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CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
AN UNDERSTANDING
✧
MORGAN LEE WAS A CONFLICTING WOMAN. She held herself gracefully, yet easily faltered under caring gazes, she seemed so much like stone until she melded into a softer form. She smiled, then she snapped. In a blink of an eye, she could turn from comfortable to tense – from friend to foe. Apologies slipped from her mouth as easily as jeers did, and it perplexed him as he tried to decipher what was genuine and what was forced.
If anything was genuine at all – or forced.
He knew how not to be obvious, something that Morgan – though she excelled in slipping jabs in with compliments – lacked, knew how to time the flicker of his eyes over to her when she was occupied eating or talking. Hairs always stood up on the back of his neck when she stared at him, and he knew not to glance at her then – it was obvious, careless, reckless when she stared at him, and it left him staring up at the ceiling at night pondering why she was so interested in him.
Then his eyes would glance at the rose on his bedside table, and his frown would deepen, the confusion deepening. What a maddening woman she was. Because when he leaned forward, she would push back, but sometimes she would be the one leaning. Drawing him in, giving him apologies, wishing for a friendship, then something would switch inside her and she would turn. Yes, what a maddening woman.
He wanted to understand her, more than that he wanted to know her. He looked at her like an unsolved puzzle, but she was more than that. There was something in her eyes. Even when she was cold, or when she was trying, something he couldn't pinpoint. It looked like pain, and sometimes she flinched like someone was inflicting it upon her, clutching her shoulder before shaking it off.
There was a hesitance as she spoke, as she moved, so reckless when she was near him before it was hidden where no one would find them. She wasn't calculating, she was open and obvious, there had been a change – after Christmas. She came back, and she was different, and it was yet another mystery surrounding her that he wanted to solve.
But he wanted more.
He wanted not only to understand her, but to know her, to be close with her, but she was cold. She could turn. And that gave him hesitance. He didn't know what would set her off, he didn't know the insults she would shout at him, he didn't know what hex she would throw his way. He wanted to be her friend, maybe...no, he wanted to be her friend, but there was hesitance. Fear of what could come.
"Oi, Moony," Sirius shoved him lightly, causing him to blink and turn to the other boys who laughed at him slightly, "Stop with the love eyes already, I'm getting sick."
