A Soldier's Life

Chapter 16 - Six

Y/n's POV:

My alarm rang out indicating that it was 8am. I groaned before remembering that it was Ava's birthday. A smile starting to creep across my face. I realise that I'm still led in Sophie's arms and that's when I remember the events from last night. The smile quickly fading. I carefully untangle myself from her, so I don't wake her up and make my way into the bathroom.

Resting my hands on the sink, I look in the mirror and see my tired face. I run my finger over the cut on my forehead, the reminder of the nightmare and panic attack from the night before. This is going to be a hard one to explain to everyone later. Luckily, my eyes aren't too puffy and bloodshot, hopefully a shower and some makeup will help to disguise most of the evidence.

Whilst I'm in the shower, I let the hot water run over my aching body. I forgot the toil having such a severe panic attack had on my body. My mind is swirling, and I can feel tears start to mix with the water on my face. I hate this feeling of not having control. I felt such guilt that Sophie had to see it, and it scared me to think what affect this could have had if Ava witnessed it.

To stop myself from continuing to spiral, I give myself the time in the shower to just feel everything, let out the emotions that I need to. Then when I'm done, I can focus on Ava and making sure she has the best birthday. Once I'm out of the shower, I wrap a towel around me whilst I grab some sweatpants and a baggy shirt. I quickly towel dry my hair so I can crack on with preparing for the morning.

I go to my secret hiding space in the living room and take out the presents I had bought and wrapped for Ava, placing them around the coffee table. Next on the list is decorations. I start by blowing up the balloons, which have the number 6 on them, and decorate the living room with the happy birthday banner so when Ava wakes up it's special for her. I found these cute little "6th birthday" confetti type things which seemed like a great idea at the time. Now I've spread them over the coffee table, I'm quickly regretting it, knowing that they will be a bugger to clean up later on!

Once I'm happy with the living room. I start on breakfast, a full English, Ava's favourite. I put my airpods in so I don't wake either Sophie or Ava up and start to slowly dance around the kitchen whilst cooking. I can start to feel my body relax as I get into cooking and the music which is flowing through my headphones.

As I'm frying up the bacon, I can feel a presence behind me, and I turn around to see a sleepy Sophie in her pyjamas rubbing her eyes. Taking out my headphones, I give her a warm smile. "Why didn't you wake me?" She asks taking a seat at the kitchen island. I grabbed a mug and poured her a coffee to help wake her up.

"After last night you deserved a lie in." I say quietly, avoiding eye contact with her. She audibly huffs at me before taking a sip of her coffee. "About last night I just want to say..." "I promise you, if an apology comes out of your mouth right now, I'm going to walk over there and punch you in the face! It's fine, I'm fine, we're fine. Stop worrying." Sophie interrupts sternly.

Relief sweeps over me and I turn down the bacon before walking over to her and pulling her into a hug. She gratefully accepts it and snuggles into me. "Just please tell me if this happens again. I hate the thought of you go through it on your own and I want to be here to help." She speaks into my shoulder. "I promise." I agree rubbing my hand up and down her back.

"Right, come on, let's get breakfast done so we can wake the monster!" Sophie says, leaving our hug and grabbing the eggs out of the fridge. Like we did on the morning of Ava's first day at school, we worked seamlessly together in preparing the breakfast feast.

As we started to plate up food, I noticed that Sophie kept glancing in my direction. "What's with the side eye Soph, are you trying to flirt with me?" I tease with a smirk. Which quickly earnt me being on the receiving end of a punch to my arm. "You're a dick." She grumbled before taking a more serious tone. "How's your head? Does it hurt?" She asked finally addressing the elephant in the room.