands?

Or at least that was what I had thought, and it had damaged me. It would take more than the truth to heal me.

I must take control of this and stop running from it.

I had never imagined that would be so difficult and nerve-wracking.

My shoulders tense as I await Keanu's answer.

Keanu's eyes crinkle then, and I can't tell whether it's from happiness or sadness. I used to be able to. That terrifies me more than anything else I've seen about Keanu since I returned to Colorado.

"There will always be a part of me that loves you too." Keanu hugs me to his side.

He smells like a spring breeze tangled with the salty scent of the sea. His scent was once my greatest comfort.

I lean into Keanu, sensing a "but". Even that doesn't bother me because he still feels like home even though he isn't mine anymore.

"But..."

I smile at that. Maybe I can still read him, even if not as well as before.

"It's been nine years, Acacia. We've grown up, become totally different people in the years we've been apart." Keanu shakes his head.

"Maybe things could be different if I wasn't engaged to Renata, but I love her too much to let her down. I've spent years building a future with her. She's been here for me all the years that you weren't... and I'm going to marry her as I promised."

My heart sinks. Keanu may as well carve out the troublesome organ and put it on a pike for all to see.

I prepared for war today but not a losing battle.

I lost Keanu once. I never imagined losing him again, nor did I think it could feel worse.

His every word buries me deeper and deeper, blocking out my sun, cutting off my air.

There's no space for misunderstanding in what he said. My dreams of our life together wither into fragments of themselves, and I know there's no resurrecting them.

My throat closes.

I dig deep so that I don't cry, and it's there, among the dying roots and forgotten bulbs beneath my surface that I find my strength.

I broke Keanu's heart. Renata glued the pieces back together. It's only right that Keanu's heart belongs to her now.

I deserve nothing, not even the time he can spare for an afternoon conversation at Starship Point. I'm not doing anyone a favour by pretending things are different than they really are.

The past is in the past. Nothing, not even an astounding revelation nine years later, can change it.

"You're right," I croak, Keanu's princess who turned into a frog. "I don't deserve you. You should be with someone like Renata who wouldn't hurt you like I did."

Keanu flinches as if I struck him. "That's not what I meant—"

I stand. "It doesn't matter."

I start down the path.

I've said what I came to say. Why should I stay any longer, waiting for more of Keanu's words to beat me down? I shouldn't have agreed to see him. I shouldn't have let him hurt me again.

But I have, because nine years after the time, I'm still the girl head over heels for Keanu Lucas.

"It sure as hell does. Acacia!" Keanu grabs me and spins me to face him.

At the sight of his face, I break down.

His was the face I looked forward to seeing in biology. The face I imagined beside me at the altar, the first face I wanted to see every morning for the rest of my life.

But I sacrificed him in my foolishness, and there was no way to fix that.

Keanu hugs me as the first tears flood my cheeks. His arms are the place of my greatest happiness and sadness. It used to be my place of comfort, but now it's out of my reach even though I stood on my tiptoes to stretch for it.

Keanu and I are truly over.

The realisation constricts my chest until I have to fight for breath.

I cry softly, my tears not much more than wet gasps, my sobs merely quivers racking my body.

"Do you remember our first date here?" Keanu asks, his voice humming against me as he holds me to his chest.

I pull away, both reluctant to put any distance between us and glad to have a happy memory to fill my mind instead. 

"Of course I remember." I give him a tiny smile. Even thinking of that moment makes the darkening sky a little brighter. "You kissed me after I called you a liar for saying you saw a UFO."

"But my lie worked because it got me a kiss from you." Keanu grinned.

My heart gives a pang at that. This is how we used to be, but we can never go back to that.

This is just a pretence, and even though I know it's going to turn mushy like an over-watered orchid's rotten roots, I want to hold onto it for the beauty of its flowers.

Keanu tilts his head to the side. "Do you remember that rainy day we drove up here?" The gleam of mischief in his eyes is bright in the incoming night.

My cheeks warm at the blush that colours them. "Oh yeah." I recall that day with all the crispness of a poppy's petals, even years after it had been pressed between the pages of a book.

Keanu took my virginity in the back of his car. I haven't forgotten our racing hearts, hot breaths, or clumsy, uncertain hands. I haven't forgotten the flash of pain that blossomed into pleasure or the sense of completeness I felt at having him so close to me. He felt like a part of me.

I can't think of anything more electrifying or awkward, though our conversation two days ago came close. It breaks my heart anew that this is what we have become.

We have so many other wonderful memories.

We used to watch Scooby-Doo and match wits with the gang. Keanu was always quickest to spot the culprit, quicker even than Velma. On Friday nights, we used to light candles and sit in the bathtub while we talked about our week.

Because I assumed those moments of closeness would always be mine, I took them for granted. Now, I feel like an idiot for it.

This why they say you don't know what you've got until it's gone. You don't feel the warmth of its presence, but you sense the coldness of its absence.

That's how my life has been since I lost Keanu; cold and dark and lonely.

Keanu cradles my face in his hands. I gaze at him, at his square jaw, at the way a loose tendril of his dark hair lies over his eye, and I wish with all my desperate, greedy heart that I could have one last kiss from those beautiful lips.

Keanu doesn't kiss me, of course, just parts his lips to speak. "I was mad about you, Acacia Clegg. I will always have been yours for those years, but I belong to someone else now, that's all."

I don't belong to anyone else, but maybe that's because I was always holding out hope for Keanu.

But now, he has set that hope to rest. Although it hurts more than anything, even seeing him hand in hand with Renata, I have been freed from my past.

It's because I love him that I'm happy to see him happy, even if it's with someone else. Nothing has ever been so hard for me, but I'm done getting in the way of Keanu's happiness, or my own, for that matter.

I smile up at him through my tears. It's shaky and sad, even though there's peace in my heart. It's sharing the space with many other feelings, and I have to dig deep to show only the positive ones. 

Keanu grins. His eyes seem brighter somehow, free from the shadows of our breakup.

There is nothing left to resolve between us, no accusations or apologies left unspoken. As much as my heart aches to know Keanu will never hold me like this again, it feels lighter, somehow.

We can move from our tangled past into a simpler future. The thought ignites a warmth in my belly.

I have lost the man I love, but I have gained something better, something as full of potential as a seed.

There is nothing for me in this town, no happily ever after lurking in the sweet memories of my youth. My path and my contentment lies elsewhere.

It's not as difficult to accept as it was before.

A new beginning stares me in the face, young and green and full of hope, like spring.

A future of promise has blossomed for Keanu since we broke up. Maybe it's not too much to hope that something new can bloom for me too.

The little crocus flowers nodding at my ankles seem to agree.