Heal Me

Chapter 5

  

   

    

He shouldn't have yelled at her. He shouldn't have used those words... the instant they rolled out of his mouth he regretted them. He regretted the way he acted so much that his heart ached to go after her and apologize. He wanted to say how sorry he was, how he didn't know that he would hurt her so much.

  

As Evangeline turned and stormed out of the park he opened his mouth to say something but nothing came out. So he watched her leave and not once looking back...

    

    
He might hadn't realized it yet but he felt empty again; cold as always... as a proof of the guilt he felt, of the pain he caused but also received after the blue-eyed doctor told him everything.

But that feeling was ever so slightly eased out of his mind and body when Evangeline sat with him. She was annoyingly insistent and comforting at the same time. How was that possible? How could she make him feel all those things, taking him from the soul that died along with almost everything he had ever loved to a whole new world of questions and contradictory emotions?

It was so much more than he could process at the moment... he didn't have enough energy in him to even think about it.

"Shit!" he damned himself out loud and leaned against a leafless tree, supporting his body in his right arm. He felt that oh-so-familiar guilt spreading through him again, like a poisonous vine, making his whole body cringe.

 

He could only hurt the ones around him... that was the single response he was able to give. He knew he certainly couldn't go back to the teenager he was before the accident. There was no hope for that. Not now, not ever...

  

He didn't deserve the life he had had; not after what he had done ...

  

~
  

  

Two days had passed and Evangeline told herself to get over it, to stop thinking about what she should do... to stop thinking of him. But even after all he said to her, she still didn't want to let go. She had sworn to herself, and silently to him as well, that she would never give up on him, although they were practically complete strangers.

  

But since that morning, when he so bluntly pushed her away, she knew he needed someone. He was suffering and Evangeline could see right through him, like you could see a rock on the riverbed. The details, though, wouldn't reveal themselves unless you mustered up the courage to reach out, grab it from the freezing water and study it in the daylight.

  

So she took a deep breath and decided to keep her promise...

~

      

   

"Eva? " her mother called from the doorway, making her raise her head from all the photos scattered across the bed.

  

"Are you and dad ready to go out?"

  

"Uhmm... Yes."

"Then go. You deserve some time to yourselves. I'll take care of Addy so you don't have to worry about it." she beamed at her mother and looked back at the photos she took.