For Your Eyes Only

34

Nate had looked away during my pathetically unrehearsed speech. His hands have shoved themselves so deeply in his pockets it reminds me of how my chest feels with each aching moment. He could rip through my chest cavity and it still wouldn't amount to the pain I feel at this moment. 

"It hurts to look at you," Nate finally says and his fist clenches around the stem of my heart and yanks. "You are the one person I let see the real me and you betrayed that. Do you know what that feels like?"

Him saying this makes me sob because it means so much more than if an average person had said it. After months of claiming he wanted nothing more in the world than to see me, he now couldn't even stand to do so.

I physically smooth my hand over my chest to ease to aching pain of my heart.

His next words shut my body down completely. "But the thought of never hearing your laugh or simply holding your hand hurts more. That's what makes this so confusing."

I gasp in a breath again and clutch the paper in my hands tighter.

"It's insane how I am so mad at you and still want you so badly," Nate continues, his words bouncing in my head making my own vision waver. "It's toxic, what I feel for you. It always has been."

It didn't matter if I told him that I didn't want the boys to go through with it, that I wanted to see a movie and get pizza instead. That simply didn't matter because it still happened and I still said nothing.

"I don't want this to be over, Nate. I can't bare it." I don't care how I sound. I need him and I need him to forgive me before I can even think of moving on with my life. Which even I knew there was no moving on from Nathaniel Haynes. A boy like this doesn't come along everyday.

"I don't know if I can trust you anymore."

"You can," I insist and make the bold move of moving closer to him. "You can, I swear it."

Nate surprises me by cupping my face and swiping his thumbs under my eyes to rid my tears. My eyes pull closed at the sweet pleasure of his warm skin against mine. His eyes, ones he said he couldn't look at me with, latch onto my face as his brows lower in the way that they do.

"I have come to the conclusion that I don't blame you."

"What?" I open my eyes and momentarily lose my breath at the way his are connecting with mine. My heart rate spikes.

"I don't blame you for the loss of my sight, Kelly."

"How could you not?" I sniffle. "I was there. I knew what happened all along and I said nothing. For that, I'm more to blame than physically placing that stupid dynamite into your experiment. I said nothing, Nate. I said nothing and you lost your eye sight."

"And I have it back now," he states. But his eyes remain sad.

"How can you even say that? Did they not tighten the bolts and wires in your brain when stitching you back up?"

Nate surprises me once again with a small smile but it dims in a nanosecond. "Might have to have your dad take another look at it."

I manage a watery smile back but smiling is something foreign to me over the past few weeks. It feels strange on me.

"Which is something that I want to thank you about," Nate says slowly. "If it wasn't for your dad doing his part in my surgery, I don't know if I would have the outcome that I have right now. He even got it to be pro bono on his part. He said it was all your idea. It really helped my family out financially, Kelly, and he's the best of the best, so... Thank you."

I stare up at him in shock? My father took hand in Nate's surgery? Why didn't he tell me this? He let me mope around for days with the desire to know how Nate was doing after his surgery and he never said anything.