Walk The Line

Chapter 11: Shitters and Carrots

PEEEPS, 

I'm so sorry I've been MIA for a little. Life has been CRAZY, so I finally had some time today when things slowed down a little to get this out. 

Hope you are all doing well! Thank you so much again for all your support! 

Song of the chapter is, "Like Real People Do," by Hozier. 

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It's not quite light outside. It's dripping in. Slowly. Like honey slowly dripping to the ground.

My body aches, but in ways that I can't complain about. I've never been tired like this before. I've never been so awake and exhausted at the same time.

He's sleeping next to me and I don't want to wake him. He looks so calm, less like a slab of stone unbending to anything, but the water will eventually erode that stone. Yet he's so much more than stone. So much more than the rumors we had heard.

All we heard growing up were that the Thornes were cruel creatures. In bed with vampires and careless about their own wolves. We heard they let vampires roam their land and take what they wanted. We heard Luca Thorne didn't for the ways of the moon and that his children were no better—soulless heathens that would defile the Earth.

But Levi is none of those things.

I never really believed all the rumors. As I grew older Chris and I came to understand that some were just too crazy to be true, that and there wasn't proof for half of them. Still, it's hard to not be afraid of the monsters that haunted your bedtime stories.

But Levi is not that monster.

I knew the moment I looked at him that all the rumors were lies. You don't look into eyes like his, so full of life and compassion, and run in fear. All I wanted was to run to him, to be here, waking up in the early morning while a storm rolls in; because he isn't just a Thorne, he's my mate—mine. My gift from the moon. Why would she curse me with a monster when she loves her children so?

He blinks slowly, his eyes tired but there's a smile on his lips that's sleepy. He says nothing, he just looks at me like I'm the greatest thing he's ever seen. He is not the rumors I've heard, nor the serious front he always puts on.

I feel him pull me closer, close enough for me to lean my head on his arm. "Go back to sleep," he yawns out.

"Cranky this morning?"

"You're going to kill me Little Red," he murmurs out.

"I think you're equally as guilty asshole."

"Mmm," he hums, his breath evening as sleep pulls him back.

I want to stay awake. I want to ask him one of the million questions in my brain but I'm still tired. My brain is still scrambled with memories of the two of us wrapped in each other yesterday. I think we were both just so happy that there wasn't a war, that we could live without a threat hanging over our heads—that my father wasn't going to cast away his own daughter.

Yesterday was a good day.

I fell back asleep with that thought in my head. When I woke neither of us had moved. I think we're both so exhausted that we were practically dead when we slept.

But he's awake. He's barely awake, but I can catch a glimpse of his eyes through his lashes.

His cheeks flush, embarrassed I caught him. It's nothing that he hasn't seen, touched, or tasted many times over at this point. My funny male.