Under Your Scars || Sebastian Sallow x MC

Chapter 70 - The End

Sebastian POV

ONE MONTH LATER...

All afternoon I have waited in the Undercroft for her.

Her classes must have run late.

Perhaps she didn't get my letter.

I wipe my sweaty palms against my slacks as I mumble another rehearsal under my breath.

Just when I think to make my way to the dungeons in search of her, the squeaking of the gate alerts me to her arrival.

I only have one shot at this, so I must do everything precisely as rehearsed.

I have my whole speech prepared, but the moment my eyes land upon my Juliette, looking radiant as ever in her blue corseted dress, nearly all words escape me.

Luckily, I only need a few.

I wait for her to walk through the aisle constructed of candles and rose petals to the center of the room where I am standing. When she reaches me, I take one of her hands and drop clumsily to one knee.

This is it.

I look up into her amber-brown eyes, and nothing has ever felt so right.

"Juliette Marie Fontaine, would you do me the honour of marrying me?"

My hand shakily procures the small blue velvet ring box from my pocket and presents it to her.

Before she can answer, before a single tear falls, before she can even gasp in surprise...

I woke up.

____________

I didn't need to open my eyes to know I was in the same shitty reality. 

A reality in which I hadn't seen her eyes, heard her voice, felt her touch in nearly a month.

I fucking hate it here.

I was in the in-between, what I had learned to call the time between dreaming of being with her and waking up alone. It was the time in which I slowly realized that it was real, that the caverns was not some horrid nightmare I was finally waking up from. 

It was the real-world that was the nightmare. 

My eyelids fluttered open and my eyes strained to adjust to the brightness of the room. It must have been mid-afternoon, though they always kept the bloody lights so bloody bright in here it was hard to tell.

I realized only then that I had woken up not because of the light, but because my pillow was moving.

"We've got to stop meeting like this."

A raspy voice brought me out of my half-asleep stupor and thrust me into alertness. I snapped my head up from where it rested on her legs, checking to make sure I was not hallucinating.

And I wasn't.

Juliette was awake.

I thrust myself across the hospital bed and into her arms, not realizing how frail she might be. In moments I was blubbering like a fool, kissing her through tears and snot. I didn't care. I would never detach my lips from hers again, if I could help it.

"Are we erm... interrupting something?"

I parted lips with Jules but kept our foreheads pressed together.