Until You Left (Or Had To Go)

It was midnight...

"You shouldn't be here."

The words hurt but they were true. It hurt to say them—to feel them. To know them. To believe them.

"Yet here I am." She sighs against my bare collarbones. Her face is warm on my chest, her arms loose around my waist. I toy with the hem of her shirt nervously, glancing at the glinting doorknob.

I exhale deeply, staring up at the ceiling. I feel her lift her head from my skin, the bitter cold of her absence stinging. Her chocolate eyes kiss the moonlight on my face—the moonlight of midnight streaming in from the window she left open.

"I told them we broke up." I tell Camila, the small girl in my arms, who winces at my words. I feel her deflate; the air leaving her lungs, the hope leaving her heart.

"You still love me, right?" Camila looks at me imploringly, her bottom lip trapped by her teeth. Something she does with fear. "They don't matter?"

"Camz, they're my family." I groan, seeing the disappointment in her eyes as she lets her lip fall as it quivers.

"Oh."

"But I love you more than I could ever harvest feelings—emotions—for them. You're why I get up in the morning. Why I'm finishing college in this hellhole. To be with you." I murmur into her brown hair, shutting my eyes tightly. "You're all I want."

She shifts her body so she is sitting up, her hair tumbling down her shoulders. The light catches it just right, the tip of her nose shining as the rest of her face darkens. She looks up as a tear falls down her cheek.

"Then why let him control you? Why let him hurt me?" The tear streak highlights the bruise on the side of her face, her bottom lip busted by my father's ring.

I look down, ashamed to meet her eyes. I don't deserve the painful adoration in her gaze. She takes my hands. They're cold. I hear her nose sniffle.

The discolored skin on her face reminds me of the night it happened.

We had been dating for three years that night—two weeks ago. Going strong yet in the dark. I just wanted to show Camila how much I loved her without words. How much my body belonged to her. We were one and just as entangled as vines growing up a castle wall as the night went on. But my father came home too early.

He walked in as I had Camila on my fingertips, as fragile as glass. He screamed his fit and cursed our souls. He stomped right up and broke the glass—my glass. Her glass. Took her color and painted a new one on her. A paler one. I tried to glue back together the glass but I couldn't see through it anymore and my father threw her out.

Piece by piece.

I let out a sob and Camila wipes a tear away. "Don't think about it." She whispers, pressing her forehead to mine. "It's not worth the pain."

"You're worth it all." I shake my head. "I shouldn't have let him hit you. I should've fought for you. I should've—"

She presses a kiss to my lips. A soft one. Just enough to let my mind fall apart. She squeezes my hands, her fingers nimble yet where I belong. "Just hold me." She says, her request simple yet complex in every way. Like a spiderweb in the morning, the dew glinting in the sunlight.

Camila crawls into my arms and I wrap my arms around her like the sky will take her. My skin absorbs her tears and she sighs abruptly.

"Lauren," she murmurs, hesitation on the tongue. Her eyes cry like a wolf does to the moon—pitifully and longingly. "We're falling apart."

It's like a bullet in my heart.

"What do you mean?" I furrow my eyebrows. She just shakes her head and I feel a tear slide into the cloth of my bra.