Pandora's Box

Chapter 5

Spring, 2016
North Halstead Street
Chicago

This is new. Rhys thought, as he shuffled his feet in the chilly spring breeze.

Anthony often joked that if he stood there any longer, he would have permanent foot prints in the sidewalk. "You could start your own Walk of the Stars there!" His best friend would laugh. Rhys would throw a pen in his direction, and most likely miss as Anthony would stroll away. He would pack his documents and folders away by 6PM, and make it out to Halstead Street where he would wait, and wait, till the blonde head exited the doors of the Leigh Gallery.

She was taking very long though, just on that particular day. He had been waiting since 6PM, and finally, 3 hours later, the bell rang. His honeyed brown eyes shot up, and he drank in the sight that was ambrosia for his gaze. One would think that after two years, one girl should be out of his system already. But Pandora Eve Talbott wasn't just any girl to him.

The moment she clicked the lock and started her walk back, Rhys's pace easily followed behind hers, careful to keep a distance away. And for the fifth week in a row, he marveled at how two years could do so little to him, yet do so much to her.

He had seen her name in the gallery's window. A chance meeting, for he had to meet Benedict for supper one day along the street. Rhys almost didn't believe it. In fact, he had wanted to believe that some other girl with the name Pandora was an artist as well, and she too had a showcase. But they were like magnets, always ending up together. Unable to withhold his curiosity, Rhys had lurked around the day of the opening. When he saw the flash of blonde hair, he could've swore his heart stopped.

For two years, he had agonised over going to Kansas City, just to get a glimpse of her. But he had promised her parents to never seek her out. Yet here she was, in Chicago. He wasn't doing anything wrong by keeping watch over her, was he?

His eyes flashed when he noticed someone else fall into step behind Pandora, just in front of him. In a baggy jersey, low cut and torn jeans, messy hair which color he couldn't even discern anymore from the dirt caking them, Rhys could almost swear that the male was homeless. Just like any other homeless miscreant on the streets of Chicago. Can't be that big of an issue, could it? No need for the gun in his belt holster to be unearthed then.

Quickening his pace, Rhys quickly slung an arm across the man, effectively cupping his hand across his mouth to prevent any noise as he hissed. "Go near her, and you're a dead man walking." he warned in his darkest of tones, before proceeding to shove the shaggy man to a corner, and running towards Pandora as she turned a corner.

He never imagined she would turn around and almost knock into him.

His reflexes were automatic. Ryland Jarett lived to protect Pandora Talbott, and he instinctively caught her around her waist before she fell.

"Whoah, sorry there. Did I startle you?" he quickly asked, as his mind ran a mile a minute. This was not part of the plan. Anthony is going to skin me. Howard is going to gut me. That's if Mr. Mrs. Talbott don't do it first. Shit, what do I do what do I do! And then his brain froze the moment she looked at him.

Those blue eyes that always mesmerised him, where flecks of green swam in its depth. How many times had his dreams been tinted with blue, as if he was looking at the world  through her eyes? Rhys couldn't count the amount of times he had slept with a woman in his drunken stupor in the first six months of her being gone, just because he wanted to be reminded of her when he woke up. Anthony's intervention had stopped him from further sleeping around, but that didn't mean his chest didn't hurt each time he met someone with the same shade.