Chapter Five: Catching Feelings by Rosaline Saul
Ibiza’s nightlife had waned into the early hours, leaving
the streets scattered with the last traces of the night—echoes of laughter, the
faint thump of a bass beat, a muffled shout of joy. The island was still, but
Christopher felt anything but calm.
Alone on his balcony, he looked out at the quiet waves and the dim lights of passing boats, remnants of the night’s vitality. Normally, this hour brought him peace, a rare lull after the throbbing energy of his nights at the club but tonight, his mind was a storm. Meeting Isabel had set off something in him—an ache, a desire, a longing he couldn’t shake. He was Cupid, a god bound by divine law and centuries-old purpose and yet, here he was, shaken by the presence of a mortal woman in a way that defied everything he thought he understood about himself.
Christopher sank into a chair, feeling the weight of his
history pressing down on him. In his countless years, he had watched empires
rise and crumble, seen the world turn itself inside out in search of love,
power, and meaning. He had crafted connections between lovers, his arrows as
sure and silent as whispers on the wind but what he felt now was different,
chaotic and dangerous. Love for a human was the one emotion he had been
forbidden to feel. It was the one rule that anchored him—an ancient edict that
kept his heart walled away from mortal temptations. However, since meeting
Isabel, the walls he had built around his own emotions and feelings had begun
to crack.
He sighed, resting his head against the back of the chair as
memories washed over him, memories of a time he tried to ignore. His mother,
Venus, had warned him of what happened when the divine meddled with mortal
emotions for their own desires. “Once you let your heart linger on a human,
your fate is sealed,” she had told him centuries ago. He had known then that
there was danger in allowing himself to desire what he crafted in others. Yet
now, here he was, standing at that precipice, unable to turn away.
A pang of bitterness hit him. In all his time guiding humans
to love, he had been a silent witness to the rise and fall of their fragile
hearts, sometimes whispering with envy at the purity of their raw emotions.
While he moulded connections for others, he had never allowed himself the
chance to truly understand what they felt. His place was to remain detached,
godly, unbreakable but tonight, he felt anything but immortal. Tonight, he felt
excruciatingly human.
The moonlight cast long shadows across his face as he
remembered his past transgressions—times he had flirted with the boundary of
his role, tempted by fleeting moments that came dangerously close to
attachment, but it was always brief, an inkling, easily dismissed. Isabel,
however, was something else entirely. She was real, close, her heart open and
vulnerable in a way that pulled him to her, like gravity, relentless and
unyielding.
He stood and walked to the balcony’s edge, gripping the rail
until his knuckles turned white. The thought of letting her in, of even briefly
entertaining this feeling, filled him with guilt, a gnawing sensation that felt
foreign and familiar all at once. He was Cupid, destined to be the unfeeling
hand that guided others to love. Falling for Isabel would mean risking
everything—his purpose, his immortality, even his place in the pantheon of gods
who relied on him to uphold the fragile balance between mortals and the divine.
Yet there was something undeniable in her eyes, something he
couldn’t quite place. Her gaze had held shadows of pain, the kind he had seen
in countless lovers after heartbreak, but also a resilience that sparked his
curiosity. She did not know him, did not understand the centuries he carried,
and yet, there was a quiet comfort in her presence. The ache was both
exhilarating and terrifying, and it left him feeling as if he were standing on
the edge of a cliff, with no idea what lay below.
In his life, he had seen the damage that unchecked desire
could inflict. He had witnessed gods and mortals alike lose themselves to
longing, to jealousy, to the need to possess. The stories of divine punishments
and tragic ends were carved into his soul, reminders of what happened to those
who overstepped their bounds. If he let himself fall, he could lose everything
he had worked for but if he continued to deny it, to ignore the pull he felt,
he feared he might shatter under the weight of his own solitude.
For so long, he had believed himself invulnerable but with
Isabel, there was no hiding, no escape. His heart was beginning to betray him,
whispering in a language he wasn’t sure he wanted to understand. He could feel
it, as surely as he felt the salt-tinged breeze against his skin. This was the
start of something that would change him forever, for better or worse.
As he stood there, watching the first light of dawn stretch across the horizon, he knew he could not go on pretending. Something had been set in motion the moment he first saw her crossing the street ahead of him and meeting her on the beach propelled the motion into something beyond his control. He did not know how or when, but he felt certain that his life was about to unravel. Whether he would fight it or surrender, he could not yet say.
But one thing was clear. His heart, forbidden as it was, had already begun its descent.
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