Golden eyes watching our every move
Losing time without the sun or moon
For a few silent breaths, he can hear only the clamorous echoes of his own thoughts, his own confusion. Impossible to sort into any coherency, but still digging claws deep into the ache in his chest. He’s so foolish. So incredibly naive to believe that she might have belonged to him. To believe that there wasn’t someone else.
He takes another step back, shaking his head as though it might clear his thoughts. As though it might erase the memory of her scent, still hers, but changed. Wrong. All wrong.
Her words only tighten the knot in his chest, scraping the edges of the hollow pit in his stomach. If breath had been necessary, he would have been choking on it. I made a mistake. The words, so quietly whispered, are like a sledgehammer to his heart, crushing whatever hope he’d had left that she hadn’t been avoiding him on purpose. That it wasn’t him. That somehow, with time and patience, he could fix it.
“A mistake,” he echoes hollowly, the brightness of his golden eyes dimming, his voice, still impossibly soft, falling flat. “I see.”
He’d been a mistake for her, nothing more. A night that had changed his life had only been a mistake to her. He thought he’d known pain and loneliness before, but it was nothing compared to the weight that settles on his soul in the wake of her confession.
He takes another step backwards, his gaze dropping to the ground, unable to meet hers. Unable to bear the weight of her regret. It’s clear now he had intruded where he was not wanted. So clear now that she wished only to be with whoever had fathered her child. Closing his eyes, he takes another step back, her apologies feeling as empty and hollow as he does.
He swallows hard, fighting back the tears that threaten. He should go. He doesn’t know why she’d asked for him, but it’s clear he is not wanted here. Still, despite everything, he cannot hate her or wish her pain. She should have her happiness, even if he cannot have his. “Please be happy with him, at least,” he finally whispers, unable to hide the anguish in his voice, despite his best efforts. “It’ll be a beautiful baby, if it’s anything like you.”
His voice wavers over the last, but it hardly matters. He’s already pulling the shadows around him, disappearing into the ether. His parents had named him so aptly, hadn’t they? It seems it would be the only place that always welcomed him without question.
ether