slide away {lorenzo berkshire}

42. half the world away

"There is no peace, I'm sorry to say. We find it. We lose it. We find it again. We lose it again."
- Kurt Vonnegut

~~~~~~

Lorenzo Berkshire

I didn't sleep much.

Cassie was warm beside me, one leg tangled with mine, her cheek pressed to my shoulder. Her hair tickled my neck with every soft breath she took. She looked peaceful - content, even - in a way that made my chest ache for her. Because now I knew that as soon as she woke up, that peace would be gone.

I laid there for a while, just watching her. The morning light was soft through the curtains, making everything feel a little less real. She was here. In my bed. After everything.

After that.

I hated that I hadn't seen it coming. That she'd kept it from me. That someone - her mother, of course it was her mother - had dragged her into something that would chew her up and spit her out.

It didn't change how I felt about her. She could have told me she'd done a 4 year stint in Azkaban and I would still look at her like the sun rose in the morning purely for her.

I just hated the way it made me feel - helpless. Like I should've protected her and didn't. Like I should've known, should've seen the signs.

I reached over, brushing a strand of hair from her face.

Cassie stirred, her eyes blinking open slowly. That little sleepy smile spread across her lips, and she shifted closer.

She yawned, stretching her arms out, then smirked up at me. "You're staring."

"Hard not to. You drool in your sleep."

"I do not," she scoffed, elbowing me lightly in the ribs.

I smiled, planting a soft kiss on her collarbone, letting my fingers trace light patterns down her side. She leaned into it, sighing, but something in her body was just the tiniest bit tense. Like she was holding her breath.

"You okay?" I asked, quietly.

She looked up, eyes wide - too wide. "Course I am," she said with a smile, pressing a kiss to my jaw. "Don't start going soft on me now, Lorenzo. I'll lose all respect for you."

I huffed a laugh, but it didn't reach my chest.

Cassie had always been like this - she didn't do vulnerable. Not unless she was breaking. And I could feel it - something simmering just under the surface, hot and sharp and fragile.

But she didn't want me to see it. So I didn't push. I let her move the subject onto something else. Something easier.

Her smile was slow, lazy, and real. Not the forced grin she wore around other people, or the one she used to hide whatever hell she was pushing down lately. This was just Cassie - unguarded, warm, tangled up in my sheets and stealing my duvet from me.

That laugh - god, that laugh - I felt it somewhere deep in my chest. It pulled me right back in, made the mark on her arm feel like a dream, distant and unreal.

So I kissed her.

It started soft, slow. Then her hands slid into my hair and she bit my bottom lip, and we were gone again, tangled in sheets and limbs and the rush of something that felt too big to name.

And just like that, we fell into it. Easy. Natural.

The next couple of weeks slipped by in a blur of stolen moments and soft skin. We were inseparable again. Not in a clingy, desperate way - in a way that felt inevitable. Like we'd always been orbiting the same pull and now we'd finally collided.