𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐈𝐑𝐄𝐋𝐘 𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐄

ꜰᴏʀᴛʏ - ᴏɴᴇ

𝗖aycee tucked her fingers around the softness of his comforter, tugging the blanket more over her head, hiding any part of her from the real world. Pieces of her green and brown hair got caught in the crossfire of her self-indulgence; warm tears littered her face as she did her best to keep her sobs at bay and her breaths in the back of her throat.

She had no idea what time it was, or if the night had transformed into day, but she didn't care. She barely slept a wink of sleep. Between mourning her kid brother and dissecting how she truly felt for the man she was currently sharing a bed with, she was up all night. Some of the time she spent crying like she was now, wrapped in cotton comfort, and other times she just aimlessly looked up at the ceiling; she had counted up to one hundred specks on it before falling asleep, waking up, and doing it all over again, having lost her place.

Yesterday had to be the second worst day of her existence – August's passing took hold of the first. Out of everything she'd been through, from losing her parents, to being abused and kicked out, to trying to save him, she never thought she would end up in the position she was in right now. Becoming something that she'd cursed from the moment that drunk driver slammed into the side of their old family Volkswagen was a gift wrapped and delivered perfectly to her as if it was a serenade – a true revelation of who she always was.

All it did was remind her of who she'd never be.

And if that wasn't bad enough, she showed up to the same house of the person she'd knowingly done wrong seeking resolution. Without even using a second of her time, considering it special, she ripped apart the souls of three men – Kai, Kaedyn, and Mason.

It was gut-wrenching; after all they did for her, this was how she chose to repay them?—to play a hand in something that hurt so many people was an act she was surely capable of, but never wanted. Not with them. Her thought process lay with the idea that she'd hurt so many men in her past with escorting and thievery, what were three more?

The answer to that?—

Everything.

"Caycee?"

Her ears perked up at the sound of his accent reverberating in her ears. She had been hoping that he wasn't awake, and wouldn't be for a while, but it seemed like luck wasn't in her favor. Quickly cutting off the waterworks, she brushed the remaining evidence off her cheeks and spun around.

Kaedyn didn't need to see her like this. Not right now.

The only one out of the pair of them that deserved comfort was him.

Pretend, Caycee.

You do it better than anyone.

Slowly, she pulled the covers off her face, dragging the comforter down just enough that her nose was sticking out from under them. He must have turned the lights on when she wasn't paying attention because she blinked rapidly to get a hold of the brightness of the room easing into her pupils.