𝐎𝐏𝐄𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑
— 𝓅𝒾𝑒𝒸𝑒 𝑜𝒻 𝒻𝑜𝓇𝑒𝓋𝑒𝓇 —

     𝐒𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐀𝐒 𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐘𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆 he couldn't possibly have. Paul Lahote was sure that if he were to place a hand on her pale, delicate skin, she would shatter beneath his warm touch. And despite everything in his heart that told him to hold her close, he wouldn't; no he couldn't. His temper alone would be too much for the fragile girl to handle, let alone his actions that always tended to follow— those raging fits in which he'd break everything that he laid his hands on, and would have no mercy upon those that watched. Never did he want her to stare at him in terror, the way he knew she would. The monster inside of him would have to be contained forever, he supposed; despite the constant feverish attempts of Sam Uley to push the two together into the binding spell that would forever entangle them.

Paul would rather face the wrath of a million slow deaths than to ever lay hands on the girl next to him. And yet, with every second that passed, he could feel himself growing weary of holding back — if he could just have her hand in his, for even a moment, all of his pent-up anger would decimate into nothingness. But as her eyes met his, he began to melt. Those eyes.

Every aching time he stared into her eyes, all he could see was the color of the deep brown of winter trees at twilight that he loved to gaze upon, a delicate cinnamon like that of his favorite traditional gingerbread cookies, or the color of soft brown sugar that his mother once baked with. And he could've gotten lost in them, too, every single moment that she'd let him. She showed him things he had never seen before: the way the fluorescent rays of the sun ever so slightly brushed upon the effervescent tendrils of grass outside, the feverish sounds of rushing water as it crashed against the shore of the beach he held so closely to his heart, and the way the passions of her heart reflected within her eyes. They held the kind of beauty that expanded a moment into a personal eternity, and her soul offered to him a piece of heaven that he wished so desperately to be a part of.

And he would be damned if her soul wasn't the most beautiful thing he'd ever known.