Heal Me

Chapter 7

Her words kept playing in Damon's head...

            Everybody deserves a second chance.

                        A second chance...

No... after what he had done, he felt unworthy of something like that. That's why he subconsciously developed a habit in pushing people away. His hurt and sorrow became feelings he could not live without. They had consumed him almost completely, making him numb to any emotion… dead on the inside.

But he needed them. He would not let himself forget that night nor forgive himself for the part he had played in it. That would be too easy, too selfish. He had obliged himself to remember every scream and wince, to cry their tears... Damon thought it was only fair to suffer from what he caused.

"You called me Eva..." she whispered suddenly, interrupting his thoughts, and all of the sadness on her face disappeared. Evangeline's deep, enchanting eyes were dancing with excitement as she cocked an eyebrow at him.

"Well... isn't that your name?" Damon frowned and the naive confusion on his face made her chuckle.

"Yeah, it is. Never mind..." she contained a grin and looked at the place where Addy should have been. She was surprised to see him coming back to them, holding something in his little hands.

"Hey... look what I have!" he exclaimed and stopped in front of them. He then carefully placed a blue origami boat on the bench, between Evangeline and Damon.

"Where did you get that? It's beautiful..." she smiled and studied the ingeniously folded paper.

"A boy taught me." he grinned at both of them so widely that Damon snorted. The child was simply adorable.

"And there?" he pointed at another piece of orange paper in Addy's hands.

"Oh... I couldn't do." he mumbled half a sentence and went to tear it in half but Damon took it from him.

"How about I show you something else instead?" he said and Evangeline could have sworn she sensed a tint of excitement in his voice. She looked at what he was doing and gazed with interest at the agility of his hands to fold the paper in many different, complex ways. Both she and her brother were amazed at how good Damon was at it.

Before Evangeline could ask him about how he knew origami so well, Addy spoke up:

"How old are you?" he asked so suddenly that Damon stopped for a second. The child was rather mercurial and almost everything he said or did was out of the blue.

"Uhm... 18." he answered and folded the paper once more.

"Wow... you're so big! Do you know how to drive?" Addy gazed at him.

A lump formed in Damon's throat and his hands began to tremble. Why did he let such simple questions affect him so much? Why had he turned his grief into torture?

He ignored the question; gulping and putting the carefully folded paper between his index and middle finger, he looked at Addy and offered him the star he had just made.

"That's so cool! Thank you." the boy stared at the orange object and flipped it on every side. It amazed him how from a simple sheet of paper Damon could make something like that.

"You're welco-"

"What's your favorite color?" Addy cut him off but he didn't mind. He knew it wasn't his fault for having such reactions...

Damon stood silent for a moment to think about it. He didn't care about such things... he didn't care about almost anything anymore. Without them nothing else mattered.

"Uhm... blue, I guess." he finally mumbled an answer. Addy's eyebrows furrowed as if he was in deep thought. He glanced at Damon, at the paper boat then back at him.

"I'll give you something too." he suddenly grinned and put the fragile blue boat on his knee.

Damon gazed at the child and saw that he impatiently waited for his reaction... but he had no idea what to say. Why were Evangeline and her brother so nice to him? Sure, he had saved the boy from a car accident, but he had never expected more than a 'thank-you'. If he hadn’t done it, he couldn’t have possibly lived with himself, not after making a mistake similar to the one that had put him in a hospital bed months ago…

Damon couldn’t bear to see disappointment in Addy’s innocent, big eyes so he took a deep breath and decided to try the one thing he did not bother to do since that day… to smile. Well, at least, to fake it.

So he did it just for Addy . The right corner of his mouth was forced to twitch upwards as his lips formed a tight line. It was a clearly forced smile and Evangeline could immediately see that. But it didn’t matter now… What she did not know was what made him do it.

Damon confused her. He was like all the good books she had read. They created an ocean of mixed emotions inside of her. The more she discovered, the bigger the urge to dig deeper, to find out more. And even after reading the last page and closing the book, there would still be unanswered questions, unclear thoughts.  

And that bugged her to no end. Why couldn’t he smile truly? And why even make the effort of faking it?

Call her nosy, but she had always wanted to know everything that was happening around her. She hated but also loved secrets and mysteries just because of how much she enjoyed finding out the truth. 

“Uh… thanks. You don’t have to, though.” he breathed out after the so-called smile dropped.

“It’s okay.” Addy shrugged and turned to look at his sister.

“I’m cold and I want home.” he pouted.

“Uhm... It’s getting dark anyway.” Evangeline checked the delicate watch at her wrist and nodded to herself.

How could she be that graceful doing such simple things? Getting a stray of hair out of her eyes, rubbing her palms together, zipping up her bag… all these actions were done with so much delicacy that he involuntarily thought of her as a pure, angelic presence. And that reminded him how different seemed Darcy, how irresistibly wicked she always was... and how she had proved that.

"Okay then... we'll be going now." Evangeline intertwined the fingers of her left hand with Addy's fragile little ones and picked up the heavy bag filled with balls.

“Bye!" the boy said with a serious and rather sad look on his face as he did a little wave. He then turned around and began walking on his own.  His sister chuckled and she waved goodbye as well. Taking a few steps away from Damon, a smirk blossomed on her rosy lips as she turned towards him and raised her voice a little.

"And Damon... now that you called me Eva, we are friends. That was the deal, remember? I even told you twice..." she laughed whole heartedly and left him on the wooden bench.