“Don’t go. Please don’t go, Sarah.” She was getting in her car, with luggages in hand, and I was begging as she headed to her red-colored BMW. “I was wrong, okay. I can- I can handle my parents. Please just don’t leave me.”

I was on my knees by her car window as she hasn’t said a word and she got in her car and started the engine. “SARAH!”

Then she drove away.

She broke up with me in silence and left me behind. I broke down on the road and cried. I screamed at the top of my lungs and cried as my eyes turned red and I started to lose my voice from all the screaming.

It’s because I was a coward.

I was the second born son from a conglomerate family. I have an older brother, who was the heir to our family’s business and fortune, and then there was my younger spoiled sister, who just had to have everything.

This isn’t like one of those novel-like stories, where we are a strict controlling family and we actually all get along really well like a family. But there was just one thing that’s the same; we all have a role to play. My older brother, who’s the heir of the family, has to study hard and to prove himself as the next CEO and marry someone from an appropriate family. While me and my sister are there to marry outside the family to further our family’s endeavors.

I love my family and I love our wealthy conglomerate business. But I never expected to defy everything I knew and loved for a woman I met in a coffee shop.

She works there and her name was “Sarah Collins.” She was an average, normal girl. She had bright blue eyes and blonde hair — she has the typical American look. At the time, I was ordering an Americano and I was wearing a red hoodie with a grey shirt and jeans, so she had no clue of who I was.

During the past 3 weeks, as I was enamored with her, I visited Sarah everyday and as we got to know each other, I asked her out. She became my girlfriend at the time and I had no idea that I was being watched by my brother.

After dating around for the next few months, I got home around midnight, where my parents waited for me and we got into an argument.

“A girl?” My mother exasperated. “You’re dating a normal girl? How could you?”

“I love her!”

Out of anger and disappointment, my father struck me on the side of my cheek. “I can’t believe you. I’ve told you since the moment you were born. As the son of a wealthy family, you are born into honor and privilege. We gave you everything you’ve ever wanted and the only thing we asked for was an alliance through marriage.”

I clenched my fist in fear as I begged them. “Please don’t ask me to break with her.”

I couldn’t help but feel as if I were the smallest person in the world right now. Then out of nowhere, my brother appeared and turned on the rest of the lights in the dining room. “Mother, Father, that’s enough. Please let me talk to my brother alone.”

They nodded and left.

He sighs, “want a drink?”

He took one of the whiskey bottles in our father’s location and poured it in two separate glasses as he handed me one of them. I told him then, “I love her, Zac. I really do.”

He sighs, “it’s never going to work out anyway, Oliver. You’re engaged to someone else since the moment you were born, and, well, she’s just a normal person. It’ll never work out between the two of you.”

He repeated the phrase twice, when I suddenly realized just what kind of person my brother was. Zac was a smart person, he was cruel and vindictive. He always puts his interests and the interests of the family before anything else. Even if that means, making me hate him. “Zac, what did you do?”

“I taught her a lesson she would never forget.” He replied and as I rushed out to look for her, I was stopped by Zac’s two big goons. I couldn’t leave the house, until the next day, where I had to sneak out in the morning.

I looked for her in the coffee shops, where she should be working at this hour, but she wasn’t there, then I found her in the apartment we shared. She believed I was poor, so she rented the place herself. Then I found her, packing her stuff in boxes and putting her luggages in her car. “Sarah? Sarah, where are you going? Why are you leaving?”

I was in a state of panic, and then as I approached her closer, she suddenly slapped me as she had tears in her eyes as she accused me, “how could you? You lied me!”

“No, Sarah,” I was still panicking and I was down on my knees, “whatever you heard, it isnt what it looks like. My brother talked to you, right? Well, you haven’t heard the full story, I love you. Sarah, I loved you. So please let’s talk about this.”

“You’re such a coward, Oliver.” She fumed with pain and anger as she tore of the necklace I gave her and threw it back at me. “I lose my job because of you. I got kicked out of my apartment because of you. You- Your brother just bought the coffeee place I worked at and fired me for no reason and then that same man bought the building where I rented my apartment at and kicked me out. Eventually, I figured out how you two were related.”

She revealed the truth bomb on me and I couldn’t even looked her in the eye, as she continued. “You lied to me and I lost everything for it.”

As I gained the courage to look her in the eye, I saw her face streaked with tears and I could how truly heartbroken she was at everything.

She continued to pack her belongings into the car, without any regards to my prescence, “I had to move back to my parents’ place because of you. I hate you, Ollie. I wish I had never met you.”

Something broke inside me when I heard that and I tried saying whatever I could to convince her to stay. I begged her to reconsider, but she didn’t say another word and just drove off.

I watched as her vehicle drove further and further away from me, and then I realized. I now had to live a life without you.

It was torture.

My family got exactly what they wanted. I married another wealthy person, and so did my brother and sister. We grew the business, but my heart remained cold and broken. That night I married that stranger, I made it clear where I stood in this relationship.

My family might’ve thought that my relationship with Sarah was impulsive, but even after years went by, I had never forgotten her.

And because of my sexless relationship with my adulterous wife, I never had children. I made it clear to her that I would never love her or touch her. She understood, so she seek love from someone else. She never stopped her or interfered. My brother, as the genius he is, knew everything behind closed doors.

One day, I visited Sarah in her hometown, and she married a man in the neighborhood. Someone she knows well, and I just watched her from afar. I never stepped too close.

Our time might’ve been short and she may have already forgotten me, but I truly did love her and her smile and they way she looked at life. She taught me that there are way to have fun without money.

Many years had passed and I never forgot her, I never had children and then one day, my parents was hospitalized due to old age. They never saw grandchildren from my side of the family; it was one of the things they wished from me.

I felt nothing from them. My brother might’ve drove her away, but it was only because of the way my parents raised us that we ended up in this broken relationship. “You know, father, mother, I was grateful to you once. Controlling my marriage in exchange for wealth and freedom. It was a great deal. Until I realized how important that aspect of my life once.”

My hair grew grey and I had to walk with a cane as I grew older and I started wearing glasses by the time I reached the age of 47.

I smiled coldly at them as they struggled to speak due to the tubes attached to their body. “Are you happy, mother, father? You ruined my life, so you must be happy, right?”

I leaned in close and whispered to them, “destroying your son’s happiness, in exchange for profit and power, you must be happy to see what my life has become.”

Saying such things to were my way of showing some petty revenge against them, even if it meant wasting my life.

I walked out of the room after, and even as years passed and love had faded with nothing but a dream. I closed my eyes and I sighed, “a life without you is boring and lonely.”

I wished I could see you again in the next life, Sarah