The Way We Almost Were ✓

48| beginning of the end

for _enkazi_ <3

| Chapter 48 |

| beginning of the end |

Nick woke up with a slight headache, the dull throb pulling at him from some vague place in his head.

The instant a crack appeared in his sleep, allowing consciousness to trickle in before Nick could even contemplate opening his eyes, he was hit with a sudden wave of urgency. As if there was something he was supposed to have done, as if time was running away from him and he needed to grab onto it with both hands.

It felt like that struggle in trying to recall a really good dream, with all his mental energy focusing on retrieving a memory of something that existed only in his head. A fruitless attempt. How was he to recover that which he never lost in the first place?

And then his eyes fluttered open, drowsy gaze sweeping over shadows casted around the dimly lit room by a thin strip of sunlight peaking through a gap in the curtains.

Bree stirred in his arms, having turned her back to his chest sometime during the night while asleep, and Nick felt his mouth curve into a lazy, sleep-induced smile. He let his eyes shut for a brief moment again, burying his nose into the back of her head and inhaling the lingering scent of the shampoo she'd used last night.

Nick didn't know how much fear and doubt still remained inside the crevices of his heart and soul, not until right then -- not until he was staring at his love sound asleep in the safety of his arms, and found himself wanting this for the rest of all his days.

His hands tightened their hold on her on pure instinct, as if the gesture would be able to ward off everything else. As if Nick Fraser could keep away the world with nothing but his arms fiercely wrapped around Bree Salvare. As if.

He could only hope, after all.

Because when everything else abandoned and left behind, it was always hope that remained. Yet that one single emotion held the power of nuclear destruction -- that ability to rip through a heart and obliterate a soul, leaving nothing but almosts and could-have-beens in its wake.

And it was insane how that was always forgotten, until it was too late and hope had already festered a home within what tiny room remained in a heart crowded with misery.

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Bree watched Nick squint at the music sheets in his hand, looking at them as if they'd been written in ancient Greek.

"Careful," she laughed, "stare any harder and you'd be burning holes through them."

"I don't understand anything," he said in frustration, placing them back into the slot of the music rack above the piano.