Word Count: 1,097
Type: idk just read it
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Every night I watched him.
I watched him when the sun was down inside the sea and the sky was black and everything was quiet.
It was all quiet except for Connor's quiet breaths and my heartbeats. Sometimes I never got close enough to hear his breaths, but I could see his chest rise and fall and I knew it probably sounded beautiful. I had never heard him speak more than a whisper, never seen his open eyes. I had only ever been able to gaze at his closed lids.
Every night I watched him.
I had since I was 15, and I never skipped a night. Ever. Not even once.
I would crawl up to his house, climb up and push the window he always left a crack open. Some nights I would notice he was only sleeping lightly, he would toss and turn and mumble things, flinch at the tiniest squeak or creak of a floorboard. On those nights, I'd sit on the windowsill. I wanted so badly to be closer, but I knew he would wake up.
On normal nights though, I could get closer.
I would climb in through the window, the only light in the room the cold glow from the moon. I walked over to his bed and stood there. I would stand there for a few minutes. It was like my way of saying hello, without speaking and without him hearing me. Sometimes I would lay down next to him, sometimes I would sit there and stroke his hair.
It was four years since I first started coming to his room at night. Four beautiful, long years that really felt like forever.
But there was a problem.
Four years ago, things started to happen. I started to get attached. I started to feel things that I'd never felt before. Every night, when I watched his chestnut brown hair soaked in moonlight and his soft, toned skin, I loved him a little more.
When I watched him sleep and I sat by him, I started to get to know him in some strange way that no one else had. I saw his bare, calm, unfiltered self in front of me. I saw the pure peacefulness that came with sleep because nothing could harm him until he woke up. I knew him for four years, and I knew him so well even though in some way I didn't know him at all.
And as the four years went by, I realised I was falling in love with him. Every night I fell in love with him a little more.
I was really, really, really in love with him.
And yet, he didn't even know who I was.
Sometimes I wanted to kiss him and hug him and whisper things in his ear. I wanted to see his eyes open, I wanted to hear his voice and have him reach out and touch me for the first time. But then I would remember that he didn't know I existed. He didn't know anything about me, and yet I knew everything about him.
One night he was thrashing in his sleep, whispering stop, stop, no no no . . . I climbed over to him, even though I knew I shouldn't. I felt the sticky sweat on his skin when I placed my cold hand over his cheek, trying to comfort him in some way.
His eyes flew open and he jumped, still half asleep. I could catch a glimmer of tears in his eyes.
His eyes . . . I was caught in them.
I knew I still had time to escape, to jump into the darkness before he was fully awake, and he would only take the shadow as part of his nightmare. But I couldn't look away from him. The moon shone on them and illuminated the most beautiful shade of green. It was more like five different shades, swirled and sprinkled together as each color pooled beneath the next, making them look like the green glass sea.
He started screaming. He jumped up from his bed and pushed himself into the corner against the wall, kicking at me and staring at me like I was a murderer.
He looked so scared that it broke my heart. Of course he would be scared. There's a stranger by his bed in the middle of the night.
He didn't stop screaming so I reached forward and covered his mouth with my hand, trying to stifle his yelps. He kicked and thrashed, his screams becoming so terrorized it sounded as if he were being stabbed with a knife.
I grabbed him firmly but didn't hurt him, forcing him down to try to get him to stop. I didn't want to hurt him. I really didn't.
"Please stop," I whispered into his hair, "Please, please, please." He didn't stop though, and I don't know if he even understood what I was saying. His screams weren't quite as loud and he cried and sobbed in between. He was running out or energy. The poor thing only just woke up.
The bedroom door was flung open and his dad was standing there, a gun in his hand. His mom was behind him in her pajamas and she screamed, covering her face.
"GET AWAY FROM MY SON, NOW, OR I'LL SHOOT," his eyes locked with mine, the gun pointed straight at my head. I slowly let go of Connor and stepped into the corner as Connor sprung out of his bed and ran into the other side of the room.
But then I stepped forwards, so softly, holding out a trembling hand because I didn't want to lose him. I didn't want to leave him. And it was stupid of me to do, because the piercing sound of a gunshot echoed through the room and all I could feel was hot liquid dripping down my body and pain so bad that I almost couldn't feel it. I could feel the hard floor as it jolted me, making my frail bones shake through my whole body.
I was dying.
I couldn't see, I couldn't feel. I tried to reach out, and I think I did but I didn't really know. Connor's face was fading.
I tried to touch him one last time but he was too far away.
"I love you . . ." I said through a mouthful of blood. It was all I had left.
But I could just hear it, so quiet. I know I said it.
It was the very last thing I heard before the whole world was finally ripped away from me.
