Chapter 7: Love Across Oceans
775 Words
Love Across Oceans
The sky over Paris was gray the day Isabella left again.
Her father said it was “for her own safety,” but she knew better. It wasn’t safety he wanted — it was silence. He had pulled her out of the city, enrolled her in another private university in Switzerland, and made sure there would be no trace of Ethan Hayes anywhere near her new life.
As the car drove her away from the only city that had ever felt like freedom, Isabella pressed her forehead against the window, watching the streets disappear. She had no phone, no email access, and barely enough courage left to breathe. But inside her coat pocket was a folded scrap of paper — Ethan’s handwriting, the last thing he’d given her before their separation.
> “For when you feel trapped — look at the sky. It’s the same one I’m under.”
She read it over and over until the ink began to blur.
Back in New York, Ethan returned to his small apartment, a ghost of the man who had boarded the plane just months before. The city felt colder now, emptier. The diner where he’d worked was the same, but every sound, every smell, every face reminded him of her.
He tried to move on. He tried to tell himself that she was gone for good, that her father had won. But every night, when he picked up his pencil, her face was all he could draw.
He sold those sketches for rent, but some he couldn’t part with — the ones where she was laughing, where her eyes were alive. Those he kept stacked neatly beside his bed, like memories he couldn’t bury.
One evening, as he was leaving the diner, a letter arrived — sent from a friend of a friend who worked in a gallery overseas. The handwriting was messy but unmistakable.
Dear Ethan,
I don’t know if this will ever reach you, but I need to believe it might. They moved me again — somewhere cold and quiet. I don’t see anyone I know, and I’m not allowed to leave campus. But I still look at the sky, like you said. And sometimes, I swear I feel you looking back.
Isabella
Ethan’s chest tightened as he read it. She was alive, still fighting, still reaching across the ocean. He sat down, grabbed a napkin from the counter, and began to write.
Bella,
You don’t have to look hard. I never stopped watching the same sky. I’m still here — working, saving, dreaming. I’ll find a way to see you again. I promise.
He mailed it the next morning, even though he didn’t have an address to send it to. He just wrote the only words he could:
> Isabella Carter — wherever the wind takes her.
Months passed. Letters found strange paths — through friends, through strangers, through luck. Sometimes weeks went by without a word. Sometimes, two arrived at once.
They spoke about everything — their dreams, their fears, the quiet hope that someday they’d meet again without the world standing in the way.
“Do you still draw?” she wrote once.
“Every day,” he replied. “But it’s always you.”
Still, time was merciless.
Ethan’s job grew harder, the weight of bills and loneliness pressing down like a second skin. Some nights, he’d sit by his window and watch the rain, whispering her name just to remember what it sounded like.
Across the sea, Isabella was living in a mansion that felt more like a cage. Her parents praised her grades, her composure, her obedience — but no one noticed the emptiness behind her smile.
Every night, she’d stand on her balcony, clutching the pendant he’d given her, whispering into the dark. “Just a little longer, Ethan. Just a little longer.”
Years began to blur.
Ethan’s art started getting attention — small galleries, magazine features, local buzz. People called his sketches “raw, nostalgic, heartbreak in pencil.” They didn’t know that every line was a memory of her.
And though he’d never admit it out loud, he was waiting.
Waiting for a day when he could afford to stand in front of her again — not as a poor student, but as a man worthy of the love he’d never stopped believing in.
He began saving again. Plane tickets. Passports. Hope.
But time wasn’t waiting for either of them.
Because while Ethan dreamed of a reunion, Isabella’s father was already arranging something else — a future she would never choose.
A future that didn’t have Ethan Hayes in it.
- Writer
