It was around two in the morning when snoring to my right woke me up. Forgetting where I was at the moment, I bolted straight up in bed and panted and looked around. Hotel room? Mark to the right of me and...Eli on the floor? That's when the mission popped into my head and I remembered the past hours we all spent traveling to Nashville, Tennessee. The mission to find Esther Hills.
As if knowing my thoughts, Mark started to mumble her name while tossing over. I knew he was having trouble with wanting to see her soon, his sleep was probably restless at times.
I laid back down and covered myself with blankets only to suddenly get super hot and kick them all off again. Sighing, I just laid on my bed looking up to the ceiling.
"Can't sleep either?" Eli said from the opposite side of my bed. Smiling to myself and knowing he was awake as well, I replied.
"Yeah, just woke up and can't drift back." I admitted. "Why are you up?"
"Truthfully, I haven't gone to sleep." And immediately once he said that, I felt bad. "It's not that I'm on the floor or anything," He quickly said as if knowing I felt terribly bad, "It's just that, what if he really is alive?" As soon as Eli said he, I knew who my boyfriend was referring to. My brother. Carson.
When Eli and Carson got into the terrible accident, Eli remembers that Carson wasn't there when he woke up before the paramedics got there. Just the fact he was the only one in the car. That night, no one knew if my brother had died or not, so my parents held the fact from me, and made Eli confess that my brother truly was not dead, and he was the reason for his disappearance according to my parents. That is why I had been living with the Laker's the past few weeks. The fact that my parent's held truth about my "dead" brother behind my back, and forced my boyfriend to tell me hurt me pretty badly. I haven't been able to face them for a single conversation ever since I left.
And now that Eli believes my brother is truly alive, he is giving me a hope that I would like to have in me as well.
"If he is, I can only pray and hope I can see him one more time and tell him how much I love him. Eli....I miss him so much." I admitted to him starting to choke up. Eli heard it in my voice crack and he got up on my bed and wrapped his arms around me.
"It's okay Cals. Shhh." He whispered and I wiped my tears away and looked to him.
"I'm sorry for crying. I'm usually a lot stronger than this."
"Callie, your one of the strongest girls and people I know. Not a lot of people in this world can even live with the fact there brother or sister might be dead or is dead. But you, you know the truth and somehow you push through each day. I push through with you. I can only hope I'm just as strong as you are." He told me while looking in my eyes.
"Eli, I'm anything but strong sometimes."
"Strong in my eyes beautiful." And in that moment I couldn't help but kiss him. It was a soft and sweet kiss, and it made me smile that he kissed back, but it wasn't demanding. "You will always be."
For a while we stayed there talking about Carson and our best memories with him. It was around four in the morning when I started to drift off and fell a little backwards. Eli caught me and smirked.
"Tired much?" I nodded and stretched.
"Yeah actually." He laughed and started to climb off the bed towards the floor. My mind made a rational decision quickly in that moment.
"Eli? You can um...sleep up here if you want. I mean, that floor has to be hard and we have to walk all day tomorrow..." I said trying not to sound like I really wanted him to sleep beside me, it was still a bit awkward but I knew Eli would never try anything bad. I trusted him.
