Page 13 of Timeless
The sharp, relentless sound echoed through my house. Each strike came with increasing urgency, pulling me from my sleep.
“For fuck’s sake!” I groaned as I registered the sound of someone pounding the heck out of my front door.
Whoever it was could kindly get lost. I wasn’t ready to face the world, especially when I knew the reason I didn’t toss and turn all night had everything to do with the warm, petite body tucked like a little spoon against me. Unfortunately, my sated bubble officially burst when I felt Lily’s body tense up as another round of vigorous banging started.
Throwing back the covers, I got out of bed, lifting her effortlessly as if she weighed nothing; a fragile silhouette now, too thin compared to the healthy, softly shaped girl I once knew.
When her toes brushed the floor, her eyes looked up at me, wide and brimming with fear. The fire that had lit her stance last night was long gone, leaving behind only a shadow of that girl.The realization landed heavy on my heart, stirring a deep need to shield her from whatever had caused the sudden shift in her demeanor from then to now.
Three more sharp knocks ricocheted down the hallway.
But first, I had to deal with an unwelcome visitor and since my keys for the handcuffs were in the kitchen, Lily had no choice but to follow.
We’d barely cleared the hallway, into the living room, when the sound of a key sliding into the lock of the front door caused her to yank my hand, still cuffed to hers, behind my back as she shielded herself and dug her fingers into my arm just as the front door swung open.
“What the hell, Ari? It’s not even eight a.m.”
“Don’t you dare, Jaxon. If you’d answer your damn phone, I wouldn’t have had to come over here at the butt crack of dawn.”
“It’s dead. My brother with you?”
“No.”
“Good.” The tension in my body shifted the second my reply left my lips when it hit me that Lily was still tucked behind me, frozen, when her best friend had just stormed into my house. “Lily?” I questioned after turning around to find her eyes scrunched tightly closed. “Lily-Bee?”
“Why are you handcuffed to each other?” Ari asked, rushing to her friend’s side. “Lils.” She’d softened her voice and pulled her into an embrace.
Lily opened her eyes, and I swear all the air from my lungs evaporated. I was no stranger to a vulnerable Lily, but this, this version of her was something entirely different. She stared at me as if she’d seen a ghost. I wasn’t even sure she knew I was the one standing in front of her.
Her eyes, which lacked vibrancy, were cold and haunted.
It was like staring at a stranger, a shattered version of the girl I once knew inside and out. My heart broke into a million pieces as I stood helpless, watching her eyelids droop as if they had no fight left in them, while a lone tear ran down her cheek and landed on Ari’s sweater-covered shoulder.
I held my breath and struggled internally to process the vortex of emotions raging a war inside me, that I felt powerless to stop.
“Ari.” Lily’s voice cracked as color slowly crept back into her cheeks.
Relief slipped in where panic had been amid a haunting, unfiltered look into what Arizona had alluded to last night, or rather, this morning, about what Lily may have endured in her time away.
As a police officer, I wasn’t unfamiliar with trauma, but this felt different. It took me longer than I’d like to admit to notice the cracks, simply because I had always seen Lily through a lens of beauty and consummate strength.
Seeing her now, so broken, it crushed me with guilt and unearthed a fierce need to shield her from further pain. The idea of anyone hurting her was inconceivable to me. But now, seeing the truth so clearly in front of me—that she had been through something unimaginable—it shook me to the core.
“Jaxon, can you please take the cuffs off?” Ari’s question drew me back from the edge of a familiar spiral; a trip down memory lane, wishing I’d done more than lash out at the world in the days after her family’s disappearance.
“My keys are over here.”
Lily remained silent, her fragility almost palpable, as if the weight of whatever it was that spooked her rested solely on her delicate shoulders. I reached between us and grasped her chinbetween my thumb and forefinger, coaxing her gaze up to meet mine.
At that moment, my axis shifted. Her eyes, those beautiful blue irises I had always adored, locked on to mine, and for the first time in what felt like an eternity, I saw her. I saw everything. The pain, the unspoken sorrow, but also the glimmer of something more, something deep and unbroken that remained unfinished between us.
Lily was the only girl whose laughter echoed in my heart, and whose smile had once been my favorite sight in the entire world. She was the person my heart solely beat for, the only girl I’d ever loved. And to have her back in my life was equally overwhelming and bittersweet.
“I’ll give you two some privacy.” I kissed her forehead like it was second nature, without thinking, after removing the cuffs from our wrists and left the girls in the kitchen while I made my way down the hallway, into my bathroom, and straight into the shower.
Cold water blasted from the showerhead and ran down my back. I was so lost in my thoughts that I didn’t even stop to let the water warm up or take off my shirt and shorts.
And yet no part of me gave a fuck.
