Page 158 of Into These Eyes
Even more unnerving, is the expression in those eyes. There’s no ambiguity whatsoever. I’m staring into the past, into the utter hatred that consumed me back then.
It appears those vile looks I lasered at him in court hadn’t gone unnoticed. They’d impacted him. I’m holding the proof.
He’d had seen me.
He’d understood me.
And he’d captured it with astounding precision.
Closing my eyes, I take myself back to those days in the courtroom, the days I spent spewing my hostility at a man who never deserved it. I imagine the reverse, if it were him looking at me like that. It hurts. I’d caused him so much pain without saying a single word.
I stay in that courtroom and try to remember how he’d looked at me. My stomach drops as I see him in that dock, staring at me. I’d forgotten how he took every opportunity he could to latch his eyes on me. Every time I turned my glare on him, he’d already been watching me.
Pleading. Desperate for me to see the truth no one believed.
Then I remember the only time he spoke in that courtroom. Directly to me.
I didn’t do this. I didn’t take her from you!
Determined not to cry, I swallow over the lump in my throat, and read.
Jamie,
I know you hate me. And I don't blame you. You believe what everyone does. But they're all wrong.
I did NOT kill your mother.
Whoever did it is still out there.
I'm scared and alone, and it’s hard to get my thoughts straight right now.
That night, my dad told me he was going to start a life with your mum. That hurt for reasons you can’t understand, but that just makes me human, not a killer.
There's so much you need to know, but I have to get my head straight. I'll keep writing to you. I'll tell you the truth, letter by letter.
But this one is about you and me.
You see, we're connected.
We're both victims of this crime.
And if your mother had lived, we would have met through our parents.
Instead, we've been introduced in a different way. A way that makes you hate me and a way that makes me desperate for you to see the truth.
However it was supposed to happen, we were meant to meet.
I can't get the way you looked at me out of my head. It’s right there, at the bottom of this page, a look I need to release through my fingers, or I think I'll go insane.
One day, I hope you'll look at me differently.
Gavin.
Tears flow over my cheeks as I set aside the paper so I don’t stain it with my tears.
That boy breaks my heart so hard, my chest literally aches.
And worst of all, if my father had given me these letters at the time, I would have torn them to shreds and flushed them down the toilet. I would never have believed a single word.
