When you can't have what you want

It isn't as though this hasn't happened to everyone at some point. For the younglings around here it will happen, probably pretty soon, but it didn't make it any easier to feel that way, to know all that, and to understand what had to be done.
She looked into his eyes and thought, "Oh, God, I am so cruel. I am so evil to do this."
And she could see the gears turning and the works behind what she was feeling, and she pulled the levers and pushed the buttons, anyway, because she had never felt this way and it was....really nice. He was really nice. It was hard to stop.
"I know better," She thought. "I only look at him because it makes him feel something and it makes me feel something." It was like a balloon full of something sour or tart bursting somewhere near her lower spine, and the liquid swirled out in slow motion and puckered all her nerves and ligaments with its tangy bite. It was as though the light in the room itself came alive, and a fog of shadow moved around her. She looked into his eyes just long enough for this to happen, and then she looked away in regret, because she knew better.
"I'm breaking his heart," she lamented.
It was about time for her to speak.
She addressed him,
"You know, the more you love me now, the more you are going to suffer."
It was such a dumb thing to say, so overdone in drama. Everything she was feeling was already far overdone in drama.
"I don't want you to suffer."
She cursed herself for being such a loser.
She looked at him to see how he was taking it. She wanted too many conflicting things. She wanted him to be stirred by how she loved him in this moment, so he would love her more. In the same motivation she wanted to feel heroic and dramatic.
But she also really did care and she wanted to protect his heart from breaking in her hands. She regretted ever taking hold of his heart in the first place.
And then she liked the power she felt, bending a man's soul. After so much time and so much aging and learning, she still felt she had to overcome a sense of helplessness.
And then she just wanted to be in love, she searched his eyes and face to see if she could convince herself that she could have him, after all, and that they could be together. But she came back disappointed, because she really wasn't attracted to him enough, she didn't like the looks of him, or his character enough. She couldn't get past the judgment that he wasn't good enough for her. He certainly wasn't the right match for her.
And then there were the feelings themselves, the realization that she was in a room with someone who's feelings for her were filling the air all around them. Someone who had already touched her, though it seemed like nothing, as she never had been touched before. She had loved him and he had loved her and they embraced, and around the encirclement of their arms was the encirclement of their feelings. And this had never happened before. Certainly her body had endured a lot more than this, but never with her feelings so involved.
It pained to feel how close they were, how alone they were, and how their bodies--as far as she had assumed--seemed to long for one another. At least she wanted to think that was true. It was a really sappy scenario. It was even a trashy one, but the feel of it rolled over her.
So she thought all of these ridiculous things for a while, but fortunately stuck to the conviction that in spite of all of this prickly fuzziness overtaking her veins and her gut and making her want to swoon, this still wasn't right and she didn't picture herself with this nice guy for the rest of her life. She acknowledged that she wanted something different. She also reminded herself that she had to be, to some degree, deceiving herself, because he really didn't indicate that he felt the same way, or any of that mess about their bodies longing for one another or anything.
So that's the truth of what happened. What is important it what she did next.

***
"Do you love her?"
***