Through His Eyes Novels & Stories

"You think I forgot how this works?" Something shifts in his expression, not anger, not quite. Something older than that. Something that has been waiting. And then, barely above a whisper: "They look like me." The words land between us like something dropped from a great height. I swallow. Keep my voice steady. "They don't." But he isn't listening. He's staring through me, at something beginning to break loose from where he's buried it. "One of them," he says slowly. "His eyes. I've seen them before."

"Why?" I looked at him. His black eyes were soft. Vulnerable. There was no anger in them, no frustration. Only patience. Only love. Only understanding. It was the kind of look that made my heart ache with gratitude and guilt all at once. It was the look of a man who would wait forever. It was the look of a man who had already given me his whole heart and asked for nothing in return. It was the look of a man who believed in me. It was the look of a man who would move mountains for me.

When his eyes switched from Adam retreating silhouette to mine he calmed down and his eyes turned back into the color we all know and love, but it still wasn’t the same. He turned and walked to his car without saying one word to me. ‘Shit’.

I watched impassively as he collapsed onto the spread of glass shards on the floor. His embrace used to bring me warmth and comfort. Now, it brought me nothing but disgust. Marcus couldn't care less about the fresh injuries he got from the shards. He shifted to his knees and began crawling toward me slowly. Two long trails of blood extended from behind him. He thought he could cancel out the damage he had inflicted on me by getting hurt himself. Soon, Marcus hugged me once again, his senses completely overwhelmed by panic and anxiety. He buried his face into the crook of my shoulder as he began whimpering sadly.

I said again, this time a bit firmer, I needed to be sure that he heard me. And then he turned, ever slowly, his hands dropping by his side. Our eyes clocked, as I drank him in, and he did. Inch by inch, I felt his eyes all over me, from head to toe. He was looking at me. Not just seeing me. And in his eyes, I saw the hell he's been through, the torture, the suffering, the guilt, the hate, and most importantly, the relief. I was about to take a step when he stopped me.

They were Riley and Zahra’s eyes. "His eyes, they’re your eyes." "Yes. But he has the color of your hair." His fingers traced the little hair on his head. "Thank you, Nadia." My eyes shifted to him, and our eyes locked. Riley has always looked at me with love in his eyes, and this was one of those moments, but I could see something else. Gratefulness. I smiled at him as my eyes welled with tears. "What for?" "I always thought I was not capable of feeling this happy. That I don’t deserve to be happy. But since you came, something in me has changed. I feel important."

He slowly turned his heavy head and finally looked directly at me. His eyes were pitch black in the shadows of the moving car. There was absolutely no kindness in them. No sympathy for my panic. No pity for my tears. They were the cold, calculating eyes of an apex predator looking at something small, weak, and completely trapped. He looked me up and down. He took his slow time doing it. His heavy gaze dragged over my messy, sweat-drenched hair, my ripped, dirty silk shirt, my violently trembling shoulders, and the way my chest heaved with every shallow breath I took.

Especially those phoenix eyes, which made people know it was him at a glance. The cartoon was beaming, but... it had been a long time since he laughed. "I don't know what on earth you're going through. But when you get over it and look back at it, you'll find that it's nothing." 'It's nothing?' He pressed his thin lips together slightly. 'She has no idea what I'm going through! ‘But I have no choice but to get over it!' His dark phoenix eyes stared at the woman in front of him. If it was not Yiran, it did not matter who it was.

"You were just as lost as I was." He nods his head. "I had no idea what was going on with me. When I found you, I almost couldn't believe you were right there." I worry. What visions has he seen to make him believe that? "I am not going to force you to stay." "But I am," I say. I put some distance between us. "Your life-" "Is nothing without you in it." God, his eyes. It's hard to say no to his eyes. Eyes could tell a person how much they've been through and how much they could take. That was his eyes right now.

He also quieted down; his eyes still closed. Then he blinked them open, got off my lap, and shifted back to his human form. He sat beside me with a plain expression. Putting a hand on his shoulder, he raised those eyes at me. Profound sadness stared back from his brown gaze. They said, “eyes are the windows to the soul” – I was staring straight into it right now. He was letting me in, showing me what was usually concealed. Oh, Liam. A tear escaped an eye and I wiped it with a thumb. After all these years, he carried it alone – regrets, grief, anger…