Afterglow

stark

The cold light of day was often a bitter pill to swallow, and unfortunately for me, the sunlight bounced off of copious amounts of incessantly bright snow, making that 'cold light of day' a ridiculously shining and headache inducing brilliance that made me want to furrow my head under the covers and cuddle up with my absurdly comfortable pillow, made out of someone's skin...

Lachlan's skin, to be exact, a fact that wasn't lost on me, not in its entirety.

I wriggled a bit in his embrace, but his arms didn't budge. My head was on his chest, his arm thrown around me while one leg was stuck between two of mine. I was irresistibly comfortable, but I was worried that he wouldn't want to wake up so desperately close to me like that...old insecurities were hard to erase, and the memories of the old teasings he used to throw my way crowded out all of the normal reactions that came with waking up next to Lachlan, a second time.

A sudden knock at the front door of his cabin stirred him out of his stupor, and I rubbed the sleep from my eyes pretending the intrusion had woken me and that I hadn't been staring at the cut line of his jaw for the past five minutes like a creeper.

"Goodmorning," he said sleepily, and the normalcy of waking up next to him was striking. I realized I wanted this more than I should have allowed myself to.

"Morning," I squeaked out as he stretched his arms above his head, those lower muscles pulling taut across his skin and I wondered how he could make my mouth water so early in the morning.

He slipped out of bed and threw on a t-shirt and padded to the front door while I cowered under the covers like a scaredy cat, afraid of whoever was at the door.

"I brought your cell phones, since no one thought to grab them from detention yesterday after everything happened. Is she still in here?"

Lachlan didn't give Vera a chance to answer as she pushed past him and her eyes widened as she found me in the bed since there was no barrier between the 'bedroom' area and the living area.

"Okay, I knew you two were a 'thing' yesterday but I didn't know it was an actual 'thing, thing,' you know?"

My eyes furrowed in confusion as I took in her casual appearance, remembering that it was Saturday. Her hair was in a twisted bun, her face makeup free, and a wry smile on her face.

"Wait, so you're not mad that I hid this from you?"

"Mad? A little bit, but I get why you did. I mean, we all would've given you so much shit for this so I get it."

Guilt stabbed at my stomach as I remembered that there were a lot of things that I had yet to tell her, and things I hadn't even told Lachlan yet.

"I brought you some clothes and toiletries so you could get ready. We're going somewhere just us best friends, and you can spill all the beans then. Just girls," she said, pointing the last of her statement towards Lachlan who was watching the interaction between us with hooded eyes and a slight amused tilt to his lips.

"Once you tell me absolutely everything, then you can have this back," she said, dangling my phone between her fingers.

A rush of panic flitted over my spine, but then I remembered that he couldn't hurt me if I didn't give him the power. He couldn't reach me if my phone was dead...but I wondered if he would soon grow tired of my ignoring him, if he would escalate his attempts to reach me.

There was also the matter of Ian and if he had continued to get better, or if he had regressed back into a coma. There were multiple other reasons to go along with Vera's demand of information for my phone that she was currently holding for ransom, reasons that weren't purely selfish such as genuinely wanting to fill my best friend in on what was going on in my life, but my head was so messed up that I found myself wanting to rush her out of the cabin so I could get dressed.