Lost Heart √

Epilogue

Skylar's POV

Stars. Constellations. The sky.

I think I understood now why stargazing was a thing, and not as dull as I thought it to be. I'd seen Rena a few times on the balcony, staring up at the stars. She told me stars were always there and they never really left. You'd always see at least one of them up there.

Maybe she'd said that because she still felt lonely even though everything, I liked to think, was back to normal now. Maybe she wasn't sure right now what normal really was for her.

Sighing, I placed the paintbrush in my hand inside the mug of colored, murky water and scrubbed my itchy palm over my knee as I stared up at the halfway-painted wall. Orion, I thought as I stared at a particular constellation I'd just finished painting. Or at least that's what Rena had told me the name was when she'd shown me the perfectly aligned stars in the sky.

I heard a soft sigh somewhere behind me before I heard footsteps, and I startled a little out of my paint-splatter daze before looking over my shoulder. To my inner delight, I was greeted with the sight of a very bedraggled--and shirtless--Caden.

"Hey," I spoke softly, not wanting to disrupt the peaceful quiet of the house.

"Sky." He frowned at me from the arched threshold with no door. I liked that about this room. Especially during the day when the sunlight seemed to spill out of the doorway into the entire hallway.

"Can't sleep?" I asked.

He raked a hand up his face before walking towards me, silently sitting down just behind me and regarding me with his confused and exhausted green eyes. "I was sleeping. You," he said and glanced at the painted wall behind me, "weren't there in the bed."

I relaxed unconsciously and turned back to face the wall. Things were better now, I reminded myself, even though sometimes Caden still needed sleeping pills to get him to sleep. But those times were becoming few and it was a feeling so relieving--a happy, vulnerable thing.

"I woke up. Rena was having a nightmare again and you know what Chicken does when that happens," I said before picking up the flat irregular plate of wood I'd found discarded in the backyard, which was now covered with even more irregular blobs of paint. Touching the dark brown blob, I realized it had gone dry. "She wakes me up."

Caden made a disgruntled sound before pressing his forehead on my shoulder.

"Rena lets her sleep on the bed with her so Chicken's gotten pretty attached to her." I smiled and opened the tube containing the darkest of blues. It was a pretty blue. "And I think Chicken's got this thing going on where she thinks it's her responsibility to fix the nightmares. Have you...talked to Rena?"

He was quiet for a moment and it would've made me think he'd fallen asleep if not for the fingers curling and uncurling around the hem of my long-sleeved tee.

"She doesn't like talking to me," he answered.

"She talks to you just fine." I nudged him with my elbow.

"She doesn't like talking to me about the nightmares, Sky." He tugged me back closer against his chest before getting comfortable. "I've tried. It always ends with her asking me when Blake's coming back. I can't tell her that I hope he never does."

"He did say he'd come by to visit."

I felt him shake his head. "He won't." And that was it, I guess. No further explanation. Blake had left--disappeared without telling anyone a few weeks back, even though I'd told him he could stay here.

Well, Caden had said no, he can't stay here. He'd been the least perturbed by Blake's sudden leaving. Rena had been confused and sad and bewildered, and I could only feel bad for her when the poor girl had only just found a semblance of normality, found her family back, only to find Blake leaving her once again.