“Why today? Why now? Why all three of them? I am not going to live through another love confession. Actually, a third one in a row.”

She was furious and fuming with anger, shouting at him in English. She automatically switched to this language as she always did every time being overwhelmed with emotions, not noticing the transition.

“I don’t want to ever see again! You made me count the ways to die! I actually wanted to kill myself, to finish this stupid life for everyone’s convenience… but in the end I was too weak to do it, to bring so much pain to my father, to the people who love me.”

“Thanks God,” he gasped.

“And now you are telling me that you love me, that you’ve loved me all along. I just don’t believe it!”

“Yet it’s true.”

“Do you have any idea how much pain you made me go through? I’m not doing it again.”

He looked really miserable, devastated, apologetic.

“Till now I cannot sleep well at night, I forgot how to eat, nightmares hunt me night and day, and I do not know which one is worse, the dreams or the reality!

“If you decide you don’t need me again, I’m not going to survive it! So please go away now.” Her words made him suffer.

“I’m sorry. I cannot do it,” his voice was sad, yet determined.

“Sure, you can. You’ve already done it once.”

“I cannot live without you.”

“I don’t care!”

“I know that I have caused you so much damage. I know that I don’t deserve your trust but I’m not going to give up so easily.”

“Neither am I. You will give up sometimes. Just remember you are not interested in foolish human girls.”

“You are not foolish and, I daresay, not human anymore.”

“Go to hell!”

“I’ve already been there, and I’m not going to return. My personal hell without you.”

“I don’t want to hear another word!”

She left.

He didn’t give up as he promised. He sent her flowers, she sent them back. When the flower company eventually refused to take them back, she forwarded all the bouquets to St. James hospital.

He called, she didn’t respond. He sent presents, she sent them back unopened. He came to talk to her in person, she pretended he didn’t exist.

The other two contenders also pursued her and didn’t show any signs of giving up but all their efforts were way behind his. To avoid him was a task all too complicated, “mission impossible”, as Madeline called it. He was literally everywhere she went.

On the day of his confession she came back home. At the end of the day after exhausting whirlpool of too emotional events she felt tired like never before. She started changing her clothes slowly intending to go to bed right away. He was already sitting in her room.

“Don’t you have any shame? I’m trying to change my clothes here!”

“You can show me nothing I haven’t seen before,” he chucked.

She threw a cushion in his direction. Of course, he caught it effortlessly.

“OK, dear, I’ve closed my eyes. I am not watching,” he said trying to reconcile.

“You know you are impossible.”

“I’ve been told so before.”

She lay in bed covering herself with a blanket and turned away from him. He was already on her bed, hugging her gently.

“I still don’t want to see you.”

“It will pass. At least I dearly hope so.”

“Oh, well, at least this night I’m not going to have any nightmares,” she murmured quietly and fell asleep in his hands at once.

Then everything changed so abruptly. That day he almost died, and she almost died trying to save him.