Nightfall (Devil's Night 4)

Emory

Present

We’d never slept in the same bed.

Of course, it wasn’t like we ever had a relationship. Just unbridled, stolen moments.

I looked over at him next to me, his head turned away as his bare chest rose and fell, and the morning light seeped through the drapes, making his skin glow and his eyebrows look like chocolate.

He brought me up here last night and told me to go to sleep, and I thought about arguing, but then I realized I didn’t want to.

I was tired. He was tired. Fuck it.

My arm laid next to his, my pinky brushing his, and I almost wanted to thread them, but if I moved, so would he, and I wasn’t ready for him to wake up.

Turning my head left, I gazed at Alex curled up on her side, facing me and holding the pillow under her head.

She wore one of Will’s T-shirts, and while seeing them together last night and how close they were hurt, I liked Alex. I liked her a lot.

She didn’t want to hurt me. I knew that.

I couldn’t help but smile a little. Her nose curled up at the end, almost like a Who, and I could see straight up her nostrils.

Not a single hair out of place on her entire body. Not a single one.

I shook my head and stared back up at the ceiling, trying to wonder if I should be weirded out that I was planted in bed between my first love and his girlfriend, but somehow it seemed like such a shallow thought in the grand scheme of things.

I rolled over, pushed myself up slowly, and climbed over Alex, gazing down at them both still asleep. Walking behind the privacy screen, I grabbed a washcloth, wetting it under the faucet of the tub.

Squeezing out the excess hot water, I pressed it to my face, closing my eyes and letting the warmth seep through and calm the ache in my jaw and on my eye where Alex had smacked me yesterday.

A bath sounded good, but I didn’t want to wake them up yet.

But just then, something brushed my leg, and I dropped my arms, opening up my eyes to see Alex sitting on the edge of the tub, peering up at me.

“Sorry I woke you,” I told her, reheating the washcloth under the hot water again.

“I’m fine.”

I wrung out the cloth and stepped up to her, pressing it to her cheek and the nasty bruise swelling under the skin.

She tried to take it, but I nudged her away. “I wasn’t going to leave without you,” I told her.

In case she doubted that.

I just hated myself, and it was easier to try to disappear than face the music yesterday.

“And him?” she asked. “Were you going to leave without him?”

I inched forward, my legs on both sides of her thigh as I gently patted her face.

“The best thing for him is to be as far away from me as possible,” I said.

But instead of trying to convince me otherwise, she just scoffed. “You’re such a coward.”

I tensed a little, but I kept my mouth shut, moving the hot towel around her face.

I wasn’t a coward about everything.