What If He Didn't Die?

Chapter 28: A Mistake

Did that mean nothing had changed between us?

Did that mean we could start exactly where we'd left?

My subconscious laughed at me, mocking my stupidness. How could I even think nothing had changed? Everything had changed. With the unveiling of one truth, my world had turned upside down. The look in his eyes confirmed it, making the pain in my chest sharper.

My eyes had, had enough of his cold ones and I couldn't keep looking anymore. It was torturing. I drifted my eyes away from his face and they stopped at his tattooed chest which was visible through his half-unbuttoned white shirt.

His muscles were prominent on his translucent skin and the ink was contrastingly pleasing to my eyes in the dim light until I realised something, I shouldn't have. The scene in front of my eyes was somehow familiar. It was familiar but not clear. So familiar and yet I couldn't connect the strings. My forehead frowned slightly staring intensely at his chest, trying hard to remember, until it dawned on me. The horrible realisation.

It was familiar because this was exactly what I'd witnessed when I'd met him walking out of the teachers' parking lot the other day. Behind that girl in a messed-up shirt.

If there was any last part of my heart still safe and intact, it broke at that moment.

My lips fell apart abruptly as I struggled to escape the smothering feeling in my lungs. Tears had started welling up at the brim of my eyes and it was pitiful and pathetic because I used to never cry before him. Nothing ever made me cry until I met this boy. I wanted to blink, wipe the tears off, stop them before they could become the evidence of how msereble I was. But I couldn't. I had lost it all.

I felt it, alive and ever-growing. The pain. I was broken, beyond repair.

And yet, there he stood, flashing his cold eyes at me without any hesitation, his half-unbuttoned shirt, proudly telling the tale of another proud hookup.

The contrast hit me deep and for some wicked reason, I found it funny. A shallow chuckle escaped my lips while I looked away from his chest, still reluctant to meet his eyes.

"What's funny?" He snapped at me, his voice was harsher than earlier.

His peculiar tone and the abrupt question made my eyes land directly on him. I exhaled deeply as my face stood parallel to his.

I tried my best to reciprocate his cold feelings because I knew he could never reciprocate my burning ones.

What was funny he was asking. Apart from the contrast between our emotions, we actually had many other inappropriately funny things to laugh at. The answer to his question was at the tip of my tongue, but I fought against the urge of telling him, because that would only worsen things for the world.

I knew what exactly was the best thing to do at that moment. I didn't want to do it, because a part of me still wanted more. More time. More him. More us. But I had to act against it.

I shook my head briefly at my own train of battling thoughts as I directed my eyes and my steps, back towards the party.

I could've barely walked two steps when my cold wrist sensed electricity drive through it, travelling all around my body in a matter of seconds. My gaze averted to the origin of the current only to find his strong fingers wrapped unmovably around my skin.

I looked up at his eyes in the utter lack of understanding. What did he mean by that?

"You have no right to walk out on me like this." His baritone voice hit my ears and my eyes widened up in response while he only turned a darker shade of grey. In a way that made him look dangerous, even to me.

But refusing to let him get under my skin, I leaned up closer to his stiff face, my eyes fighting my will to look away. "And you have no right to stop and question me like this."

My response undoubtedly caught him off guard. I saw the evidence in his eyes, thought it hardly stayed there for a fraction of a second. The next moment, as if it meant nothing, his face turned cold again and he pulled me closer so that our faces were just a few breaths away.

"But you think you have the right to break my car."

Break his car? Car? That was all he had?

A hint of smirk lined my lips while my insides burned with angst. And I regretted saying it even before I did.

"Why not? When you believe that you have the right to break my heart and my trust."

His grip dropped off my wrist and I felt the blood that had stopped, rush to my fingers like electricity. But I stayed where I was and maintained our proximity. Maybe, I tried to give him the impression that I wasn't already regretting all of it.

Our eyes stayed locked into each other for what felt like an eternity.

"I-" he started and his voice made me shudder. "What?" His eyes narrowed while he aspat the word out.

What?

That was his answer? I accused him of breaking my heart and my trust and demanded the answers that I deserved out of him, and that was what I got.

This boy was hilarious.

A painful smile made its way to my face and I turned away. The disappointment was visible on my face when I bit my lower lip, shaking my head.

The silence between us made it easier for the loud music from the party swinging in the house behind me to reach our ears. With a last look at him, I took a step backwards. He looked at me as if searching for something, but I had no time, nor the patience, to keep up with his curiosity.

After a few more backward steps, I convinced myself to turn my back on him and started walking toward the inviting music. There was only one thing that this night had made clear to me; this night was a mistake.

My breathing was unevenly fast when I walked, my steps, however, were not. My legs seemed to not like the idea of leaving him behind, but I forced them because that was the only right thing I was doing the entire night.

And besides, he didn't even want me there.

"So this was why you kept hanging around me, so you could walk away when I finally want you around?"

My breath hitched in my throat as his words made their way to me. My legs stopped and taking another step was impossible. Doing anything was impossible. All my senses were compelled and hypnotised by his words. I'd never before heard his voice portraying that depth and sincerity.

It just hit me somewhere unknown and it was very difficult to even try to recover.

What he said- was it a question or a statement? How could he say something that intensely meaningful? A person as shallow as him.

Or was I the shallow one?

His words said so. His words were forcing me to believe so. My own conscience forced me to believe so.

How could my own conscience speak against me?

Was I that wrong?