Please...

Katie’s tears tear at Jason’s heart like nothing else. Suddenly his barrier is tested to the limit. Her quivering voice begging him…pleading with him to break those chains was stronger than anything she’d used before.

Jason stands distanced from Katie. The war that had started months ago was now at its most gruesome battle ever. His heart screamed at him to let go. To live. To love. To give back what he had stolen from the one who was most precious in his life.

The love was hidden, locked away….his eyes gave her nothing, nothing but that dark abyss, void of his emotions.

But her eyes…those eyes that pierced his own…they held the key to the chains. They held the key to breaking down the barrier, no matter how strong it had grown.

“I can’t,” he whispers… he reaches out a hand to cradle her tear-streaked face. “There is so much…” He closes his eyes for a moment, dropping his hand. “So much I haven’t said…”

He wants to look away. He wants to back away. Every fiber in his being wants to drop it all and run from the pain that was so deep.

But those eyes…Katie’s eyes…they pull at him… tug at him…beg him not to. They pain him more than anything else as they drive his own hurt towards the surface. Like a magnet pulling nails through his heart.

“Aw, Katie.” Jason grits his teeth and turns to lean on the open doorframe, his eyes clenched shut, trying to block her. He could…he knew he could…he was capable…he had the strength. He hadn’t wanted this to happen. Not now…not seeing her for the first time again. Why was she doing this to him? He could stop it…he had the power…

But what was he willing to lose, in order to preserve his pride?

Jason’s gut twists with his own agony. He was free from prison, but his heart had remained behind bars. He was being offered a second freedom and was turning it down.

He was being stupid.

Spinning back around, Jason locks a gaze with Katie, anger for the situation flashing in his eyes. He steps toward her, shutting the door behind him to block out the world.

His eyes remain harsh as he reaches out and takes Katie’s hands. His grip tightens around her fingers as his pulse pounds in his head. His breathing grows shallow, a bead of sweat trickles down the back of his neck. He glares into the eyes that begged him to release himself.

Closing his own for just a moment, he opens them again…and they show life.

Pain…deep pain courses through Jason’s very being as he drags it from the depths. His hands start to shake as they grip Katie’s. He relives the moments that brought the most hurt. He pulls from the corners the anger he’d built up. He remembers the people he has hurt…the fists he has thrown.

His eyes remained locked on Katie’s as the emotions begin to pool.

Agony shoots through his veins…loneliness surges through his heart…sorrow envelopes his gaze. One after the other, Jason dredges up everything that he had worked so hard to bury, hurling them in Katie’s direction.

And finally, the tears. Springing into his eyes, they sting more than the emotional pain itself.

Unable to stand it any more, Jason chokes on his own breath that he’d been holding. He lets go of Katie’s hands and reaches out to pull her close to him, wrapping his arms around her in a tight embrace, pressing her head to his chest. “I’m sorry…” His voice is wrought with the emotional trauma he has just gone through. His body weak, his mind exhausted. “Please don’t let me go.”