Midale

Chapter Twenty-Nine: All a Game of Power

"I know you regret it."

The words came out cold. A little too cold which only meant that he was trying hard to sound that way. It hurt. It hurt that I was making him hurt.

"I regret it because I know you don't." I said. My voice sounded resigned, like I had had this conversation with myself a thousand times.

"Why should I?"

"Miles, I think I have gone about this all wrong. I always tried to tell you why we weren't good for each other by using Cassidy as an excuse. I know I want you, I really do." My plan was to go on, the sentence in my head hadn't ended there. But like seen before, my mouth had a mind of its own.

We were both finally facing each other. Miles moved closer to me on the footpath we were both sitting on. My mind screamed danger and warning alarms ran through out my body, but I stayed glued to where I was. Our knees were pressed against each other's and his hand came up to caress a side of my face.

"Then why do you have to make this so hard? Why do you keep pulling away from me?" He asked. There was a rare vulnerability to his eyes then and the Miles I saw, the Miles he let me see, was not a side of him he let out on the surface. Maybe I was the only one he let in.

Even as I thought it, I felt a pang at my heart. Had he let Cassidy in too? Did he let her see this side of him? Would she have treated him better if he had?

"Because I can never do you justice." I said. "I can never love you with all my heart, like you deserve to be loved."

His hand dropped from my face and for a moment he seemed so sad and tired, I wanted to kill myself. Then his mouth broke into a somber smile.

"We all deserve a lot of things, doesn't mean we get them all." He said. He still wasn't looking at me but I felt the pressure of his words. I knew that Miles had never had it easy. The fight that killed both my parents also took away his father. In a way, it didn't seem worse than my fate because he still had his mother. But she was never really there for him, not in the way he needed her. I had Emma and my grandmother that loved me so much, I sometimes forgot I was an orphan.

His mother, on the other hand, had made things even harder for him. Only after a year of her husband's death, she had married another guy. Miles' stepfather was a busy businessman and was hardly ever around to cause him much trouble, but because of him, Miles' mother had also become increasingly less available to her only son. Sometimes I thought she accepted the role of the principal of our school so she could finally have a reason to stay and maybe heal her relationship with her son. It was just sad that she needed any other reason than her son to come back. And unsurprisingly, when she had, Miles hadn't been interested in spending time with her.

Maybe he still hadn't forgiven her or maybe it was just that his mother was not what he sought comfort in. Anymore. He was never used to her being there for him. And maybe he had gotten used to doing just fine without her. He didn't feel like he needed her anymore just when she felt she needed him.

I hadn't been around to watch Miles suffer through his years, but Emma had kept me up to date. Sometimes she would tell me things to the point and sometimes she spilled random things and I had picked up what life was like for Miles on my own. In my own way, I knew him.

When Miles' mother had to be away on trips with her second husband, she had asked Fiona to watch over Miles. Those trips stretched so long and became so often that it wasn't long before Miles was living at the Institute rather than at home. In a way neither of us had a home.

My eyes flitted to Miles again. He sat there watching the stars but I didn't feel like the need to turn towards the sky to do the same because his eyes were more luminous than any star I could find in the sky. Those eyes though, were different now. I remembered a bright flash in them as a kid, always trying to offer help and protect those who needed protection. That was still there but the brightness, the happiness had dimmed considerably, being almost invisible. I couldn't even count the times he had been there for me and what had I given him? Pain?