You know when your mind sees something that is so utterly beautiful, so unworldly that it distinctively focuses on the pinnacle of its interest, zeroing in on that magnificent sight, having everything else blur in the background?

That's what Nate's eyes did to me. The golden, caramel orbs locked on mine and it was all I could see. His eyes are red rimmed as if the surgery was still taken its toll but his face is bare and so responsive.

The butterflies, the ones that have become paralyzed a few weeks back, twitch and flutter when Nate's pupils dilate and his clear, breathtaking eyes roam around my face before dropping down my body.

I hold my breath as he does so, wanting so badly to see what he is seeing.

One of his family members behind me says something but it is muffled in my ears and Nate either ignores it or doesn't hear them either because he remains unmoving in the doorway while I stay crouched in my position of the floor, my letter forgotten about. It is held limply in my hands, slightly swaying from the breeze traveling through the opened door.

I don't know what did it, but I snap out of the golden hue caressing me and time speeds up to its natural clock world. With all of my willpower, I slowly stand, straightening up and keeping eye contact with Nate. His eyes slide down my body once again before they snap back to my face.

I am breathing heavy. I'm sure the whole room can hear me but I hear nothing because my brain can only focus on one thing. Nate.

It feels like an eternity since I have laid my eyes on him. He is still tall, towering over me even when I stand. The few little freckles peeking above the collar of his dark green shirt dot his smooth skin and call for me to lean over and graze my lips over them. The only thing that is different is his hair, buzzed back down, showing off a long scar an inch above his left ear where they achieved his brain surgery.

And of course his eyes, always vibrant and fascinating, but never this alive. Never this all knowing.

Movement on the other side of the door snaps my focus away from the boy I love and my face heats more at the sight of Mr and Mrs Haynes walking up the breezeway. Nate remains stoic, eyes trained on my face as if his memory is jotting down every blemish, every feature that he has not seen in a little over a year.

"Oh look Nathaniel, Kelly is here," Lucy announces, shuffling through the door with a few grocery bags in hand. She smiles overbearingly at me and right away I know that she knows something is up between me and her son.

Has he been moping around for two weeks like me?

"Yes Mom, I can see that." Nate's eyes don't move from my face and, not being used to this kind of attention from him, my cheeks heat more.

Nate slowly moves to the side to let his parents through the door but never once does he look away from me. And never once did I think I would be the first one in doing so.

My eyes fall to the floor. With Nate's newfound sight has come newfound emotion that swims too luminous in his eyes that it takes my breath away. I can now read Nate like an open book. Though he may like what he sees with his newly working eyes, it hurts him to see me. He looks away.

"Kelly, sweetie, it is so nice to see you," Lucy announces and steps forward to place a motherly kiss on my cheek. My reaction in delayed because my brain has not caught up with the rest of my limbs yet, but I steady myself with a hand on her shoulder.

"You too," I manage to say and my eyes goes back to Nate now cowering in the corner by the staircase.

"Would you like to stay for lunch?" Nate's father asks as he takes out meat from the sacks of groceries at his feet. "We're barbecuing."

Nate's eyes stay unblinking on the wall behind me and he has now masked his emotions which leaves me feeling dull and alone.

"No," I tell them after blinking a few times. I turn my head in their direction and force a polite smile. "That's okay. But thank you."

I bring my eyes back to Nate's but his have now moved to the ground that I walk on. I look down to see what on earth has caught his attention and when I see that I am barefoot and dirty from my rash decision to sprint across multiple lawns, I wiggle my toes. His eyes snap back up to mine and I can't hold back a genuine, amused smile.

My brain just simply cannot comprehend that Nate can see me wiggle my toes.

I don't know how long we stand there looking at each other but when the back door slides shut and chatter dims in the backyard, it is obvious that Nate and I are left alone and we have been for some time.

I grip my letter tighter, giving me something to keep me earthbound.

"The surgery worked." My voice is slow and wondrously quiet that I'm not sure if he hears me and he doesn't give any sign that he did or not. He just watches me.

The way he is looking at me now is unsettling. It's no longer in a way that makes me think that he can see into my soul. Instead, he is intelligibly grazing the surface, monitoring my reactions.

I sigh and lick my lips, now uncomfortable and feeling incredibly parched. Nate's gaze drops to my mouth before flickering back up in a steady leer.

"I know you said you didn't want to see me and I respect that but I need you to know that I am so deeply sorry and I never meant for things to go down the way that they did," I say shifting from one foot to the other.

Something flashes over his eyes, a new emotion for me to see, but it vanishes before I can read it. But something tells me it relates to the same sadness I am feeling.

Nate still remains silent and suddenly I want to scream at him.

After a few more moments of utter silence, anger starts to bubble up in my chest.

"Gained your sight but lost your speech now, Nate?" I bite my tongue and cross my arms over my chest as if to protect myself from hurting any longer. I can't stop the bitter self inflicted words from pushing out of my mouth. I tend to say mean thing when I'm mad. But I'm not mad at him at all. I simply hate myself.

I want more than anything to reach forward and wrap my arms around his torso and have him concoon me the way that he does when he holds me.

Nate shakes his head as if to swipe away whatever daze he is put under. "I don't know what to say."

"Say what's on your mind. Say what you are feeling!" Fresh tears spring to my eyes as if on cue. "Because I can tell you that I hurt so badly I couldn't get out of bed for weeks! Every fiber in my body misses you and needs you close to me. I'm not trying to justify not telling you and I'm surely not trying to cover myself for the hand that I had in it but I am asking for your forgiveness, Nate. Please forgive me because I love you so much."

His face scrunch up in pain at my last words and the dam inside me breaks open at his feet.

"My feelings towards you have never been a lie. Sure, I was curious about you but that never, ever made me fall for you the way that I did. Everything between us was real, every moment, every confession, everything. I have never lied to you, Nate.

"I wanted to come clean for so long about that night but it never seemed like a good time. I know that sounds stupid. Trust me, I know. But I don't know how else to put this into words. I didn't want what we had built up to come crashing down because the thought of losing you in any way kills me. And that has been proven over the past couple of weeks. I guess..." I look off to the side where there is a mirror hanging on the wall and catch a glimpse of my now tears stained self. I shake my head and allow a few more to fall before I latch them back on to Nate. "I guess, I understand if you want nothing to do with me anymore. But I need you to know that I love you. I will never stop loving you. I meant what I said on the fact that you have my heart and soul, Nathaniel. Forever. And I will never accept it back."

Nate had looked away during my pathetically unrehearsed speech. His hands have shoved themselves so deeply in his pockets it reminds me of how my chest feels with each aching moment. He could rip through my chest cavity and it still wouldn't amount to the pain I feel at this moment.

"It hurts to look at you," Nate finally says and his fist clenches around the stem of my heart and yanks. "You are the one person I let see the real me and you betrayed that. Do you know what that feels like?"

Him saying this makes me sob because it means so much more than if an average person had said it. After months of claiming he wanted nothing more in the world than to see me, he now couldn't even stand to do so.

I physically smooth my hand over my chest to ease to aching pain of my heart.

His next words shut my body down completely. "But the thought of never hearing your laugh or simply holding your hand hurts more. That's what makes this so confusing."

I gasp in a breath again and clutch the paper in my hands tighter.

"It's insane how I am so mad at you and still want you so badly," Nate continues, his words bouncing in my head making my own vision waver. "It's toxic, what I feel for you. It always has been."

It didn't matter if I told him that I didn't want the boys to go through with it, that I wanted to see a movie and get pizza instead. That simply didn't matter because it still happened and I still said nothing.

"I don't want this to be over, Nate. I can't bare it." I don't care how I sound. I need him and I need him to forgive me before I can even think of moving on with my life. Which even I knew there was no moving on from Nathaniel Haynes. A boy like this doesn't come along everyday.

"I don't know if I can trust you anymore."

"You can," I insist and make the bold move of moving closer to him. "You can, I swear it."

Nate surprises me by cupping my face and swiping his thumbs under my eyes to rid my tears. My eyes pull closed at the sweet pleasure of his warm skin against mine. His eyes, ones he said he couldn't look at me with, latch onto my face as his brows lower in the way that they do.

"I have come to the conclusion that I don't blame you."

"What?" I open my eyes and momentarily lose my breath at the way his are connecting with mine. My heart rate spikes.

"I don't blame you for the loss of my sight, Kelly."

"How could you not?" I sniffle. "I was there. I knew what happened all along and I said nothing. For that, I'm more to blame than physically placing that stupid dynamite into your experiment. I said nothing, Nate. I said nothing and you lost your eye sight."

"And I have it back now," he states. But his eyes remain sad.

"How can you even say that? Did they not tighten the bolts and wires in your brain when stitching you back up?"

Nate surprises me once again with a small smile but it dims in a nanosecond. "Might have to have your dad take another look at it."

I manage a watery smile back but smiling is something foreign to me over the past few weeks. It feels strange on me.

"Which is something that I want to thank you about," Nate says slowly. "If it wasn't for your dad doing his part in my surgery, I don't know if I would have the outcome that I have right now. He even got it to be pro bono on his part. He said it was all your idea. It really helped my family out financially, Kelly, and he's the best of the best, so... Thank you."

I stare up at him in shock? My father took hand in Nate's surgery? Why didn't he tell me this? He let me mope around for days with the desire to know how Nate was doing after his surgery and he never said anything.

I had brought the plea up at dinner the same day that Nate had his consultation with his doctor. My dad had said he was very busy and he had taken most of his pro bono cases for the year but he would see what he could do. I even made some phone calls and wrote multiple letters to the administrations office but I didn't hear anything back. My hazy mind seem to disregard that memory along with all the oxygen in my lungs.

It is my turn to not know what to say.

All I know is that "thank you" should not be coming out or Nate's mouth.

"What's that?" He looks down at the paper in my hand. The change of his moods is giving me whiplash.

"Nothing," I claim crinkling it up in my hands as I do so.

Forgetting that I can no longer get away with that, Nate reaches forward and unfurls it. He squints at the writing. I stand in front of him motionless, holding my breath as his eyes dart back up to mine.

"You got accepted into WSU?"

I swallow harshly and nod. It was stupid to bring that over here considering Nate and I were... well... I don't know anything anymore.

"I didn't know you applied." He hands the paper back to me and I numbly take it.

"It was just an option but I liked the idea of us going to the same school." My eyes drop to my bare feet. "It was a nice thought to think I wouldn't have to sneak out my window anymore to sleep next to you." I smile sadly, the memory of our first night popping into my head. "I applied a few months ago as a backup on Dartmouth but I got that acceptance letter the other day as well."

Nate's eyes stay glued on my features, measuring up my lack of emotion as I say this.

"That's awesome, Kelly. I knew you would get in." There is no enthusiasm behind his words. He sounds rather monotone like me.

Not able to take the silence anymore, I take a step back, dropping my eyes from his. Nate does the same but he peeks up at me when I slowly walk backwards towards his open door. They look panicked, his brown eyes shining like melted gold as he watches me inch away. The panic soon fades to somberness when I tilt my lips up apologetically.

It hurt to go, but I knew that I had to in order to give Nate time to adjust.

Even though my past actions have proven that I am not good at giving this boy space, I know I must in order for change to start taking root. He has bloomed so much and though I feel like I am wilting, I would give all of my sunshine for him to grow.

"I should go," I say with my hand on the doorknob.

Nate nods, the movement barely visible but everything Nate does shakes me to the core.

I can't help but take one more look before I walk out the door. Nate is still watching me and for some sadistic reason, that makes my heart beat faster. If this was pre confession, I would have ran back into the house and threw my arms around his neck. He would have kissed me back and we both would have had a hard time letting go.

I still won't let Nate go and I know Nate doesn't want to let me go either. But I have to leave to give him time to think.

But before he can shut the door in my face, I stop it with my hand. "I'm not giving up on us so easily, Nate. I'll wait as long as it takes. Please think about it."

"You're a hard girl to not think about, Kelly." He sadly smiles but shuts the door just the same.

When I get back to my house I lightly shut my door behind me, leaning against it dreamily. I just saw Nate for the first time in eternity for us and I am still walking on cloud 9 even though things didn't go the way I wanted them to. It was still something.

My father catches my eye, sitting on the sofa reading his daily paper. I think about walking past him but I can't get my nagging thoughts out of my head.

"Hey kiddo," my dad says, not lifting his eyes from his paper.

"Why didn't you tell me you did Nate's surgery?" I softly accuse my father. He tips down his bifocals and peers over his newspaper at me.

"If I would have told you it was a success, you wouldn't have gone to see him for yourself."

I stand their silently thinking this over. He has a point and that irritates me that my father might know me better than I think he should. My parents were so different from Lucy and Tim. They didn't helicopter around me nor did they set an annual time for family night dinner.

But they did make sure I got the best of the best whether it's something that I want or something that they wanted for me. They have given me all that I needed.

Guess that just shows that people show their love in different ways.

Walking over to my father, I bend down and kiss his cheek. He blushes slightly, not use to me showing much affection towards anything he or my mother does for me. But this was for Nate and I am incredibly thankful.

"Thank you, Daddy."

"You're welcome, kid." He slide his bifocals back up in nose and goes back to reading the political readers section.

My mother blows a kiss at me, seeing the interaction between my father and me and I smile affectionately back at her.

Life is too short to not show the people you love that you love them.