Beyond This Moment

22 Day Nine- 10:47 P.M.

"We need to stop for the night," I tell Elias as he's the one driving and Gabe and Cassie are in the back asleep. It's been a long day full of mostly-silent driving due to the fact that I'm still not talking to Gabe and he wants to apologize, I can tell, but he wants to do it in private. Which means that I spent the entire day glued to Elias's hip. When we did bathroom breaks, I stayed with Cassie. Despite Cassie's encouraging, I wasn't ready to talk things out with Gabe.

"We only have like, two hours left," He says to me in response but he says it with a yawn and he's obviously exhausted.

"You're going to crash the car if we keep going, you're basically falling asleep at the wheel and I'm too tired to take over," I tell him with a shake of my head.

"I'm fine," He assures me. "Besides, we don't have any money left to get a motel."

"I saw a campgrounds sign saying that there's some campgrounds up a little farther. Let's at least just park for a few hours and get a nap in. We'll still be there before morning," I try to reason with him, which is easy to do considering how tired he is and I know that Gabe won't appreciate us stopping but there's no difference in us showing up in Seattle at one or at three in the morning.

"Alright, let me just get somewhere to park," He appeases me.

The camping area is hard to navigate in the dark so once we turn into the grounds, we pull off of the main road as soon as possible and he parks the car. Deciding that we can lay on the hood of the car and watch the stars as we nap, I carry my blanket out of the car and Elias follows me.

"Maybe we won't sleep for long if we're outside," I suggest. "And fingers crossed that we don't get eaten by any wild animals."

"They probably have wolves out here," Elias says jokingly but he slides onto the hood of the car with me anyway. "But the sky is pretty clear and it looks nice so I guess I'll take that risk."

"Good," I say. To get the blanket around both of us, we have to sit pretty close together so we're pretty much cuddling and when I lay my head back on the cool window behind me, I let my cheek fall against Elias's shoulder as we both look up at the stars. "It is really beautiful."

"Yeah, it is," He agrees and after that, we're silent. For a while, I think that he's going to sleep but I'm still watching the stars. I am exhausted but this is such an amazing view that I don't want to let it go and I'm with Elias and I don't want to let that go either. When Elias starts moving though, I realize that he's not asleep and that he's also watching the stars. His hand is moving under the blanket and for a moment, I don't know what he's doing.

His hand brushes against my bare thigh and so I think that he's trying to make a move or something but he moves past my thigh and I realize that he's looking for my hand. Hoping that my hunch is right, I move my hand to his under the blankets. When my fingertips brush against his palm, he quickly snatches my hand into his and it makes me smile. Obviously, we're not going to get to sleep anytime soon and now that he's holding my hand, I don't think that I'll sleep at all. I just want this moment to last forever, looking at the stars with him beside me and holding my hand because it's such a small gesture but it feels nice.

"I need some more time," I find myself saying to Elias. "I do really like you but with everything that's been happening, I just need to take a breath, you know? I can't start something with you when I'm still sad about losing Kellan, that's not fair to either one of us at all."

"Yeah, I get that," He assures me. "And that's fine. You'll just have to tell me to fuck off when I'm crossing the line because sometimes it's hard."