For a moment, he had stared at it, remembering all the dreams and fantasies he had built around that image.
"Why couldn't you see me?" Eric asked the image. "Why wasn't I enough?"
The paper crinkled as his grip tightened.
"Why him?" Eric's voice rose. "Why did it have to be Edward?"
Then, with a sound that was half sob, half scream, he tore the picture down the middle.
Then again.
And again.
Until Victoria's face was in pieces on his bedroom floor.
"I hate you," he sobbed, throwing the fragments. "I hate you, I hate you, I hate you."
But even as he said it, he knew it wasn't true.
He could never hate her.
That was the worst part of all.
The memory of that moment — his eighteen-year-old self destroying the symbol of his first real heartbreak — merged with his current pain as he sat outside the restaurant.
Eric's sobs echoed in the quiet street, raw and uncontrolled.
