Summer kills

Ethan remained silent, his eyes scanning the hieroglyphs of their love's dying language. The parchment trembled in his hands, reflecting the way his heart quaked in his chest. All around him, the mansion seemed to echo with the ghostly wails of their failed romance. They were mournful phantoms etched into every crevice, every stone, a haunting reminder of what once was. Olivia's face was pale in the moonlight, casting her visage in an aura of lunar melancholy. The silence stretched painfully between them like a chasm - deep, dark and insurmountable. He looked at Olivia one last time, really looked at her. Her auburn hair cascaded in delicate waves around her shoulders and down her back like rivers of red silk under the lunar glow. Her eyes, once filled with unbridled joy when they met his own, were now stormy seas of sorrow. The sight clawed painfully at his heart and a wave of remorse washed over him.

Ethan turned away then, unable to bear the sight any longer. He walked away from her, from the woman he loved and the mansion that bore witness to their tale of passion and heartbreak. His footsteps echoed harshly against the stony path that led through the gardens they once strolled through on amorous summer evenings.

Suddenly without warning, tears welled up in Ethan's eyes and cascaded down his face. Grief overwhelmed him as he fell to his knees amidst the obsidian labyrinth of their shared dreams. He howled into the night's abyss, a primal cry that reverberated through the mansion's empty corridors.

"I'm sorry,” he choked out between sobs; it was too late for apologies but he needed her to know he regretted everything - his hastiness, his inability to control his temper that one unfortunate evening.

In that moment of vulnerability under the stern moonlight, he lost control over his composure. The slap he had delivered echoed in his mind, a cruel symphony of regret. He remembered the shock on Olivia's face, the sting in her eyes that mirrored the sting on her cheek. He wished more than anything to reverse time, to change that fatal moment.

He hoped that his heartfelt apology would reach Olivia's ears and mend the tapestry of their love story, thread by thread. Even if it was too late for them, even if they could never return to being those people in the photograph again, Ethan wished with all his heart, for Olivia to remember them as they once were and not as they had become.

But as he sat there, his body trembling in the embrace of solitude, he felt a dreadful epiphany wash over him. Yes, the echoes of his apology could reach Olivia, but it would only remind her of all the promises that he had broken. His regret could not mend the seams of their love that he'd so recklessly torn apart. All it could do was to etch into her heart an even deeper scar, one born out of missed chances and wasted potentials. If only he had been more patient, more understanding; if only he had studied to comprehend her silences rather than resent them.

He trudged through the mansion: their shared laughter still bouncing off its cavernous walls, their whispered secrets woven into the rich tapestry adorning its corridors, their shared warmth lingering in the cold marble floors. The mansion stood as a monument to their love, now desolate and echoing with phantom memories.

Ethan found himself at Olivia's favorite spot - a small garden overlooking the dawn side of the mansion. He remembered her there, bathed in the soft golden hue of dawn, her laughter carrying on the wind like a forgotten melody. It was here that they'd planned their future together, weaving dreams under canopies of shifting skies.

Now as he sank onto Olivia's bench, inhaling deeply from roses she had nurtured lovingly in her garden, he felt an acute sense of loss. Their dreams were left unfulfilled, suspended in time like fragments of an abandoned symphony. He closed his eyes and pictured Olivia's face - radiant as morning sun yet fragile as porcelain - filled with hope and promise; a sight he'd marred with his thoughtless act.

Suddenly he clutched at his chest as a searing pain radiated through him - not physical but emotional. His actions had taken Olivia away from him forever and he must live with that void. It was here amidst the roses of her labor that he swore to himself: he would change, he would find a way to control his temper and nurture patience, not for Olivia anymore but for himself. He needed to alter his path for his own redemption, even if it meant walking alone on a road they'd planned to journey together.

And so, under the watchful gaze of the moon, Ethan wept again - not just for his loss, but also for the man he once was. For he knew that man could have saved their love but chose not to; and now, it was time to bid him farewell.