HeartBeat

Chapter 27

Chapter 26

Chase

My eyes trace every inch of the woman currently walking away from me. My Hazel Eyes. I feel a twinge of heat against my neck but ignore it, as a more settled filled me. She didn't deny it. Instead, her eyes had turned to me with heat, and the same need that filled me. It didn't last too long of course. Her scowl is also why, for some reason I'm desperately falling in love with her. Still thinking it, even to myself is madness. In love, after two conversations, one of those were to disparage my character.

In that moment I think I hated her. I hated her for seeming so tall before me and making me feel as small as I've ever felt. But I found truth in her words, and as they say, there is a thin line between love and hate. Messed up sure. With how large she got in that moment, mouth filled with venom, my hate had turned to admiration, near fucking worship, as she seemed to transform into a goddess.

I sigh. Turning away from her direction as she walked away with Jess and Nila. The more I tried to rationalize what I feel for Charlotte Bowe, the more my mind gets tangled. She didn't know me, yet she fired shots of acid my way. She made me question myself. I was herald of some sort of prince in this city. People had circled around me all my life, throwing compliments at me, as if I had begged them too. I pretended that I was normal, as the others did. We called it being humble. Yet we never stopped anyone from calling us princes and worshipping us with flattery.

Maybe we never noticed the wrong in it. It just was. We were popular, all our lives. Always surrounded by a crowd who smiled. And we...I smiled back. And those were the ones I saw. I called by name. Not the ones that didn't surround me, not the ones who didn't smile. My ego was a forerunner for a lot of my actions, for most of my life. I had taken my wealth for granted more times than I could count. Memories from a past I had left behind rise up.

Unlike them, I hadn't needed to be there. Some of those men I had once known, had bled for the win, for their livelihood, for their families. While I bled because I needed to feel pain. I needed to release all the strangled energy anger and violence brought.

I'm unsure why these thoughts have surfaced again. Maybe it was the pool comment from earlier. I look at said pool glittering with the tiles that filled it. My hands shove themselves into my pockets, alone now, left to start the grill, while the other go and change into their swimsuits.

So, with how much she made me think, and feel, why am I drowning so desperately in my need for her? Maybe because the fact of the matter was, as much as Hazel Eyes is right, she is also wrong.

If I go off her words, I am nothing but an egotistical narcist. Someone who lives and breathes off of the worship of others. Someone who goes to charity events and pretend to be someone good. Someone uncaring and so lost in their privilege that their blinded to everything else. Charlotte Bowe doesn't know me. No matter how deep our feelings, she doesn't know me, and I don't know her.

I am not just some privileged asshole. A little self-centered yeah. But what human being on this fucked up planet isn't. My ego is sizable sure, I mean I have folk heralding me as a prince like bachelor. It can explode anyone's head. I've made many fucked mistakes. I've done stupid things, and let this...little world I live in, become lonelier due to my arrogance. I have a lot to work on. But I'm not a bad person, and I'll like to make sure I'm the best person for myself, my brother, my mom, and friends...and for my Hazel Eyes.

She'll get to know me and I her. Truly know. Our feelings are there and aren't going anywhere. No matter the insanity of them, their there. Love. I don't want to think about the how and why of it anymore. I just want to feel. For whatever reason, I believe that its possible to release all my restraints I've lived with. For some reason, some part of me wants to show her all that I am made of, all that I am. Slowly yes. But one day, she'll know every bit I have to offer. And I'll take all her venom, and all that rage I see in her. I'll take that pain, that I see too, and I know it all, and I'll grow just as tall as that goddess I had seen the night. I'll grow just as tall, and kneel at her feet, so I can still bask in her glory, but be more of a proper man for her.