Letters She Wrote | Outer Banks

𝐱. 𝐢 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐢 𝐡𝐚𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮

[ x. i thought i had you ]

➸➸➸

WILLA DEVERAUX REFUSED TO go home that night, but to her relief, she was not the only one that protested doing as such. Considering that it was already dark by the time the five teenagers made it safely back inside John B. Routledge's fish shack home, no one was willing to risk walking home in the pitch black in fear of running into the two dangerous boatmen from the marsh again.

As she had settled in that night with a stomach full of salty pretzels and a cold beer, Willa had not found it within herself to care that—despite the common ground the five of them now shared—she was still considered the high kook on their otherwise pogue totem pole. She also did not care that she was forced to share a foldout couch mattress with Kiara Carrera whilst the three other boys were left to find beds elsewhere throughout the home. No, in that moment, with her heart still painfully tight in her chest from her near-death experience and her hungover body on the brink of giving out from exhaustion, the only thing Willa cared about at all was not being left alone while she finally tried to get some rest.

Unfortunately, rest would not come easy for her.

The night crept by slowly, eerily, with each gentle tap of an innocent tree branch against one of the musty windowpanes sounding more like a set of dirty, calloused fingertips searching for a way into the tightly locked Routledge home. Willa could not shake the feeling that someone was watching her, waiting for the moment she let her guard down to strike. So, despite the beer that should have lulled her to sleep in a drunken ease, Willa's sage green eyes were now open wide in blatant alarm as she stared carefully into the darkness of John B.'s messy living room. Her bottom lip was trapped between her chattering teeth and bleeding softly from where she had bitten in too hard, her taste buds fizzing faintly with the coppery taste locked within her mouth.

Willa shifted softly onto her right side, her bare left leg rubbing awkwardly against polyester material as it stuck out from beneath the light makeshift sleeping bag covers. It was too hot and humid to be completely covered, even though the tiny voice from her childhood still tried to convince her that she was safest with her entire body covered in blankets and pillows. Despite what her inner conscience tried to tell her, she fought back with the knowledge that, at least, she was not alone. Beside Willa on the foldout mattress, less than six inches away, Kiara Carrera rested quietly in the dark. Her body was practically a silhouette; the moon peeking overhead from the window was lost in the storm clouds, though Willa could reach out and touch her shadow if she dared, for it was not truly a shadow at all. Kiara was still there. No matter how many times Willa would have to remind herself in the following silent hours to come—she was still not alone.

"Can't sleep?"

So lost in her own darkened thoughts, Willa had not even noticed that Kiara, too, had suddenly shifted on the bed, her head now angled towards Willa with gentle alertness. Her auburn eyes reflected poorly in the barely-there lighting and if it were not for Kiara's abrupt change of breathing pattern, Willa would have thought she had imagined the girl speaking entirely.