Professor Khan ✔️(completed)

10. q u r b a t - closeness

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     Her face paled as white as porcelain. Her breaths became shallow. Each one was harder than the last. The need to cut out of this pain was taking over her. Her arms were becoming heavy.

The need to breathe was desperate. She needed familiarity. Anything. Whether it was her room, her cat, or even her pain. But her eyes flickered up the only thing staring back to her were the brownest of the eyes she'd seen. Of all the questions, why would you ask me this? She wanted to hold the collar of his pristine white dress shirt and just shake him. Why would you do this to me?

     She held on to the mahogany desk for her dear life. Counting backward from ten. It wasn't working. Then she remembered her rubber band on her left wrist. Snapping it with each time, she counted backward. The flick on her wrist reminding her to breathe.

     "Miss Noor?" Her widened eyes met his as his concerned voice reached her through the snapping somehow.

     "I can't breathe." She gasped for air as the croaked voice left her throat. She closed her eyes. Looking for straws to hang on to. Anything to snap her out of it

     "Hey," His deep, balmy voice was much closer this time. "I'm so sorry, ok!" The voice was distracting her. She liked that. "I'm sorry. I didn't know it was something so traumatic for you. I should have been more careful."

     She fluttered open her eyes. The eyes staring back at her were filled with guilt and concern.

     "Let me help you okay?" He spelled out each word for her quietly and slowly as if he was talking to a child. She nodded. "Look me straight in the eyes."

     She looked into the dark eyes that were staring back at her. They were much clear now. The charcoal black was actually dark brown. She could see the flakes of gold in his orbs.

     "You're fine. Everything will be fine." His words smoothly crossing to her. "And Listen to me clearly, Miss Noor." She nodded as if in a daze. "You survived. Whatever it was. You survived. You're here. You're breathing. And even if you don't know how to swim through your pain, you're staying afloat and that's all that matters. And you won't let your suffering sink you. You will not allow it."

     She nodded. She kept nodding until whatever she was holding left her body silently through her tears. She cried. She cried her heart but silently and quietly in that dim house. She covered her face with her hands and let herself go through those tears

    For the first time in her life, she had cried without guilt. To be able to accept that her pain was not wrong. That maybe she did survive even if she was scarred and battered, but she wasn't defeated.

     "Close your eyes." His words softly washed over her. She did close them. "Listen to the waves and just imagine yourself, out there on the beach. Just let yourself breathe freely. Without any restrictions. Without any thoughts. Just breathe."

     He didn't know that she hated beaches. She hated sand. But in that moment he'd given her solace. A way out. But he'd never know that more than his beach it was his scent that calmed her. With each breath, she could inhale his scent. A mix of wood with the ocean. The calmness of earth he carried.

     Giving her a whole new meaning, He'd never know that it was that day that he'd turned her world upside down.

     She opened her eyes, staring straight into his alluring eyes. Mystified and thunderstruck. She'd calmed down without a blade, without bleeding, and without a cut.