TWISTED ꜜ LOUIS PARTRIDGE

⟾ 21 | BURN FOR YOU

Song!! It really brings out the emotion in this chapter, and I greatly request you listen to it as you read. Also, buckle your seatbelts, because this is going to be one wild ride.

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LOUIS🗡

Monday, 9:43pm

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I COULDN'T TAKE MY EYES OFF HER.

Not in a creepy way, of course, but in one I couldn't really explain. After that moment a few hours ago, the world felt different. I had held her hand, and she had held it back. I felt like I was clinging onto the memory of it now, just as I had been clinging onto her then.

Eventually, she moved on, holing herself up in the corner of the room as she typed away on a rented computer for information. She said she wanted to get a head start on the mission plan to stop The Embers, because we 'wouldn't know when the bomb was planned to set off'. She was right, so I left her to it.

"Ash?" I'd ask after a while.

She'd look up from her computer. "Yeah, Lou?"

And I'd forget what it was that I had to say.

Even just meeting her gaze somehow terrified me to an extreme extent, and I felt myself hesitating just to speak. So I'd just shrug it off, pretending I was just simply checking-in with her. She'd return to her work. I returned to mine.

I was in charge of dinner.

I was supposed to make pasta—because I bought the ingredients for pasta—but half-way through I got distracted by the soft humming noise she'd exhale as she scrolled through the laptop in interest. She had this funny habit of biting her lip when she focused on something.

But even though the walls of our rented AirBnB space were small in size, I still felt like I was a mile away from her. All I wanted was to drop everything and hold her hand again, because I'd never felt more at peace than I did in that moment, fingers intertwined with someone I'd grown to care about.

And then she looked up, locking eyes with me once again.

"Lou," she said.

[y/n].

"Louis," she said again.

Rising onto her feet, I watched as she strode across the room heading straight towards where I stood in the small kitchen. What was she doing? I took a step back, not sure what I should be bracing myself for, because she had a look of determination in her eyes, and was reaching out her hand to—

"Bloody Hell, Partridge," she exclaimed, placing her hand on the stove to turn it off, "the water's boiling over!"

Oh Hell.

I'd gotten so lost in thought, that I failed to notice that the pot of water I had been heating up was bubbling over the sides of the metal bowl, dribbling over the marble counter like a burning waterfall.

"Hey," Ash said quickly, snapping her fingers, "Is everything okay?"

I blinked. "Yeah, sorry, I just—"

"You've been zoning out all evening."

"Have I?"

"Mhmm," she nodded, before placing her hand on my forehead, "are you feeling sick?"

No, but I was definitely feeling something.

Something in the way she was so close to me now, her warm breath fanning over my skin as she worried over me. Something in the way her fingers traced against my face like ink on a page, seeping, and seeping, and seeping into the paper of my soul and leaving an unreadable mark. Something in the way that was so her, that I nearly forgot I was me.