Please Don't Drive Me Blind
Even from a distance Jack could still read her eyes. He sees her across the square or when he collects Amy. However fleeting the contact was he could tell something was not right. He had always loved her striking eyes, loved the way that no matter how much she tried to turn her facial expressions to cold, unreadable marble she could never hide the flash of feeling deep within them. And no matter how frustrated he got with the way she kept him at arm length at least her eyes gave him a means of connection.
Now her eyes are murky blue and steady, like looking up from the bottom of a chlorine filled swimming pool. He would like to say that he does not recognise the woman looking back at him, that tragedy had eaten away at everything that was familiar and he could wash his hands at all their failed attempts to make a relationship work. But while she had changed in a way that made his insides ache every time he saw her there was an understanding he just could not let go.
She was always there, like a ghost flickering in the corner of his vision, too close to become just another regret washed away in a brooding alcohol induced coma.
Ronnie Mitchell seemed to have stopped living. She went through the motions of working and shopping with her sister. She kept herself unapproachable and removed enough that no one seemed to realise the difference. Jack thought he knew her better, better than her own family.
That Joel bloke had disappeared a few weeks back. The other man had just quietly upped and left one day. It was practically unheard of for someone involved with that family. He had tried to get the details out of Roxy when she came to take Amy home, the blond had been uncharacteristically tight lipped but he still noticed the flash of worry across her animated face.
He was honest enough to admit that a big part of him was glad that things had not worked out with Danielle's father. For a long heart stopping moment he had thought that Ronnie was actually happy with the ordinary looking man, he tried to pretend he could be glad for her. She deserved to finally have some happiness in her life but he could not let go of the feeling that she should be happy with him.
He felt like a failure because he had not been the one to make her let go of the past. It amazed him how he fell for a woman who had built herself around the foundations of past trauma. Nobody knew who she was past all the pain. He never thought he could love a woman so similar to himself.
Her eyes scared him now, all blank and hazy as if she was not really there. Maybe he had no right to be concerned; at least her face did not seem to contort in pain anymore but he knew she had never dealt with such deep set distress. She was on the edge of the roof top waiting for the long fall. Jack did not think anyone would be able to save her if she jumped.