Collecting Misery

Chapter 5 - Part 2

A/N: Song The Lumineers - My Eyes.

*Unedited Version.

With a sharp intake of air, he was up on his feet. Just one look... That was all it had taken. He could always read my mind even if his wolf was too dazed to connect us. I gripped my dirty t-shirt as if that would help ease the sharp pain in my chest or the knot in my throat. No, it didn't help. 

I was choking with all these feelings that threatened to spill from my eyes in those dreaded tears. Still, I wouldn't look away from his beautiful eyes. They're only to look at you, he had said in the cheesiest way possible once. Paradoxically, his scent was the thing keeping my shattered pieces together, preventing me from breaking down into a sobbing mess. 

A tentative step toward him and he gasped and nearly took a step back, but he pulled his foot to its previous spot again. He rubbed the back of his neck and attempted to look away, but I wouldn't back down.

I took another step, this time keeping my chin high. There was no reason for me to feel self-conscious. He was the one who had failed me.

He met my eyes again and for a second the boyish face of my childhood friend and soulmate flashed before my eyes. I could see the one he was once. All those years that face had been happiness manifested in a person.

A typhoon, that's what he had been in my life. But, now, everything there was left seafoam and the remains of the destruction he had caused. The image faded quickly. Seafoam. The destruction persisted but I had started reparations already.

Once I was as close to him as these bars allowed me to, I smiled. "I hate you." 

He whimpered and lowered his head tilting it to the side to show his neck, his eyes made a simple plea: Take your revenge. He looked away slumping his shoulders. I hadn't said it out of spite. It was a fact that I had needed to state. That was only the beginning.

"Listen, last time we talked, I was afraid. I didn't say everything I needed to say." I chuckled and shook my head. I had barely said anything. I had been too busy crying and pleading with him. "In the back of my mind, I had faith. I hoped you would come to your senses. For months and months that hope was a candle in the darkness you had thrown me into. But, you never came. That candle died out. Now, I want you to look me in the eye while I tell you this."

A single soft whimper escaped his cracked lips when his gaze found my glare, but he didn't look away. His tall frame didn't look so imposing anymore. He had brought up all this on him.

I took a deep breath. I would need all the air possible in my lungs to vent out ten years of resentment. My nose had adapted to barely notice the stench that had tortured me so much when I'd first gotten here. It was possible to adapt to almost everything.

My body was a polluted temple that needed its overdue cleansing. Mind you, that cleansing would happen in one of the most filthy places I'd ever been. The irony.

"You and I grew up together. I can't even name the exact instant I fell in love with you. Maybe, it was when I was five and you comforted me over a scrapped knee. I still keep the plastic wrapping of the candy you gave me that day." Looking into his eyes while I reminded him of our past wasn't as difficult as I had thought. If someone should feel ashamed, it was him.

His lips curved into a small sad smile. There were many more moments like those. He must be thinking of his favorite ones.

"Or, when I was eleven and you snuck away from training to help me because I was in a public bathroom freaking out over my first period and had no female friends to get me pads. You got in so much trouble for just ditching training but never brought that up again." I sighed.