The Gentle Art Of Healing

09┃green eyes

N I N E

G R E E N  E Y E S

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gazes & decisions

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            YOU KNOW HOW SOMETIMES you just naturally feel afraid of something without ever actually experiencing it first-hand?

That’s how I felt about being chased.

I didn’t really know how, or why, this fear started. It just did. I suppose I just didn’t like the feeling of someone running after me with the intention of catching me when all I wanted was to get away from them.

Especially since it always felt like the more you ran, the less distance you covered, because somehow, they always caught up to you. And I guess the more you thought that, the more real it became—much like many other things in life.

So before the thought had even managed to finish itself off in my mind, a hand was already closing around my wrist, hold strong and firm, preventing me from going any further.

I stopped mid step abruptly, tendrils of my hair blocking my vision, losing my balance, but his other hand reached out to steady me by my elbow, the other not loosening the grip on my wrist.

I turned around slightly, panting heavily, trying desperately to catch my breath, but it seemed that each breath of air I took, the more I felt my lungs constrict.

Unfairly enough, he seemed to be in a complete opposite situation from me, having not even broken a sweat after the sprint. Instead, his gaze was fixed unrelentingly on my face, an unreadable expression on his own.

“Let me go,” I said quietly, but firmly, such that he knew I wasn't joking.

He didn’t.

“Peyton, I–“ he started but never got to finish.

“Let me go,” I repeated, slowly this time, because maybe that would help my request to register in his head.

“I–“ he began again, but seemed to think better of it, because he snapped his mouth shut after.

Only when we stood there in that tense silence, did I finally realise how awfully close he was to me. And I wasn’t saying that in a good ‘oh-my-gosh-Colin-Sterling-is-so-close-to-me’ way, I said it in a scared, terrified, ‘oh-my-gosh-Colin-Sterling-is-so-close-to-me’ way.

Because I had revealed to him a part of me that was locked up, buried, hidden away. And for good reason. If anyone, anyone, found out the truth, none of them would ever look at me the same; he wouldn’t look at me the same.

And I didn’t know why, but somewhere, somehow, that started mattering  to me. And I hated that.

I hated that for a moment, I had considered telling him the truth, considered letting him in. And the best part was, I hadn’t even known him for more than two months. But that was exactly what made Colin Sterling, Colin Sterling.

Whenever you were around him, you just felt like you could do anything, be anything you wanted. Because there was just something about those green eyes; those green eyes that didn’t look at you and saw what they wanted to see, but saw you for what you actually were.

And the turning point?

They never looked away.

From where I was, I could smell the strong scent of his cologne. Fresh, radiant, but yet with another touch to it, one that I couldn’t really place. It was like the kind of smell you would associate with the aftermath of a storm—not the kind that ends with a rainbow, but the kind that gave you the feeling that everything wasn’t over just yet.

But what that ‘everything’ was, you weren’t exactly sure.

I could feel his breath fanning against the skin on my neck, could see the way he pursed his lips every few seconds, trying to think of what to say, or what to do, if he should let me go just like I asked him to, and if that would mean letting me go forever.

Because let’s face it, he had made more progress with me than anyone else out of all the time that we had been in this school. He came in first in getting reactions out of me, in hearing the most number of words come out from my mouth, in seeing just a sliver of the girl I used to be.

But now, now everything was different. And he knew that.

I knew that.

So once that thought had registered in my head, I ripped my hand out of his grip, breaking the only contact we had, stepping back, such that I no longer smelt his scent, but the floor polish instead, and his heat wasn’t there to warm me anymore, but instead cold air blew flush against my face.

I held my hand close to me, cradling it like a baby, rubbing my fingers over the spot, as if his hands had been on fire, and I had just gotten badly scalded.

Truth was, I was simply trying to erase any form of feeling that I had had, which would remind me that his skin had ever touched mine.

Hurt flashed across his irises, and instead of disappearing like I thought they would, it seemed to stay there. It didn’t bother me, though. Not when I knew what I had to do.

Trying as best as I could to ignore his green eyes—his green eyes that held so much suspicion and doubt, his green eyes that held even more warmth and concern—I turned around, and did the very thing I had planned on doing in the first place.

I left.

This time, he didn’t follow me.

And somehow, that just made me even surer that whatever small things we had had—hearing his stupid jokes in class, meeting him in the most random of places, seeing him everywhere no matter how hard I tried not to—was all gone.

All because of an ever present wound whose healing process was halted by his green eyes. His terrifying, horrifying, petrifying green eyes that saw right through me, that saw every disgusting, dark, ugly part of me, that saw every wound that never healed right, every scar that served as reminders of who I truly was.

His green eyes that I could still feel boring into the back of my head even as I lay curled up in my bed. His green eyes that I saw every time I blinked, tasting the salt of my tears each time.

And the scariest part of all?

Despite all that, they still never, ever looked away.