Lost Heart √

Twenty Three

Skylar's POV

When I woke up, Caden was gone.

It left me a bit ruffled, more so than I usually was in the mornings, because I didn't remember getting in bed--not in this king-sized bed with this soft, fluffy duvet over me--last night. I didn't, quite frankly, remember much about last night.

It wasn't a total blackout, but my hungover headache and the fact that the left side of my face was pounding almost feverishly weren't really letting me think straight.

I sat up and groaned, slowly rubbing the back of my shoulder and looking around the bedroom I was in. Like the rest of this house, as I started remembering from last night, there were minimal pieces of furniture here. The walls were white and hadn't been painted at all, which left the room feeling rather cold. Bare.

I wondered, for probably the fiftieth time, whose house this really was.

I pushed the duvet aside and got up from the bed, wrapping my arms around myself when a shiver ran through me. Under those sheets had been warm, but out here with no jacket on, it was way colder. Where was my jacket even? Had I left it back in that alley?

"Fuck," I groaned again, rubbing my entire face this time. God, I hoped not.

There were rays of the morning sun peeking through the translucent curtains pulled over the windows. I walked barefoot towards a dark wooden door which, as I opened it, led to the bathroom. I locked the door behind me and leaned against it, slowly letting myself look around.

When I was done taking a quick shower, grateful for the warm water after that fitful nap, I stopped by the basin and looked at myself in the mirror. A tiny wince left my lips when I noticed the starting and the underside of my jaw. The bruise wasn't that big, but a really ugly shade of purplish-yellow. Apart from that, I also had a tiny graze along my cheekbone--one that thankfully wasn't as ghastly looking as the bruise.

I looked away then and my eyes fell on something that had been sitting right there on the polished marble counter in front of me--something that I somehow hadn't noticed. Not until now.

An opened pill bottle. I picked it up gingerly, noticing how it was halfway filled with blue and white capsules. Flurazepam, the prescription label read. I opened the tiny cabinet above the basin and found another identical pill bottle in there. This one was empty, though.

And both of them, I realized as I held them in my hands, had Caden's name printed on the label.

I swallowed and placed them right back where I'd found them, my heart racing in a way that left me unsettled. I'd seen those pills before. I vaguely remembered Dad taking them back when I was maybe twelve and when his migraines had started getting a little too much to handle. Especially during the nights. He'd always take one after dinner, and my young self had always been curious.

But Caden didn't have a migraine problem. I think I knew what a person with migraines looked like. I'd lived with one almost my whole life. Then what were these pills for?

I left the room after I'd disposed of my booze-smelling clothes and put on one of Caden's hoodies, and I shuddered once again when the cold hit my bare legs. Softly rolling my left shoulder until the pain subsided, I walked into a hallway. A plain, empty hallway. The walls out here were painted a light beige that I noticed almost instantly. I walked downstairs and stepped into the lounge, looking past the kitchen and the stools lining the kitchen counter--the one Caden had made me sit down on just last night as he'd patched up the bruise on my face.