slide away {lorenzo berkshire}

75. about you

"You are the first person I ever showed my heart to and you are the reason no one will ever see it again"
- Unknown

~~~~~~~

Lorenzo Berkshire

It had been two weeks since that night at the manor.

I still thought about it. I thought about it all the time. But not in the way everyone would expect.

Because the worst part of that night wasn't the curses. It wasn't the agony running through my body. It was Cassie's voice. Her screams. The way she cried my name like she could pull me back through sheer force of will, her pleas cutting through the chaos until they didn't even sound human anymore. That sound lived in me now, carved deeper than any scar.

But even through all of that, I didn't have a single second of doubt. I would take it again in a heartbeat. For her. Always.

When I woke up in the hospital wing, the first thing I noticed wasn't the pain - it was the smell of her perfume lingering on the bed next to me. I didn't know why then, but later Theo told me she hadn't left the room for days. That she'd invented half a dozen injuries just to stay close. It was ridiculous. Completely unhinged in a way that only Cassie could pull off. No one had ever done something like that for me before.

And then there was her birthday.

I don't think I'll ever forget the look on her face when she saw me again, when she saw I was okay. For a second she didn't breathe - just froze, like her mind couldn't catch up to what her eyes were seeing. And then she smiled. Not her usual sharp grin, not that teasing smirk she likes to hide behind - but something small and unguarded, like relief and disbelief and hope all tangled together. I'd never seen her look so happy. Or so wrecked.

And I just sat there, watching her, realising how much I'd missed her voice. How much I'd missed her. It's strange - how that memory hurts and heals me at the same time.

Since then, things had been different. Cassie had barely left my side.

Not that I minded. Not for a second.

She hovered like a shadow I didn't want to shake, slipping her hand into mine between classes, pressing quick kisses to my cheek when no one was looking, playing with my hair until I fell back asleep after a nightmare. Of course, she would bite my head off if she thought I'd noticed.

I'd been physically better for almost a week. The aches were gone, the bruises fading from black and purple to angry yellow and green. I could sit upright without that stabbing pain in my ribs. I hadn't told her that. I was enjoying having her attention far too much.

Onyx said I was hopeless. Blaise called me whipped. Theo called me possessed. I didn't care what they called it. I just wanted her to keep smiling at me like that.

These last two weeks had been strange - familiar and yet completely new. We were still us - the jokes, the jabs, the quiet arguments about nothing - but there was a weight to the way she looked at me now, a softness in her voice when she thought I wasn't paying attention. We'd been close, yes, in all the usual ways, but also in a way that had nothing to do with skin or touch.

I don't know when it happened - when she stopped being my friend and started being the centre of gravity in every room. Maybe it was always that way. Maybe it had just taken me this long to realise it.

All I know is that lately, everything feels like it comes back to her.

There was a moment every day, usually right before she left, when the noise of the common room or classroom faded and she'd look at me like she wanted to say something but couldn't. Her mouth would open, her eyes would soften, but then she'd shake her head, make some sarcastic comment, and disappear.