Page 25 of Lessons In Grey
Arguably the best character inHarry Potter.
I looked up, finding his eyes ever steady on my cracked and bleeding soul. I half wondered if maybe he had already seen what slept inside of me. If maybe he had been able to piece it together in the glances he kept stealing.
“There aren’t good people and bad people, Emily,” he went on, his voice rumbly and raspy and melodic. “There are just people. People who choose to act on their hatred or act on their love. Sometimes good people choose wrong, and sometimes bad people choose right, it’s just who we are.”
I couldn’t pull my eyes away from his, not this time. Not when he was looking at me as if he had seen the pain of the world and rather than scaring him away, it only pulled him in.
“I think I know why you choose not to hold anyone’s gaze,” he finally said as my heart began to race.
His eyes had trapped me like a fish on a line, and I hated it. I hated it so much, I wanted to scream.
“You’re afraid that someone will see the darkness you feel, and they’ll run away, they’ll judge you for it, but what gives me the right to feel anything negative about a war I’m not fighting?”
My eyes burned, my jaw working. I didn’t want anyone to suffer because of me, that was the truth of it. I looked back towards the cloth, tracing over those initials again, trying to regain control. “G.N?”
“Greyson Navarro.”
Greyson.
I laughed, although I suppose it was more of a quick release of breath than a laugh. Charlie always used to tell me that I lived inthe gray. That’s why everything hurt so much because there wasn’t just black and white, the world was filled with gray, and not many people could see that.
God, fuck fate.
“I don’t know what you want with me,” I finally said, shaking my head. “I don’t.”
“I want to help you,” he repeated.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to scream at him, to throw my hands up, to fuckingshake him. This…this…personwho I decided to talk to, whoIbrought into my own goddamn life, and I couldn’t get rid of him. I couldn’t make himhear me. I couldn’t be helped. I couldn’tbefucking helped.
He could want all he wanted, but this was fucking permanent. There was no solution. There was no glue. There was no anything, this was just…this was it. This was it, and yes he had pretty words and yes, his eyes looked just as haunted as I felt, but he kept saying that. Kept saying he wanted to help. He was fucking delusional.
I licked my lips, and they tasted like salt water and rage. My insides felt like they were shaking, like a leaf in a storm, but on the outside, I was still. My eyes held hatred, my hands gripped into that cloth like a lifeline. “You can’t. What you think you can change is impossible. You’re a fucking egotistical ass, running off the high Remi’s crafted plastic pussy is giving you. You can’t just fuck the issues away, Rags. That’s not how this shit works, trust me, I’ve fucking tried. The waves are too tall, to angry. The rocks are made of steel, the lighthouse is out. There is no fixingthis,” I said, gesturing to all of me.
His eyes were dark, filled with whatever things haunted him, and I almost hated him for showing me that shit.
Almost.
“I don’t think fucking you will get rid of your problems, Emily, I want to make you feel again.”
My eyes widened, my lips parting. “You don’t get it.”
“I do.”
“You don’t,” I whispered, shaking my head, the world blurring around me from the tears filling my eyes.
“Snowflake—”
“Shut up,” I said, blinking once, the tears spilling over. “Just shutup. You don’t know me, Rags.”
He leaned over the table, his eyes so black, I felt the inherent need to flinch. “You are haunted by ghosts you can’t let go of. You are plagued by thoughts you don’t fully understand. You are filled with shards of melting diamonds and bones of white-hot steel, and you can’t breathe because each and every inhale is met with salt water and a hope that you won’t inhale again.
“You write painful truths across your skin and the seeds sown in your muscles grow in vines of thorns, and they are slowly wrapping around your soul, your lungs, your heart, until you can taste the copper on your very tongue. A tongue you use to speak in riddled paragraphs of agony and untethered rage. You have a weapon in your arsenal, yet you refuse to use it because you are continuously being shattered by your own fucking mind.”
I couldn’t breathe. Shivers ran across my skin at the intensity of his words, of his eyes. Fuck.
“I do know you, Snowflake. I know that you’re exhausted. I know that you crave something you can’t put into words, and I know that you are being haunted by things you don’t understand.” He pulled something out of his pocket and held out his other hand, gesturing to mine.
My brows furrowed, my heart thumping as I looked from his hand to his eyes and back. I sanded my fingers together. It was a little gesture. A small, insignificant gesture.