When you're ready

10. Two in the morning

The faint sound of the TV invades Shawn’s ears and he opens his eyes slowly, noticing a random movie on the screen. Aside from the light coming from the TV screen, the house is completely dark. It takes a few seconds for him to remember why he was there, but the weight on his shoulder makes his memory come back immediately. He looks to his side, finding Camila asleep on his shoulder, her long hair all over the place as the dim light illuminates her delicate features.

 Shawn’s eyes look for the clock over the kitchen bar on the other side of the room, his eyes widening in surprise as he realizes it’s past two in the morning already. Camila had spent the whole day with him and his grandpa and it was already dark when the old man had gone to sleep and it was just the two of them. It was pretty obvious he didn’t want her to go and she seemed to want nothing more than to stay there with him, so they ended up watching a movie in the living room. He didn’t remember the ending of the movie, so they had both probably fallen asleep at some point.

 He let his eyes wander on her face again, wondering if maybe he should wake her up so she could go home. Two in the morning was too late for her to go home, he thought she might as well spend the night at his house already, but he worried that maybe her parents didn’t know where she was and were looking for her.

Shawn looked in the space next to her on the couch, trying to find her phone, when he noticed it was in the back pocket of her jeans. He had spent the whole day trying not to let it show how much he wanted to stare at her ass in those jeans, so he felt kind of weird reaching to take her phone out of her back pocket. He wanted to curse Brian for even pointing out on that first day that Camila had an incredible ass, but he knew he would have noticed either way, even if he tried not to.

 Her phone was now in his hand and he just looked at it for a few minutes, feeling like it was wrong for him to look at it without her permission, but then he felt Camila moving closer to him in her sleep. Her head that was resting on his shoulder was now on his chest and her hand was holding his shirt as snuggled into him. She looked so beautiful and he didn’t want to wake her up, so he just decided to see if she had any missing calls or texts. If she had any, then he would have to wake her up. He sighed in relief when he checked her phone and she didn’t have any notifications, which meant no one was looking for her.

 Shawn placed her phone next to her on the couch and let one of his arms go around Camila as she kept comfortably using him as a pillow. Part of him wanted to just stay like that the whole night, fall asleep again with this beautiful mysterious girl in his arms, but another part of him kept saying this couch wouldn’t be comfortable to spend the night on. 

 Camila was so tiny compared to him that he didn’t struggle at all to lift her up in his arms and carry her down the hallway to his room. Shawn laid her down on his bed, but she didn’t want to let him go at first. He finally put a blanket over her and took a deep breath before leaving his bedroom and closing the door, resting his back against the wall across from it and freaking out a little over the fact that he had a girl in his bed. He couldn’t help wondering what his mom would have said about that. She would have freaked out and he would be grounded for a long time. He missed that. Now he was the one making all the decisions and it felt a little weird not having to worry about the fact that a girl was sleeping in his bed.

 As he walked back to the living room, he made sure to check on his grandpa, who was also sleeping with his TV on. Shawn turned it off before closing the door behind him and walking back to the couch. His parents' bedroom was still there at the end of the hallway, but he always avoided going there, so the couch would have to do. 

 Suddenly he didn’t feel like sleeping at all, all he could think about was how Camila was in his arms just a few minutes ago and was now in his bedroom. The couch felt kind of lonely without her next to him and his mind was racing with possibilities.

He wasn’t sure what to do about her. It was like she was invading every little part of his life, making sure she made her presence known, and he liked that. He liked that a lot. No one had tried to get close to him in such a long time, but that seemed to be exactly what she wanted. There was so much he wanted to ask her, so much he wanted to know about her, but he could tell she wouldn’t give him any of that so easily. Figuring her out was going to be a hard task, but it was one he had just decided he would do anyway.