Elijah's POV:

Whoever said that real men didn't cry was a liar.

Or maybe they had just never loved hard enough to know how it felt when it was gone. Maybe they had never loved hard enough to realize that people meant it when they said that the inevitable consequence of giving in to the feeling was pain.

Or maybe they said it in desperation.

Desperately trying to piece themselves back together through a cloak of feigned masculinity. Hoping to find themselves again, in faux strength. Despite knowing the bitter truth, that they had already lost themselves, permanently, in the people they had found.

The people they had loved.

The people who had forgotten them.

If that is the case, then I understood. I had once been clueless, too. An immature of knowing what it felt like to have the one person who could hurt you do just that.

Without them even meaning to.

Now I got it.

Now I understood that true ruining didn't have to make a sound to be heard. That it could be voiced through silence, as a grown man laid awake, wishing to forget the way she had forgotten him. As a grown man laid awake, unable to hold in his grief anymore.

Whoever said that real men didn't cry was a liar.

Or they had never loved and lost.

Whoever said that real men didn't cry was a liar.

Or they had never tried to beat Love at its own game and lost.