Hidden | Draco Malfoy, 18+

39

This chapter contains heartbreak. Please read with caution. :/

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Four months.

For four months, Navy was only able to count four days where she didn't sob her eyes out, curled up on her bathroom floor.

Her days usually started off fine. She woke up, had breakfast, drank her tea, and if she was able to reach past that point, where she ended up staring at herself and the silver coating her neck in the mirror — she had to manage until she got home again.

Sometimes she didn't manage, sometimes she failed there, in front of her mirror, looking at herself.

She could burst out crying, sobbing until she couldn't breathe, weep until her sight became blurry. She had to kneel, and before she knew what was happening, she was crying on the tile floor of her bathroom again.

Or she held herself together, gave the shaking reflection of herself a reassuring smile, nearly convincing the breaking part of herself that it would be fine.

She could manage for a few hours — that she could hold herself from missing him for a few hours a day. She could do this.

This was the easy part, she believed. Not being home was easy. She couldn't break down whenever she wished to do so. She had to keep herself sane, keep herself together for her business, and she did.

Navy kept herself occupied throughout the days. She went to her meetings, sat in her office. She didn't work from home as often anymore, not that she didn't want to, she did, but because it hurt.

It was torture, being somewhere both she and Draco was ready to be together, somewhere they wanted to be but couldn't.

She could find herself staring out of her office window for hours, just thinking of him. The icing breeze outside reminded her of that blond nightmare, how cold he used to be, but how that freezing feeling caused her to feel alive.

She did, never did Navy feel as alive as she did with him.

She'd been drowning for over two years since he left her, and she was drowning before that, before that first night with him. She was fading within the coat of her own skin before he walked into her life.

Navy was settling for someone who cheated on her, for something she knew but never dared to speak against, and then Draco saved her. Only to find herself in that exact position again, locked and moored to someone who didn't see her, who used her and played her. Draco saved her again, and then she left him. Just like he left her.

Still, he made her feel everything, even in his absence. It didn't matter that she didn't see him for two years or the four months that had passed now. He still managed to make her feel everything, all of it, all the time.

Draco made her feel so much that she found herself sobbing in the middle of the grocery store, all because he wasn't there with her, stretching past her to reach the things she couldn't. She found herself crying in her shower because he would touch her shoulders, kiss her neck. He wasn't there. She found herself shaking at night, waking up completely alone without anyone.

Navy didn't quite know if she hated it, hated him for making her so dependent on him. The way he made her feel, the way he still coursed through her veins, the way she hated herself for what she did to them.

They were going to be together. Finally, after so much, she was going to be with him again.

This was where it got difficult again, where she needed to shake her head loose of all the thoughts and focus on work. She'd lose it if she didn't.