"Desperately," Alan said heavily, the sadness of that fact feeling overwhelming. Just picturing her face in his mind, the way he'd left her that day, it was enough to make him feel like the lowest of the low. "I thought this time it was different and that we were going to be together forever. And... in some ways it was different. Because I never stopped loving her but-"
He took a deep breath and another drink. "But I can't be with someone who thinks that gods can do whatever they want to humans. Doesn't matter how much I love her, how much I want her, how much everything inside me cries out to go find her even now. That's too big of a thing."