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This weird feeling or a better word would be intuition kept my spirits low the next morning when I woke up and found Lucas missing.
Deciding that I need some time to myself, alone, I stayed back in my room and filled up a university application for my further studies.
My hands shivered for no apparent reason other than that my anxiety was stabbing me in the stomach, causing it to churn with hundreds of unwanted feelings.
What's going on with me, I've never felt so...down.
Was I upset because Lucas left me in the morning?
No, not really. I knew he had to look after an entire kingdom, he couldn't just stay back and rest all day long.
And it wasn't loneliness that I was feeling, it was an emotion that was way more frightening than just loneliness.
I continued to finish my application form and tried to stop my mind from wandering around into the unknown.
Once that was done, I got up and headed to the huge window in the bedroom. The sky has always had the ability to make me happy, but the cloudy skies and light showers only made me shiver.
Against my better judgment, I headed to my and Lucas's joint closet and sat there for some time. The comfort of his scent surrounding me calmed my nerve a little.
I walked up to where my clothes were kept and dug into the very end of it where a torn black sweatshirt lay.
My secret.
As cliche as it was, I kept Lucas's sweatshirt with me for more than a decade. At times, I hated myself for being weak, for mourning over the loss of my king. But three years after being in Italy, when I decided to stop writing letters to Lucas I tore this sweatshirt and dumped it into the trash and burned it only to run right into it and pull it back while crying over how fu*king weak I was.
To me, it felt like a safety blanket. One that would protect me from the world.
"Athira?"
The sudden knock on the door caught me off guard, I scrambled to get up and tried to hide the sweatshirt but just then, Nora walked in and gave me a small smile.
Surprisingly, she came besides me and sat down on the floor.
"I'm sorry for walking in, I tried knocking but you seemed to have zoned out," Nora said, pulling her knees up and placing her hands on them while continuing.
"I got worried when you didn't open and walked in. It's fine though, I mean, I understand why you're sitting here. I tend to slip into Shawn's clothes too when I feel worried." She completed, looking at me and pulling my hands into hers.
