Right Beside You | Stiles Stilinski | Two

5 - Stutter

Lydia ended up having to spend the night in the hospital. Exhaustion hit her hard, and she was suffering from hypothermia and dehydration, but the damage wasn't nearly as extensive as it could have been. The bite in her side hadn't reopened, and continued to heal at a normal pace. She hadn't gotten frostbite. Even after she'd been wandering in the woods for as long as she had, she didn't have another scratch on her. She hadn't even nicked herself on a branch.

Everyone was ecstatic. Except me.

Of course, I was relieved that she hadn't been hurt. It was just...odd. Lydia had blacked out and run top speed from the hospital, no clothes, no shoes, no destination, and somehow hadn't sustained a single injury. No scraped knees or bruised elbows or cuts on the bottom of her feet. It was more than just odd; it was unnatural. Unfortunately, I knew from personal experience that there were plenty of unnatural explanations to be found in Beacon Hills.

It just made it even more important for me to stay close to Lydia. Natalie, my mother and I had spent the night in her hospital room, reluctant to part ways. Jeff had ducked out in favor of his fancy apartment, remembering that he had a very important business meeting to attend the next morning. He'd only stuck around maybe two hours after his daughter had been found. None of us were sorry to see him go.

Instead, we spent the night together, just girls, tucked away with food, comfy clothes, movies, and the occasional doctor to check up on us. We flipped through magazines, brushed out the knots in Lydia's hair, and took it in turns to nap so we could all get some sleep. We didn't need Mr. Martin. We were a family all our own.

The next morning, our mothers had insisted that we both skip school, and this time, I didn't argue. Lydia and I both spent most of the day sleeping; she was still catching up after her adventure in the woods, and I was still catching up after a month of worrying I might lose her. Sometimes we both tried to squeeze on the cot, but hospital beds aren't really built for sleepovers. I had to improvise by pushing a bunch of chairs together to make my own bed, not unlike Stiles had done in the waiting room. It was a quiet day, something we both sorely needed.

Our friends checked in from time to time. Scott had sent me several text messages, interwoven with emoticons and cute pictures, letting me know he was happy that Lydia was okay. He also informed me that she hadn't been the one ravaging corpses around town. He'd tracked the scent down to a stranger, an omega wolf from out of town who'd come to Beacon Hills looking for an Alpha. I didn't love the idea of stragglers flocking to Derek for power, especially when they left so much destruction in their wake, but Scott assured me the omega wasn't going to be an issue again. The Argents had "taken care of it." I'd asked what that meant, but he assured me that I didn't want to know. He asked me to keep my head down and take care of Lydia; that was one instruction I didn't mind following.

Allison had stopped by after school to visit in person. She brought cookies and nail polish, and we spent the afternoon like normal teenagers, giving each other manicures and swapping petty gossip. The conversation was deliberately light, side-stepping any problematic subjects. That meant we weren't talking about formal. In retrospect, that's probably why it took so long for the subject to come up. But inevitably, fate intervened.

About an hour after Allison arrived, so did a delivery person from the florist. There was an oversized arrangement of purple flowers, the card specifying that they were for both Lydia and me. There wasn't any other information, but it wasn't exactly a mystery who'd sent them.

Lydia was livid.

"Are you kidding me, Scarlett?! Why didn't you say something?!"

She hurled a pillow at me, which I barely dodged with a squawk. "I—sorry! You didn't ask!"