I can't speak. I can't breathe. I can't see through the tears that blur my vision.

Every kiss, every smile, every bit of confessed love, comes down to this moment. I can only pray that Nate forgives me. But I understand if he doesn't. I don't think I would if the roles were reversed.

I need to stop being such a coward and come clean to this wonderful, concerned looking, man in front of me. But Nate isn't the only one that has gathered. Trent, Gavin, and of course, Molly, stand by his side like guardsmen. Alyssa and Johnny come up behind Danny and me.

"Tell me what?" Nate repeats when I don't speak right away.

All of the words that I have managed to learn from the age of birth have vanished into thin air.

Danny steps forward and places a hand on my shoulder and I shrink.

"Listen man, there's something I need to confess to," Danny says in a low drawl. His shoulders are squared and his stance is progressive but I can't let him continue.

"Me too," Johnny surprises me by saying, looking over at me fleetly before dropping his gaze to his feet.

My heart climbs to my throat. "Nate, can I speak to you outside? Alone."

Molly tightens her grip on his arm and my breathing hitches in my throat. She is protecting him from me. Her eyes narrow like a cat and at this moment in time, I deserve her antagonism, but I still clench my fist at my sides.

Nate doesn't answer. All the giddiness that radiated from him moments ago is gone, thrown out like the oil of a lamp, as his chest rises up and down. There is no way he hasn't caught onto the thick atmosphere that now surrounds us.

His face slowly morphs into one of a professional poker player, blank and serene. It sets my nerves closer to the edge of destruction.

"Please, Nate," I beg. If it comes down to it, I will gladly fall to my knees in front of him and beg until my heart explodes. I start to move towards him but Danny grabs hold of my elbow.

"Kelly--" Danny starts but I cut him short by shaking him off.

"Let go, Danny."

Like a light switch, Nate's face comes alive and it twists in determination but mostly it portrays anger that I have never seen before. "Get your hands off of her," Nate warns, his voice low. Nate tries to move forward but his friends hold him back.

Danny steps back, a look of confusion painting his fair features. "Alright." He puts his hands up in the air and takes a step to the side. His look reads, it's your funeral.

I can already feel my soul dying.

Nate holds his hand out as a beck and call for mine but Molly steps in front, pushing it back down. "I think you should hear the jock out first, Nathaniel."

I glare at Molly in hope that she would back away from Nate and let me explain myself. I didn't want to do this publically. "Molly, please. Stop being the rottweiler and let me speak to him."

"Ruff, ruff, Kelly. Not a chance." Her tone matches mine, clipped and full of warning. "I knew you couldn't be trusted and now with the full blown panic on your face, I can tell something big is about to explode."

"Can someone just tell me what's going on?" Nate demands through clenched teeth. He raises his hand between us once more and I gladly grip onto his fingers for dear life. Molly doesn't step aside until I wrench him away from her touch.

I have to give Nate's friends credit, they are lawfully loyal. With every step I took to get out of ear shot, they followed. It looks as if I was going to have to do this in front of them after all because if I hold back another second, I will surely chicken out or pass out. Whatever comes first.

"Kelly, is everything okay?" Nate reaches out and runs his hands down my arms and goosebumps appear in their wake.

How does one answer that conflicting question? Yes, everything is perfect, things have never been so good between him and me. We are finally in a place where we are both so comfortable with each other, intimate in every way humanly possible. He laughs with me, jokes with me, confesses his love me for, as if it is now as simple as breathing. 

The saying is right; love is pain. It's so darn painful because now you didn't just feel your own torment when you're in love with someone, but also the others person's because their heart is now pulsing in your hands. You feel their pain striking in their chest at ten folds because it physically hurt you to hurt them.

"I need to tell you something, something that I should have brought up months ago--years ago--but I didn't know how."

"Okay, well tell me." He made it sounds so simple. And maybe it is. I just don't want to hurt him which I know is inedible.

"I love you. You know that, right?"

"Spit it out, princess," Molly snaps from the sidelines and I bare my teeth in response.

Nate shuffles and unintentionally blocks my view of everyone. "Tell me what is going on, Kelly."

My eyes unintentionally roam to Danny, who sadly looks away, troubled, at his drink. He brings it up and downs it in one swallow. Alyssa gives me a wistful glance but I am the one to looks away because though the truth needs to come out, I don't want to hurt my friends either.

I take in a lung full of bravery, catching Nate's clean scent in the process and nearly choke. The sound came out as a strangled sob.

"I haven't been completely honest with you," I confess trying to keep my voice down. I can see Nate's friends lean forward to hear my words. "That night--" I swallow and shuffle on my feet. I reach out and grip both of his hands in mine. He lightly squeezes them. "--That night of your accident, I was--" It hurt to breathe. "I was there."

Nate's eyes squint behind his glasses. "You were?"

I nod, forgetting he can't see me. "Yes, I was."

"I knew it," Molly sneered through clenched teeth. "I knew there was a reason you were weaseling your way into our group. You're a freaking sham, Kelly Henderson."

"You know nothing, Molly!" I shout at her but her words chant over and over in my head.

You're a sham. You're a sham.

"Why were you out there?" Nate cuts in. His face has gone pale as well as contorting into something that resembles physical pain.

I can feel his grip loosening on my hands already and I hold on tighter, panic seizing my body like barbwire.

Danny's voice makes the ringing in my ears grow. "Kelly, please let me--"

"No!" I screech, cutting Danny off. I can feel the feral beast of absolute dread wrap its hands around my throat. "Nate, I was out there because that dynamite in your rocket didn't just appear out of thin air. It was placed there."

Nate's beautiful face scrunches up as if my behavior is finally starting to make sense. His hands release mine and I grasp empty air in desperation to feel his warmth.

"It was just a prank," I continue in agitation. I just needed him to hear me out, to understand that I love him and nothing is going to change that even if he claims to not love me anymore. "A stupid, stupid prank, that went all wrong."

"It was just supposed to scare you guys," Danny butts in. And this time, I'm thankful for the intrusion because I can't seem to breathe. "We didn't expect you or any of your friends to get hurt."

Trent snorted, his face showing his disgust. "Which just shows how stupid you all are because it's a freaking dynamite! What did you expect to happen?"

While his friends squared up with mine, I turn back to Nate and desperately grab at his shoulders to face him towards me. He didn't shake me off right away but that is mainly because I think he is in shock.

"Please, listen to me, Nate. I have wanted to tell you since the night it happened. You don't know how many times I walked up to your front door to confess or how much I wanted to tell you what I knew over the past couple of months. But I couldn't because I was selfish back then and cared only about my reputation and my future. But I'm scared now because the thought of losing you kills me, Nate. I can't imagine a future without you."

Nate's eyes glistens under the chandelier in my foyer as they peer round and confused. My heart breaks more as his silence spreads out.  

"Nate, please say something."

He shakes his head slowly, his brain slowly catching up to him. "I-It was all a lie, wasn't it? You got close to me to cover your tracks, t-to get me to fall in love with you so that you could laugh at my expense."

"No!" I demand him but he won't hear it.

"I bet you all had a laugh about this, didn't you? Wow, poor pathetic blind kid doesn't even see what's right in front of him. He can't see that the only thing he ever allowed himself to open up to, is a complete and total crock! You got me good, Kelly." He laughs a melodramatic laugh that makes my scalp prickle.

"Nate, stop. It wasn't like that."

"Doesn't matter," he claims, shaking his head deadly slow to the point that I find myself mirroring his actions just to clarify what he is saying.

"No," I choke out. "It does matter, Nathaniel."

He shakes me off when I reach for him and his friends are behind him in a second. My eyes skirt to them but don't stray long because I can't bare the thought that this is the last time I might see Nathaniel Haynes with this much emotion towards me. Good or bad, I will take what I can get.

Because seeing the one person you love on this earth have no emotional attachment towards you is a fate worse than death.

"Nate, listen to what I have to say," I plead.

Danny walks up beside me and makes the mistake of speaking. "Haynes, she didn't do anything. It was all me."

My heart stops in my chest completely when Nate steadies himself with a hand on Danny's shoulder. As if making sure Danny was the one under his grasp, Nate took a breath and nodded to himself.

In a swift movement, Nate smashes his fist into Danny's jaw. The football star falls to the ground and the room erupts in gasps. My eyes go big and I step back to see Danny sprawled out on the floor. Nate straightens his shoulder and reaches out behind him.

Out of habit, I stretch towards his extended hand but catch myself when Molly's hand clasp around his and my breath lodges in my throat. I welcomed the lack of oxygen. It almost felt good, felt justified. A slow death is permanent for someone like me. I deserve nothing more after hurting Nate the way that I did.

This is all my fault. I have no one to blame but myself.

"Please, Nate, talk to me," I beg again, my feet failing to move under me. I think they might buckle. "I get you're angry. I get you feel betrayed. But everything that's happened between us was real. It is real, Nathaniel. Please, don't throw that all away. Let's fix this."

Nate stops by the door, his friends opening it and walking through, but he doesn't turn toward my voice like he normally does when I speak. There is no soft smile gracing his lips, lips that loved to press against my skin and feel my quickened pulse beat under his slow touch. There is no rosey blush on his apple cheeks. He looks pale, grief stricken. And I feel every blow on top of my own.

"I can't—" He steadied himself against the doorframe with a hunch to his back as if he chest physically pains him enough to peel over. "I can't look at you, right now, Kelly," the agony doesn't suppress me. "I don't want to see you," he denies before ducking through the door and disappearing into the night.

I want to laugh because he is always saying little things like this to ease the tension between his lack of sight and the timid person on the other end. But instead of scoffing or rolling my eyes like I normally would, I crumble. His words cut me deep because they mean more than the average person claiming those words. He means that he doesn't want to be around me, doesn't want to hear my voice, doesn't want anything from me. Even if he wasn't blind, he didn't want to see me.

He has his surgery tomorrow and even after weeks of recovery and the hopeful chance of getting his sight back, even then he doesn't want to see me.

For the first time in my life, my world has exploded around me and I am blind.

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