Chapter 120
When I opened a gallery, he opened a café across the street, brewing coffee himself every morning and sending it over via his assistant. He sat there for hours some days, ostensibly working, but always looking at the gallery windows as if studying a painting.
When I attended an art show, he trailed behind like a devoted bodyguard. The anti–trafficking shelter I funded had just opened, and I went to the ribbon–cutting. He anonymously donated an astronomical sum.”
He tried every route to squeeze into my life. He began leaving elaborate floral displays of roses outside my gallery, lining the windows with blossoms that refused to wilt for days. Reporters speculated, patrons whispered, and neighbors watched the patterns of his devotion with a kind of fascinated pity. Still, I kept my distance. I focused on work, on new canvases, on the quiet rituals of my studio. Success arrived not as a vindictive roar but as a slow tide; invitations, offers, and small, steady recognition that warmed rather than burned. It was modest, steady, and utterly mine.”
But I shut him out.
I never drank the coffee he offered, never met his gaze, and never acknowledged any of his gestures.
He became like a breath of air–utterly ignored.
A year later, my gallery won international acclaim.
I was invited to Paris for a solo exhibition.@
The opening was a dazzling affair, elegant and lavish beyond anything I had seen.
Standing on the stage to deliver my speech, my eyes swept the audience and unexpectedly landed on a familiar figure.” Seated in a quiet corner, Felix Shaw, in a faded white shirt, watched me intently.
His gaze was focused and reverent, like a worshipper facing a deity.”
It was the look I had imagined for three years. Now, seeing it, I felt only irony.”
At dinner, he crossed the room, glass in hand, and approached me.”
“Congratulations, Sarah Grant.“@
His voice trembled slightly.”
I simply nodded politely, turning to greet other guests.”
“Sarah,” he called me.
“I’m having surgery next month.”
I paused.”
He forced a laugh, uglier than tears. “The doctor says my hippocampus was damaged by the trauma I suffered that year, which explains my memory loss and cognitive problems.”
“Surgery carries risks. I might…completely forget everything.”
“So, before the surgery, I want to ask you one more question.“}
He looked deeply at me, his eyes filled with frantic desperation.
“Will you give me another chance?”
“If I forget you, tell me who you are again. This time, I promise I will recognize you the moment I see you and never lose you again.”
I looked at him, and suddenly, relief washed over me. “Felix, forget it.“”
“Forget me, and set yourself free.”
I didn’t give him another chance to speak, turning and merging into the crowd.
That was the last time I saw him.
I later heard that his surgery was successful, but he had lost all his memory.”
He was no longer the president of the Shaw Group; the family business had been handed over to a branch of the family.”
He lived alone in that rose–lined villa, like a ghost living in the past.
Occasionally, someone would see him wandering Gallery Street.”
He would hold a faded old photo in his hand and ask everyone he met.”
“Hello, have you seen this girl?”
The photo showed a girl in a white dress with a rose–shaped birthmark on her arm.
Meanwhile, I had already begun a new life on the other side of the world.”
My galleries spread across the globe, and my name became a resounding symbol in the art world.
I also met a wonderful person.
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He was a photographer who would hold my hand and travel with me to every corner of the world.”
He would remember every look of mine: smiling, crying, with makeup, without. Every morning, he would say to me, “Good morning, my painter.“”
The day he proposed, he knelt on one knee and held out not a diamond ring, but a thick photo album.”
Inside, it was all me.”
“Sarah,” he said with a smile in his eyes, “I want to spend my entire life documenting everything about you.“”
I smiled until tears fell.”
It turns out that true love isn’t about forcing you to fit in, becoming someone else.”
It’s about being able to cut through the crowds, peel away all disguises, and accurately recognize the unique you.”
As for Felix,
let that little girl in the white dress live forever in his memory.”
And I, already wearing my favorite colors, headed for the thousand brilliant suns that belong to me.
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