Love Me, Please (Camren)

Chapter 19

One thing Lauren never learned in school is that staying away from your soulmate hurts like hell.

She never thought it would be so bad but here she is, lying in bed at night, one hand over her heart and the other digging into her mark, pain coursing through her body. Nothing would make it stop, nothing would even dull it, and she tried everything. Warm baths, hot tea, pain meds. Curling into a ball. Lying facedown on the floor. Screaming into the mattress. Staring up at the ceiling. Closing her eyes, and trying not to think.

She sleeps restlessly and painfully. Her entire body feels like shit, like she has the flu but worse, and she feels dizzy and nauseous but it's not physical. The pain she's feeling is real but the cause is in her mind and she's determined to overcome it.

She doesn't.

In the morning she feels so jaded, she can hardly get out of bed. Standing up doesn't make her feel any better and neither does putting on clothes. She has an exam in a few days that she can't just not study for, so she forces herself out of her dorm and to the library.

She's sitting staring out the window trying to quiet her mind from the ugly intrusive thoughts telling her she's so lonely, so so so fucking lonely, her heart aching for her other half and screaming at her for somehow messing this up, messing this up when it's so fucking easy and somehow she still did it wrong. Somehow she messed up so badly even the person who was god damn created to fucking love her refuses to love her anyways.

She's so unlovable, her soulmate wouldn't even look at her. That's what she has to remember when she feels the small hairs on the back of her neck prickle and her heart begin to thunder in her chest, for no apparent reason at all. The library is quiet as always and Lauren is tucked between the bookshelves, sitting on the windowsill with a textbook propped up on her lap, and no one can find her here, she's alone. But she feels the pooling sense of dreadful hope, the ache in her heart that yearns for something nearer now. She knows what it means, and she tenses, afraid.

The universe is a fan of humor. That's why it created Lauren to be hated by Camila Cabello and to hate her in return. That's why it puts them in the same place as much as possible, because it thinks it's funny to torture Lauren like this.

There are footsteps down the aisle of the library and Lauren refuses to look up.

"Lo?"

Refuses to look up.

Refuses to look up.

Refuses to-

She looks up.

Her soulmate is standing at the end of the aisle, palms turned outwards and open like she's asking god for something. She's about ten feet away and somehow the space between them seems both insurmountable and suffocating.

Camila looks tired too. Lauren thinks of her and how she was panicking, how her hands were shaking and her eyes were crying hard, tears pouring down like rivulets, tears pouring everywhere. Now her face is clear but her eyes are tired and sad.

Lauren wonders how much it hurts her but she's certain it can't be as bad as Lauren feels, not with the way Lauren knows now how unwanted she is no matter what Camila says, no matter how she tries to amend the way she never even looked in Lauren's direction when Lauren was so certain she was the one, so certain they would have their happily ever after.

She was so wrong, it's laughable.

"Lo, I- I didn't even know. I'm sorry-"

Lauren doesn't know what she's talking about but she looks away without inquiring further. Eyes back on the textbook in front of her.