Our Deepest Scars

Chapter 44

Nothing awoke Lauren the next morning. No alarm, no one bursting in through the door, no nightmares. Due to this rare occasion, sunlight was streaming into the room through the drapes as Lauren awoke in the later part of the morning. Feeling her body and mind drift into consciousness slowly, the Latina waited for a moment before forcing her eyes open, squinting around the hotel room in the blinding light that was making its way through a small gap in the drapes.

Lauren's arm was numb from its position wrapped around Camila's small frame but she chose not to move it, afraid of waking her fiancée up. Instead she settled for gently kissing the younger girl's forehead and stroking her cheek. Camila looked just as beautiful asleep as she did when she was awake, and Lauren admired the way her dark eyelashes brushed her cheekbones softly when her eyes were closed. A lock of hair fell across the petite Latina's face when she moved her head slightly and Lauren pushed it away carefully, not wanting her view of Camila's ethereal appearance to be blocked.

Perfectly content with watching her fiancée sleep, Lauren lay in silence for around twenty minutes, observing the way Camila's steady, soft breathing was moving the comforter up and down rhythmically and caressing the smaller girl's satiny skin.

She had plenty of time while lying silently in bed to think about the events of the previous day. Lauren was still in shock that she had actually proposed to to Camila, as well as the fact that the smaller girl had actually said yes. And the older brunette hadn't cried so much that she was prevented from speaking coherent words. She hadn't stumbled or forgotten what she was planning to say. She hadn't dropped the ring in the sea. So all in all, it had been more successful that Lauren could possibly have imagined.

And then last night, when they got back to the hotel. Just as she had predicted, the other girls had clearly known exactly what Lauren and Camila were planning to do when they booked a separate hotel room. Dinah had had to visibly force herself not to burst out laughing, Normani's face had split into a wide grin and Ally had looked genuinely happy for the recently engaged couple. All three of them, however, when the two Latinas had left to retire to their new room, had been up late discussing their engagement and what they were about to do.

Lauren didn't know that they had been talking about her and Camila until the early hours of the morning, but she could probably have guessed if she had chosen to dwell on the idea for any longer. Rather than think about such an awkward conversation and picture how it might have gone, the green eyed girl gently pulled Camila's small form towards her and buried her head in her fiancée's neck, kissing the delicate skin as she did so.

The brunette was still sleepy, and the warmth of Camila's body pressed against her own was only contributing to Lauren's drowsiness. She had never felt more comfortable or content as she did right now and was almost falling asleep again until this peace was ruffled by a loud knocking on the door and the undesirable sound of shouts stifled by the barrier between their hotel room and the outside world. Groaning quietly, Lauren removed her arm cautiously from around Camila's body and stumbled over to the door, hastily grabbing a robe from the bathroom and wrapping it around herself before pulling on the handle.

Swinging the door open, the Latina was faced with someone she wasn't overly happy about seeing at this particular moment.

"Dinah? What're you doing?" she asked, sighing heavily and rubbing her eyes. "It's so early."

The Polynesian didn't answer nor wait for an invitation; she strode into the hotel room past Lauren, who was standing frozen in the doorway.

"Stop, Camz is asleep!" she hissed, attempting to grab Dinah's arm and pull her back, but to no avail.

Dinah, who had stopped in the small corridor next to the bathroom, turned to face the older girl. "What time do you call this?" she asked, raising her eyebrows at Lauren's questionable attire.