I miss you.
Lincoln:
I miss you too.
I drop my phone onto my chest and just stare at the ceiling. This might’ve explained some stuff, but there still feels like there’s this giant chasm between us. I don’t know how we get back from this. Will there even be an us while Harrison rules over him? While the acting Regent of the fucking Conclave insists that Georgia is in his life?
If I looked better in orange, I’d be tempted just to take her out purely for what she did to Lincoln. Pretty sure that Harrison would make sure I was locked up for it though, and he’d throw away the damn key.
I toss and turn in bed, waiting for sleep to take me, but it doesn’t come. When I check my phone again, it’s two a.m.
Awesome.
A rustling outside my balcony door has me sitting up in bed, reaching for the gun Maverick insisted I keep in the drawer beside my bed. But when I see Lincoln open the balcony door, I stop, my heart hammering in my chest.
Why is he here?
And why do I feel so awkward that he is.
“You know you don’t have to keep coming in that way, right?” I quirk a brow as Lincoln crosses my room toward my bed. This push and pull between us is getting to a point where we either need to fix things, or I need to put more distance between us until we can sort out the web of lies we’re trapped in. I hate this limbo.
He clenches his jaw and shrugs as he slips out of his jacket. He drops his phone and God knows what else onto the bedside table, stripping down to his boxers before climbing into bed and lying down beside me in silence.
I open my mouth to speak but nothing comes out, so I close it again, wishing things weren’t like this with us.
I know I’m probably overreacting, that this isn’t his fault, but my stupid heart can’t make sense of it all. All I have is pain and jealousy, no matter how unreasonable it is.
He rolls over to face me and lets out a deep sigh before pulling his phone from the bedside table. He taps the screen a few times before turning back to me and slipping an AirPod I hadn’t noticed him grab into my ear. “I never thought I’d be the one you couldn’t talk to. That we’d be here. That I wouldn’t have the right words to fix this. So I’m hoping that this will say what I can’t.”
He goes quiet as the track starts playing in my ear. I close my eyes and listen to the lyrics, breaking a little inside—in the best way—over the fact that he chose to reach me with the one medium he knows speaks to the deepest, darkest parts of me.
So, can we close the space between us now?
It's the distance we don't need.
You're everything I love about the things I hate in me.
“What song is this?” My voice is croaky as waves of emotion wash over me. He shows me the screen as the song starts to play again.
Favorite Placeby All Time Low.
My heart shatters in my chest, but not in the painful way I’ve been dealing with lately. I break in a way that I think I might be able to rebuild from. With him.
With all of them.
I just need a way to free them. To free us all.
I make a promise to myself that as soon as there is a way, I’ll save them. All of them. No matter the cost.
As I roll over, the song still playing, he curls around me from behind, and that’s how I fall asleep.
* * *
I wake up to the feel of Linc’s lips fluttering down my neck, the press of his dick against my ass. I can’t say that I haven’t missed this.
Missed him.
I know I should be over what happened, that it’s all for show, but that doesn’t make my heart hurt any less. Not when I know I’m going to have to keep seeing him with her. That there’s nothing I can do to stop it.