Between Shadows

24: Wanna play again?

Harvey's P.O.V.

This is what it has come to. My lonely ass sitting and playing 'aimbot' all alone.

Earlier Jake, Caleb and I used to play it together. But since Jake has been away, Caleb and I stopped.

We stopped everything and spend all of our time trying to come up with some kind of plan. Also, if we let ourselves enjoy like go to Xavier's for instance, we felt guilty.

Jake didn't deserve what Derrina did to him. He is the sweetest person that I've ever met.

When I told him that I had the gun, three days after he was locked up. He told me to try to look for some other plan and keep the gun away. We didn't tell Caleb because he would've given up eventually considering he hated seeing Jake in jail and he had never even met my younger sister.

I heard some footsteps from the stairs. Caleb probably woke up.

The footsteps stopped near the door so I turned around to glance at him quickly but I stopped when I saw that it's her.

I paused the game and rotated my body to look at her completely.

She stood there, still looking as beautiful as ever. But why isn't she sleeping?

"Hey, what are you doing up?" I ask with a frown taking over my face.

"Couldn't sleep." She says, uncomfortably standing there, rubbing one of her foot on the other.

I pat the seat on the couch next to me, inviting her to sit.

She comes and sits down looking towards the screen. For me, I could sit here and just look at her all day but she'll think I'm some kind of psychopath so I decide to offer her to play.

"Wanna play?" I say and she finally looks away from the screen to me.

"You know Spanish?" She asks a little surprised.

Why is she surprised? I know French, Spanish and German apart from English.

Mom and Dad thought it'd be great for a ten year old to start learning other languages just a week after he got adopted.

They weren't bad parents but they didn't understand or sometimes forgot that I was too little to live upto all their expectations.

"Yeah, I do. Someone changed it to Spanish and I was too tired to turn it back to English. I'll just do it right now." I explained and started changing the language back to English.

That was a lie. I did it to Spanish myself because I like to test myself sometimes but I didn't wanna sound like I was bragging about knowing many languages.

"Harvey, I don't know how to play." She said when I handed her one of the controllers.

"It's okay. I'll teach you." I smiled at her.

"This looks really complicated. I don't think you can..." She starts but I interrupt her quickly.

Firstly, I would love to teach her and if I can spend more time with her before she realises that I don't deserve a second of it then I'm taking it. Secondly,...well that's it.

"Bowling isn't easy either but you're pretty good at it." I remind her the time when she was scared to bowl.

She probably realises that I'm right and asks me to start explaining how the controller works.

I shift closer to her. Her strawberry scent makes...what am I even doing?

Ignoring my thoughts, I begin to tell her the function of each button.

She looks so cute trying to remember everything I'm saying.

"So make sure you put one finger on this button the entire time. You get it?" I say and keep her finger on it.

"Not even a little." She answers shaking her head, like the time at the bowling alley.

"You'll get there." I carry on with it and she smiles.

She smiles and in that moment, I wanted nothing more than her to keep smiling like that always. It reminds me of my home screen, the picture of her laughing.

Her head is tilted back, her eyes closed with a big, bright smile on her lips. The picture makes me smile every single time I see it.

We continue playing. We tried a demo first and saying that it went awful would be the understatement of the century but she looked so focused and it made me smile at how she was trying so hard.

We played some more games before she finally got a hang of it. We went against each other and I lost purposely just to see the happiness on her face.

As soon as she won, she jumped to hug me with the widest smile.

I wouldn't mind if the world ended right this second.

Holding her in my arms, I felt relief. I wanted this to last forever. I wanted her to forget all the lies I told her and forgive me.

"Oh my god, oh my...did you see that? Did you? Harvey, I won." She said with excitement.

"Oh yeah, you did." I pulled her closer to me and nodded before saying.

"Please tell me you didn't lose purposely. I'm so happy and at this point, I'm accepting lies." She asks me.

"I don't wanna lie to you. Not anymore." I said looking into her happiness filled eyes. The words held more meaning than I showed.