♪-Chapter 3
If I tell the world, I'll never say enough
'Cause it was not said to you
And that's exactly what I need to do if I'd end up with you
A bright light burns through my closed eyelids as I rustle around. My muscles and joints felt sore and unused.
What happened?
Should I give up or should I just keep chasing pavements
Even if it leads nowhere?
Or would it be a waste even if I knew my place
Should I leave it there?
My eyes felt like lead and I couldn’t open them. No matter how much I tried. The voice continued singing, their voice gracefully steeping up into the air. Despite my momentary blindness, I found myself relaxing under their lilting tone.
Sadness and an emotion I couldn’t understand filled their voice as they sang the lines of the song.
Should I give up or should I just keep chasing pavements
Even if it leads nowhere?
I build myself up and fly around in circles
Wait then as my heart drops and my back begins to tingle
Finally could this be it?
Their words danced in the air, twirling about in my head and casting shadows within my mind. It was beautiful, intoxicating.
I struggle to open my eyes again and a strangled noise leaves my lips from my exertion.
The singing voice stopped.
“Here,” a deep, smooth voice offered, propping me up on my pillow.
I couldn’t see. Was i- was I blind? I feel something wrapped around my face and I try to pull it off.
Panic sets in and I start to trash about. Who was this person?
“Hey,” the voice sooths, gripping my arm.
Oh God. Help. I attempt to clear my throat and a half choked sound leaves my lips as I try to unhook the machines attached to my arms. Im being attacked. My foot comes into contact with something hard and it falls to the ground, an unharmonious sound of echoing strings meeting my ears.
I’m aware of a voice trying to calm me down but all I can hear is the resounding rush in my head.
“Please. Please!” the voice, begs trying to restrain me.
“I won’t hurt you, I swear!” the voice says to me.
I stiffen but stop struggling, taking in the erratic beep of a machine next to me.
I hear a sigh of relief as a weight plops down onto the bed next to me.
My heart beat races and I find myself unconsciously slinky away.
I was scared.
Fearful really.
“Sorry,” the voice mumbles, taking my hand. “ My names Teegan by the way.”
Teegan. A pounding hammered painfully in my temples, preventing me from speaking, so I only nod in silence.
As the frantic beating of the heart machine slowly fades away, I hear the door slam open. The cold air washes over me and I feel Goosebumps prickling up my arms as I feel my free hand being taken. Something cold is pressed to it.
“Hi Aria, my name is doctor stones and from what I’ve heard, you’re a hero,” a dark, gruffly voice says. He releases the cold object from my arm.
I don’t move.
A hero? What did I do to make myself a hero?
The person who was holding my hand tightens their grasp and I bite my lip.
When I open my mouth a raspy choke comes out and I cough roughly to dislodge it.
“Here,” the person holding my hand says. I feel something cool touch my lips and I drink eagerly, my parched throat aching.
I hear the scape of a chair across the floor and a heavy sigh as the doctor sits.
“Questions?” he asks knowingly.
I nod fervently. “Why can I,” I clear my throat. “Why can’t I see? Am i-…blind…?” I ask fearfully.
The doctor laughs and I turn my head in his direction in bewilderment. Why was he laughing? Was losing your sight something to laugh about?
Anger boils in my and I grit my teeth.
The laughter calms down and the doctor clears his throat.
“Your vision will return in a few minutes. Sometimes after head traumas, things like hearing or vision are temporarily disabled due to the damage of the frontal lobe and temporal lobe. However, you are very lucky that your head trauma was nothing serious.”
Oh yay me. I’m not dead.
I nod dumbly and sit silently as the doctor checks my vitals.
“Alrighty then,” the doctor says after checking all my vitals. “You should have your vision back in a few moments, are you hungry or anything?”
I shake my head in negative.
“Ok then,” he says. “I’ll have the nurses check on you in an hour. You’re going to have to stay the night so we can make sure it’s not serious trauma. Till then, have a nice day miss Cadence,” the doctor says, his footsteps sounding distant as the door opens and closes.
Mystery boy holding my hand doesn’t say anything and neither do i.
After a few minutes of sitting in thick air, black distorted paints of color appear in my vision and I blink frantically as I see bits of objects.
Staring at the ceiling, I wait numbly for the black dots to give way to the pieces of color.
I don’t know how long we sat there, but Teegan begins to hum the song that I heard earlier.
My ears pick up the slow, paced-beat of chasing pavements.
“How did the doctor know my name?” I ask him, stopping him mid hum.
He laughs nervously. “Well you see, I had to go through your bag to see if you had anyone to contact.”
Instead of being angry, I felt a small amount of curiosity.
“Did you call my parents?”
“…” I wish I could see his facial expression. Teegan pauses in reluctance.
“Yes.”
“And did they answer?” I ask, trying to keep my tone light. It doesn’t matter whether or not they did. It shouldn’t matter…
“No…”
My heart sinks.
“But they did call back. I just didn’t answer it because I was to busy… you know… you woke up when they called,” he rushed to explain.
Oh.
“And what did they say?” I ask, my voice wavering.
Teegan clears his throat and begins to trace patterns on my hand with his thumb absent mindingly.
“They said…- here, you might as well listen for yourself,” Teegan says gently, placing my phone in my hands.
“No.” I say sharply. I feel him shrink back and I instantly feel guilty. “Sorry, what I mean is that I would like to regain my full vision again before I do…”
“Understandable,” Teegan says chuckling. My shoulders relax and I can see the clock resting across from me on the wall.
Just as the last fluorescent blurbs fade from my vision, I shake Teegan’s hand in excitement.
“What! What is it!” he exclaims, his deep voice sounding worried.
I blink. Sliver ash colored orbs meet mine and all I can’t do is stare in stupor.
The small speckles of blue were rich in color and stood out like turquoise against the dark gray in his eyes.
My eyes traveled down to meet his firm jaw and nice nose, his midnight hair covering a bit of his eyes.
“Are you ok?” he breathes, brushing my hair out of the way.
“I can see,” I say breathily.
“I can breath,” I say again smiling in relief.
“I can see!!!” I exclaim, sitting up abruptly.
The walls spin about and I suddenly feel like Dorothy in the midst of a tornado as I nearly fall off the bed, face forward.
“Whoa,” Teegan says, catching the upper half of my body as I nearly slipped off.
Im braced across his arm, his other arm gripping the bed railings.
Gripping his arms, I find it firm and muscular, yet not over muscular.
Oh gosh. Now I was creeping.
My face flushes beet red and teegan carefully leans me back against the propped pillows.
I mumble a thanks, beyond embarrassed. The hospital gown crinkles uncomfortably and I can honestly say that no girl wants to talk to an extremely attractive person wearing…this atrocious, hospital gown.
“To eager to meet the ground again?” he teases me, his eyes turning bright.
The sudden clatter of my phone falling to the floor saves me from my reply and I stare blankly at it as teegan picks it up.
“You want to call them?” he asks me, tossing the phone lightly to me. It lands on my lap and I finger the sheets nervously as he cocks his head in confusion.
“Or you don’t have to with me here, I can step out,” Teegan offers, his dark eyes staring into mine.
“no no,” I reassure, laughing at his conclusion to my reluctance.
“ill do it…right now…” I say tentatively, pressing speed dial and lifting it to my ear.
“you don’t have to leave,” I speak up as teegan makes a movement to leave.
Realizing how clingy that sound I lower my head in embarrassment but Teegan says nothing, only a small smile teasing me on his lips.
“You have one voicemail,” the techno voice says, I bite my lip, squinting because my eyes feel dry.
“Hey sweetie, it’s mom. We heard about your incident and luckily the doctor says your going to be just fine. Only a scratch he said,” my mother laughs in the phone and I grimace. Incident. Right. “Anyway sweetie pie, we’re going to stay the night with Carmina because she has to stay overnight. If you get released early, called George. You have the keys and everything so we trust you. Ooh I got to go! Bye love!” my mother rushes.
I find my throat clogging, I wanted to scream. Teegan glances up at me from his guitar, worried.
I wanted something close to “are you ok? You were nearly hit by a car!” or “oh no, my baby almost died!” but no. Not from them. They couldn’t even see me in freaking person.
Tears fill my eyes. You know how people say blinking a lot, biting your lips or staring at the ceiling helps the tears go down? Yeah. Not working.
A tear slips out of eyes and before I even have the chance to wipe it away, Teegan’s there.
“Hey,” he whispers softly setting his guitar down. His weight makes the bed steep a little bit to the ground and the way his hands mold perfectly against my face makes a strange fluttering feeling fill my stomach.
He wipes away the tear with his thumb reminding me of what he did at the accident. Except, now instead of wiping away rain, he was wiping away my tears.
Oh my gosh. I try to pull away. “Sorry, I just get emotional… and this…. this is embarrassing,” I mutter, flustered.
Teegan tightens his hold on my face and pulls me closer.
I flinch, not used to someone touching my face.
Normal strangers did meet strangers like this.
“Are you ok?’ he asks me, genuinely concerned. Something in his tone of voice evokes a string of emotion within me and his words float like music in the air. More tears slip out and I can’t hold it in anymore.
I couldn’t even believe I was doing this.
Teegan doesn’t say anything. He just pulls me closer, tucking me under his chin so im resting against his shoulders.
At some point I wonder if my tears are soiling his shirt, but Teegan stays silent, allowing me to release everything.
I cried because I was tired.
Because I was upset that my parents didn’t even care.
I cried because I was embarrassed.
I cried because I felt so weak and vulnerable.
I don’t know how long we sat there, but the tears on his shirt mapped out my sorrow.
The still and quiet air was a constant reminder of what I was missing and my abrupt half chokes half hiccups filled in the space.
Should I give up or should I just keep chasing pavements
Even if it leads nowhere?
The tears filled in the words that I couldn’t say, the emotions I couldn’t explain and the pain I couldn’t hold in.
But all that mattered was that I wasn’t alone.
That while my tears fell in a patterned beat onto the sheets and increased to the climax over time, I wasn’t alone.
My tears made a song in that silent and dreary room.
But Teegan was the only one to listen.
A/N- the italisized words are lyrics to chasing pavements by adele. I hope you like this chapter. its a bit of a filler but it'll get better promise! :)
a big thank you to shady234 for the beautiful cover!!!
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