It all happened at once. Everything he could have hoped for. Everything he had feared since the first moment he said he loved her. Blood rushed to his head as he heard her mutter those three words, and then flushed from his face as he noticed the curious, vacant look in her eyes. He realized that he had shared the feelings that went along with that look: the heart-fluttering joy and breath-quickening high that she could only get by holding the face of that one person, the one who had stolen her heart, in her mind's eye. He felt frigid inside, colder than he ever had in his life; numb inside, like those words were deadening his nerves and darkening his vision. He was cold, and yet underneath it was a raging inferno; the racing fire of every feeling bottled up for years that seemed like decades building up in one moment in his dead heart, a fierce pain coursing through his body and gathering once again, yet in his wrists, begging to be released from his body in a final goodbye. He had never felt this way before. In a split second his life had ended, but he was forced to live through this; his only purpose had been taken from him. She was that purpose, and he raged against himself trying to understand why she would so willingly give away all he had worked for, all he had suffered for: didn't she know that he loved her? Didn't she know that he sould do anything for her to prove that? Did she not understand the one simple fact that she had been, is, and will always be the only person who would hold his heart with the same intensity? These three words were almost the ones he had written for her, yet had never quite gotten around to letting her hear. deep down, he had always known, from the moment he met her, that there was no future for them, and that she would never love him, nor even like him, more than a mere friend. The words were harmless to the one that she said them about, but they were worse than a shot to the heart for him, the one who loved Her. She had said "I love him".