His Father's Eyes
424 Words
The next day, I woke up hollow.
I had spent the night replaying the betrayal like a film stuck on loop—his hands on her, her smile, their laughter at my expense. The pain burned, but underneath, it was something sharper.
Anger.
When my phone buzzed with his name, I ignored it. I ignored every message, every pathetic excuse he tried to send. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of my tears.
But fate had a cruel sense of humour.
That evening, I found myself standing on his porch. Not for him—but for my things. My clothes. My books. The parts of me I had left scattered in his space, trusting him with pieces of my life.
The door didn’t open to him.
It opened to his father.
He stood there, tall and broad, filling the doorway with a presence that stole my breath. Salt-and-pepper hair, a sharp jaw, and eyes—dark, piercing, unyielding. The kind of eyes that seemed to strip away pretence, digging until they found the truth buried inside you.
“Looking for my son?” His voice was smooth, laced with something that made my skin prickle.
I swallowed hard, suddenly hyperaware of how vulnerable I looked, arms crossed against my chest, trying to hold myself together. “No. I'm just here for my things.”
His gaze lingered on me for a long, charged moment before he stepped aside. “Come in.”
The house felt different with him in it. Colder. Sharper. Like every wall carried his authority. I moved quickly, gathering what was mine, trying not to notice how his eyes followed me—steady, unreadable, but not disinterested.
When I bent to pick up a box near the couch, his voice cut through the silence.
“He hurt you, didn’t he?”
My hands froze. Slowly, I straightened, meeting his stare. Something flickered in his eyes then—a dangerous softness, like he already knew the answer.
I forced a bitter laugh. “That obvious?”
He stepped closer, not touching me, but close enough that I felt the heat radiating off him. His voice dropped lower, velvet, and steel.
“My son doesn’t deserve you.”
The air between us thickened. My chest rose and fell too quickly. For one dizzying second, I wasn’t thinking about betrayal or revenge. I was thinking about him. His nearness. His dominance. His eyes that saw too much.
And in that moment, I realized something terrifying.
I wasn’t just angry.
I was tempted.
- Writer
