Chapter Text
｡☆✼★━━━━━━━━━━━━★✼☆｡
'Self Aware' by Temper City
"Oh, we could never be together. But it's nice to play pretend"
{⋅. ♪ .⋅}
Twenty// Don't break my heart, okay?
TADHG LYNCH
⊱ ────── {.⋅ 🏑 ⋅.} ────── ⊰
I can feel the crack of my nose the second his fist lands.
Pain explodes across my face, sharp enough to white out everything for a second, and then the floor comes up hard beneath me, rattling through my jaw and teeth.
Then comes the blood, hot and metallic, running down over my mouth, dripping onto the filthy kitchen tiles.
“Get up,” my dad roars. His voice sounds wrong somehow.
Too loud and too far away all at once.
I blink through the blur, one hand slipping in the blood smeared beneath me.
“Leave him alone,” my sister pleads, pulling me up by my arm with shaky hands. Her face comes into my view. The fingerprints on her cheek are angry red, and so are her eyes from crying.
The sight makes me furious all over again.
Dad hit her.
So I hit Dad.
And the bastard hits hard.
“Oh God, oh Jesus, your nose,” she sobs.
I touch my face instinctively, and my hand comes away soaked red.
“It’s okay,” I mumble thickly through the blood flooding my mouth. “I’m-”
My words are cut off when he picks me up by my shirt and shoves me hard against the fridge. Pain explodes in the back of my head.
“Think ya’re tough, boy, ya little cunt?” he slurs, and I turn my head away from the disgusting reek of whiskey coming from his mouth. “Not such a big man now, are ya?”
“But I will be." I grit out. "Just count your days, you cunt,” frustrated, scared, and so fucking angry. “Just wait till Joey comes home.”
I’m already pressing my eyes shut, bracing myself for the next punch.
But it never comes.
Instead, he shoves me back toward Shannon, and together we stumble almost down to the floor.
“Get your holes out of my sight, both of ya. Before I put manners on you,” he snarls and storms out of the kitchen, swearing under his breath before slamming the front door behind him hard enough to shake the walls.
Coward.
He’s just afraid Joey’ll show up and finish what I started.
Pussy.
“Tadhg,” Shannon says again, frantic now, guiding me toward the bathroom. “You really shouldn’t have done that.”
“He really shouldn’t have hit you,” I spit back, blood thick on my tongue.
“Tadhg!”
“Tadhg!”
“What?” I snap, dizzy and weak and eleven years old all over again.
“Tadhg!”
Her voice changes.
It’s not panicky anymore; it’s solid, closer, softer.
“Tadhg.”
Warmth presses against me.
Hands.
Not Shan’s.
Different hands.
I jerk awake with a sharp breath, heart hammering hard enough to hurt.
I blink into darkness.
My room.
Right.
Not home-home. Not that house. Not the one that smelled like damp and piss and stale whiskey soaked into the walls.
My room now.
The one I don’t share with Ollie. The one that still feels unfamiliar on nights like this, no matter how long I’ve lived in it.
“Tadhg.”
My eyes snap downward.
Izzy’s curled against me beneath the blankets, hair spread across my pillow in messy waves, face half-hidden in the dark, brown eyes frowning up at me. My arms are wrapped around her too tightly, holding her hard enough that panic slices through me instantly.
Shit.
Fuck.
I let go immediately.
“Fuck,” I rasp, scrambling backwards slightly. “Did- did I hurt you?”
She pushes herself up onto her elbows, blinking at me. “What? No.”
I drag a hand over my face, breathing too hard. “Izzy, I-”
“You didn’t hurt me,” she says, her voice firmer this time, sleep still clinging to every word. “I’m fine.”
Space sits between us now where there wasn’t before.
And I hate it immediately.
“But I-”
“You didn’t hurt me,” she repeats, "You didn't," tilting her head slightly to study me, her eyes going soft. “Tadhg…”
I look away. I can’t stand people looking at me with pity. Especially her.
My hands clench into fists, trying to stop them from shaking, my nails biting into my palms.
“Go back to sleep,” I say, harsher than I mean to.
Like that’s remotely going to work on her.
Izzy shifts against the mattress to face me better, the blankets rustling softly. “I won’t,” she murmurs.
Slowly, reluctantly, I look back at her.
And Christ.
Even half asleep, she’s ridiculously beautiful.
Her hair is wild from sleep, spilling over her shoulders and across my sheets, freckles softened by the dark. One side of her face was still creased from my pillow.
She studies me quietly for a second too long, too closely, and there’s that look in her eyes that makes something inside me twist painfully.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
Like, I’m still weak. Like, I can’t even protect anyone I care about. Like I’m the kid from the bad neighbourhood with the scumbag dad who beat the shite out of his children and a mother who chose that monster over and over again.
“Like you pity me. I don’t want your pity.”
“Good,” she replies after a moment. “Because you don’t have my pity. You’re confusing that with empathy.”
“I don’t want your empathy either.”
“Bold of you to assume you can tell me what I can or can’t give you,” she counters.
I huff. “Crank.”
“Asshole.”
“Witch.”
“Prick.”
That pulls the smallest smile out of me, and I take my first proper deep breath.
Then she shifts closer again.
“Don’t.” My smile drops immediately, my voice sounding wrong even to me. “Don’t come too close.”
Her brows pull together slightly.
“It’s dark up here,” I murmur.
The words sound stupid once they’re out loud.
But she doesn’t laugh.
There’s a small pause, like she’s carefully thinking through her answer.
Then, softly: “If you go into a dark room and let your eyes adjust, you’ll always find some kind of light.”
I blink at her.
“Nothing’s ever completely dark,” she continues quietly. “There’s always a light source somewhere.”
Something in my chest twists, tight and uncomfortable.
Because of course she’d say something like that.
This girl is so strange, I swear.
Freckles moves closer again, slowly this time, like she’s giving me the chance to pull away.
I don’t.
I should, probably.
But I don’t want to.
Her arms slide around my neck, pulling me fully into her, and after a second’s hesitation, mine wrap around her too.
Looser than before, careful.
But she doesn’t seem afraid of me. Doesn’t tense. Doesn’t pull away.
Instead, she presses closer, warm and soft and devastatingly real against me.
And slowly, without me even noticing at first, my body starts to relax.
The tightness in my shoulders eases. My heartbeat stops, trying to punch through my ribs. The shaking under my skin quiets.
It’s like the panic attack she pulled me out of before, only stronger now, deeper. Like she’s anchoring me to something solid just by existing near me.
Which is insane.
Absolutely bizarre.
I’m calming down because this girl told me darkness technically isn’t dark.
“Why do you always have to be such a smartass?” I mutter into her hair.
“That’s, like, basic physics, I fear,” she says, and I can hear the small smile in her voice.
And somehow that pulls a quiet laugh out of me despite everything.
One of her hands slips into my hair, her fingers threading gently through the mess of it before her nails drag lightly over my scalp.
My eyes close instantly.
Jesus Christ.
I didn’t even realise how uneven my breathing still was until it started evening out beneath her touch.
“You pulled away like you thought I was scared of you,” she says after a bit, quietly.
I don’t answer.
Because for one horrible second after waking up, I was.
I was terrified of that.
Terrified that maybe somewhere deep down, violence lived in me the same way it lived in him.
That perhaps I’m not so different after all.
“You know I’m not,” she adds calmly.
I swallow hard enough that it burns on the way down, burying my face in her neck. “Didn’t mean to grab you that hard.”
“You were asleep.”
“Still.”
“Tadhg.”
There’s something impossibly gentle in the way she says my name.
It makes my chest ache, and I tighten my arms around her before I can stop myself.
Not like before. Not bruising. Just enough to keep her there, to keep her close.
And the strangest part is… she doesn’t make it awkward.
Doesn’t ask questions.
Doesn’t treat me like people do when they realise something ugly happened to you.
She stays.
Running her fingers through my hair like it’s the easiest thing in the world.
Like staying is easy.
“That’s why you don’t like to sleep,” she says more to herself than to me.
It’s not a question, so I don’t answer it.
Freckles is smart. She doesn’t need me to confirm it.
Cosmo climbs up beside us, also woken by the chaos. He nudges his snout against my neck, whining softly before curling up against us.
Izzy’s hand abandons my hair for a couple of minutes to pet the attention seeker.
Good to know where her priorities lie.
But it’s almost cute how fast they both formed a bond. Freckles fits so perfectly into my life, it takes my breath away, and, at the same time, makes me incredibly uneasy.
I don’t know how long we lie there.
Could be ten minutes. Could be two hours.
When her movements stop and her breathing evens out, I realise she’s fallen asleep.
Which is a relief, because that means she’s still comfortable enough to sleep next to me after all that... or she’s just too exhausted.
I exhale and drink in her warmth for a second longer before I carefully untangle myself from her.
Cosmo watches my every move. I scratch behind his ear. “Think I did it on purpose?” I ask him quietly.
He doesn’t answer, obviously.
He’s a dog.
But even the thought of hurting Freckles, on purpose or not, terrifies the living shit out of me.
“Wanna go for a walk?” I ask.
At that, Cosmo jumps up immediately, tail wagging hard enough to hit the mattress.
He’d never say no to that.
And I won’t be falling back asleep anytime soon. So I get up as quietly as possible so I don’t wake her and pull on clothes beyond the pair of boxers I’m wearing.
We fell asleep a bit too exhausted to bother with much else.
Then I leave the room.
If only to make it safer for her by not being in it.
≪ ◦ ❖ ◦ ≫
“You left.”
Izzy’s tone is dry, and it doesn’t take a genius to know she’s pissed about it.
The first pale traces of morning light slip through the curtains, washing my room in soft grey-blue. It catches in her hair where it spills messily over her shoulders, curls flattened on one side from sleep. She’s sitting in the middle of my bed, legs tangled in the blankets, arms braced behind her to hold herself upright.
Still only dressed in my hoodie.
Which, frankly, should be illegal considering how much better it looks on her than it ever has on me.
I close the bedroom door behind me. “Went for a walk.”
“I can see that.”
Cosmo trots past my legs and jumps back onto the mattress beside her, tail wagging guiltily like he knows exactly which side he’s supposed to be on.
“Could’ve taken me with you,” she grumbles, immediately cuddling the traitor.
“Didn’t want to wake you.”
That earns me a look that very clearly says you already did.
The space between us feels heavier now.
A space I created.
“So you just left me here, defenceless?”
“You’re literally in a house with a security system, Freckles. Calm your tits,” I say, amusement creeping into my voice despite myself.
“You calm your tits, blondie. Intruders get through those things on a daily basis,” she shoots back. “And even if it’s not an intruder, I could’ve fallen out of bed and inflicted a laceration. Bled out because I don’t know where your medical supplies are.”
“I have faith in your common sense that you would’ve found them.”
“And what if I stumbled out the window in the dark?”
“You mean the closed window?”
She shrugs, face completely serious. “I could’ve opened it... accidentally.”
“Accidentally?”
“I don’t know, maybe I sleepwalk.”
“Have you ever?” I ask dryly.
“How would I know?” she fires back just as dry. “I wouldn’t be conscious, so everything I do in my sleep is beyond my control.”
≪ ◦ ❖ ◦ ≫
≪ ◦ ❖ ◦ ≫
When I climb through Freckles’ window, it’s fully dark outside, and I’m freezing my fucking balls off. Winter in Ireland is no joke.
The second my feet hit her bedroom floor, warmth wraps around me.
Thank Christ.
I shove the window shut behind me with numb fingers, rubbing my hands together before stripping off my jacket and kicking my shoes somewhere near her desk.
Her fairy lights are on, casting that soft gold glow over everything, but she’s nowhere in sight.
Her bed’s unmade. One of her jumpers is thrown across the chair by her desk. Books are stacked everywhere in messy little towers that look seconds away from collapsing. There’s a mug on her nightstand with what I desperately hope is tea and not something actively growing its own ecosystem.
The bathroom door’s open too, empty.
I pull my phone from my pocket and check the time.
I’m technically on time.
Well, close enough to on time that it should still count.
She hasn’t texted again, though, and because patience has never exactly been my strongest trait, I head for the door after standing there like an eejit for a solid ten seconds.
The house is quiet.
I make my way downstairs carefully, one hand skimming the wall as I go. It’s hard to see much in the dark except the faint glow spilling from the kitchen at the end of the hall.
And sure enough, Freckles is perched on one of the stools at the island, still in her work clothes, back turned toward me, slowly eating cereal with the kind of exhausted determination usually reserved for war survivors.
Honestly, it’s painful to watch.
She’s got one knee tucked up to her chest, cheek resting against her fist while she stares blankly into space between bites.
I don’t even need to see her properly to know she’s wrecked.
After about thirty seconds of silently witnessing the tragedy that is Freckles eating dry cereal for dinner, I decide enough is enough.
I walk up behind her quietly and wrap my arms around her waist.
She yelps so violently that the spoon flies straight out of her hand and clatters into the bowl.
“Jesus Christ!” she gasps, twisting around in my arms. “What the fuck is wrong with you?!”
A laugh rumbles out of me before I can stop it.
"What are you doing here?"
"You texted."
She frowns, "No, I didn't." Then, pauses, and her mouth forms an O in realisation. "I did."
Apparently satisfied with solving that mystery, she immediately melts backwards against me, letting her full weight rest against my chest like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
“Yeah,” she mumbles tiredly, “your chances of getting your dick wet tonight are below zero.”
“Oh no,” I deadpan. “How will I survive?”
“You’re a big boy,” she murmurs, absently petting my arm. “You’ll live.”
“Devastating news regardless.”
She yawns so hard her entire body curls inward afterwards, eyes squeezing shut.
Jesus.
“You look exhausted,” I say, softer now. “What coffee shop keeps people till eight anyway?”
“It’s more like…” she waves vaguely at the air, clearly too tired to finish a proper sentence. “Special event thingy. Every other week, with a band and alcohol."
“You serve alcohol?”
“Yep.” Another yawn. “Pretty sure a lot of what's happening in that coffee isn't really up to today's low, but the owner of it is a sweetheart, so nobody really cares." Freckles says, trying hard to keep her eyes open.
No longer able to watch this, I slide one arm beneath her knees and the other around her back before lifting her straight off the stool.
She lets out another startled noise, hands immediately grabbing onto my shoulders.
"A warning would've been nice." She grumbles.
“You should be grateful I’m here,” I tell her, adjusting my grip. “Otherwise, you’d fall asleep face-first on the counter."
“Wow,” she says weakly, sarcasm somehow surviving despite her current state. “My knight in shining armour.”
I huff out a laugh and carry her out of the kitchen despite her half-hearted complaints.
The warmth of her pressed against me settles low in my chest in a way I absolutely do not want to think about.
She’s lighter than she should be.
Or maybe I’m just getting too used to holding her.
Her head drops against my shoulder halfway down the hall, curls brushing my neck.
“Don’t drop me,” she murmurs sleepily.
In response, I pretend to.
She gasps and locks both arms around my neck instantly.
Then realises she’s still perfectly secure.
"You fucking asshole." She says and keeps on grumbling about 'how I can't do this to an almost asleep person', and something about me being a dickhead.
By the time we make it back into her room, I'm still grinning like an idiot, and her eyes are already half shut again.
I kick the door closed behind us and head for the bed, lowering her onto the mattress.
“Alright,” I say, crouching slightly in front of her. “Arms up, damsel in distress.”
"You just want to see me naked."
I chuckle softly. “Always. But I don’t think you want to sleep in that,” I say, tugging lightly at the coffee shop shirt she’s still wearing.
Freckles squints at me with sleepy brown eyes like she’s deeply offended I’m making sense.
Still, she lifts her arms obediently.
“Good girl.”
“Shut up.”
I snicker under my breath and peel the shirt carefully over her head. The second it’s gone, her curls tumble wildly around her face again, messy and soft and unfairly stunning.
That should not do things to me the way it does.
Especially not when she looks this exhausted.
“You’re staring,” she mumbles.
“You’re very pretty. Hard not to.”
That earns me the tiniest smile. “Flirt.”
“Correct.”
I crouch in front of her again, fingers hooking into the waistband of her trousers. “Lift.”
She obeys without argument this time, clearly too tired to fight me properly anymore.
The trousers land beside the bed a second later.
She manages to pull off her own socks while I rummage through her drawers for pyjamas.
When I come back with an oversized shirt and shorts, she points sleepily at herself. "Bra."
So I reach behind her and unclip her bra with one hand, which earns me a: "whore,"
I bark out a laugh.
“Jealous?”
“Deeply.”
I help her into the shirt, tugging it gently over her head before handing her the shorts.
By the time she’s dressed, she practically falls sideways into the mattress face-first.
I pull the blankets over her immediately.
If I were a good guy, I'd leave now.
But I think we’ve well established by this point that I’m not.
And even though I'm still terrified of what happened last time, I can't resist this.
Her.
The possibility of peaceful sleep.
So after switching off the fairy lights, I strip off my hoodie and shirt, because I get way too fucking warm at night, and slip into bed beside her.
The second I do, she rolls toward me. No hesitation.
Just curls herself against my chest before I’ve even settled properly.
Like she belongs there.
Which is becoming a very real fucking problem.
Her freezing feet brush my leg.
“Christ, you’re cold.”
“Warm me up then.” She moans, half asleep.
My lips twitch up, and
I pull the blankets higher around us, tucking them over her shoulder as my arm settles around her waist on instinct, drawing her closer without thinking about it.
The room is quiet in a way that feels almost unreal. Just the soft wind tapping against the window and the steady rhythm of her breathing against my chest.
My eyes are already starting to slip shut when-
“Tadhg?”
Her voice is barely above a whisper.
"Hm?"
She murmurs something so quiet and mushed together that I almost don't hear it.
Almost.
"Don't break my heart, okay?"
My eyes snap open instantly.
But when I look down, she hasn’t moved. Her expression is loose, calm. Her breathing is even.
Asleep.
I stare at her in the dark, heartbeat suddenly too loud in my chest.
I don’t know if she meant to say it out loud.
Or if she even realises she did.
Don’t break my heart, okay?
For me to break her heart would require me to have it in the first place.
Or at least parts of it.
What the fuck are we even doing?
Because this is sure as shit not only fucking and we both know it.
I don't want to ruin this. I like how things are right now.
And I know we can't go back. But where do we go from here on?
Freckles was pretty clear about not wanting a relationship. And I don't want one either.
Or maybe I do.
I don't know.
This girl is confusing me.
Throwing my world upside down without even realising it.
I think about responding, but she wouldn't hear it anyway.
She's asleep.
So instead, I just breathe in slowly, tighten my arm around her one last time, and let my eyes fall shut again.
Whatever this is… I’ll deal with it tomorrow.
Or not at all.
And for now, I let sleep pull me under with her.
≪ ◦ ❖ ◦ ≫
I startle awake when Izzy’s bedroom door gets thrown open hard enough to smack against the wall.
“I’m taking your sisters to their grandma’s. I’ll be out with James till later. The dishwasher’s full. I need you to pick up a package from the McCarthys. Don’t look at me like that, Isabell. I know you don’t like them. It’s just a package; you can manage that. And the boy in your bed better be gone when I’m back.”
Her mam stands in the doorway like she’s delivering military orders before deployment, keys already in hand, coat half hanging off one shoulder.
I barely have time to process the fact that she just casually referred to me as “the boy in your bed” before she’s already turning away.
“Fiona! Helen! Shoes. Now.”
The door stays open only long enough for the sound of hurried footsteps and complaining children to echo down the hall.
Then she’s gone.
Silence crashes back over the room so abruptly that it almost feels fake.
Izzy groans dramatically into her pillow before dragging herself upright and stumbling to the door. She nudges it shut with her foot before falling face-first back onto the mattress beside me.
“Oh yeah,” she mutters into the blanket, voice thick with sarcasm, “thanks for wishing me a nice day, Mam. Hope you have a lovely day too.”
I snort quietly.
She rolls onto her back and stares at the ceiling. “One day I’m going to murder that woman, and you’ll see me on national television.”
“You’re a bit young to be throwing your life away for prison.”
She turns her head slowly toward me, expression completely flat. “I could handle prison.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“The real question,” she says seriously, “is whether prison could handle me.”
I let out a laugh before pulling her back against my chest, missing the warmth. “That sounds like something someone says right before they absolutely cannot handle prison.”
Like dragging me out by my ear differently.
Izzy sighs then and tries to sit up. "No," I grumble, pulling her back down. "Too early."
One glance at the clock and she protests, “It’s almost eleven.”
"Exactly," I murmur against her neck, pressing lazy kisses on my way up to her face.
"Tadhg," she protests. "Tadhg," this time laughing, then turning abruptly away when I've almost reached her mouth. "No," she squirms.
I pause. “No?”
“We haven’t brushed our teeth yet.”
I stare at her for a second before scoffing. “Yeah, because my morning breath is the worst thing you’ve ever had in your mouth.”
“No,” she says instantly, smug as hell. “That would be your dick.”
Then she immediately tries to launch herself out of my arms.
"Oh, you little-"
I don't let her escape and use another thing I've learned about Izzy. She's extremely ticklish.
“Don’t. Tadhg! Don’t you fucking dare! Ahh-”
“You started it,” I murmur, entirely too pleased with myself.
She kicks at the mattress, twisting away, laughing despite herself as she tries to shove my hands off. “Stop! I made a joke, alright!"
"My pride is wounded." I fire back, not at all wounded.
"That sounds like a you problem." She gasps out, trying to grab my wrists, but she’s laughing too hard to actually coordinate anything, which only makes it worse for her.
“Stop-stop-please!” she wheezes, squirming so much the blankets twist around our legs while we roll around in her bed.
“Say you’re sorry.”
“No!”
“Say it.”
“I’m not-I’m not apologising-”
That earns her another burst of laughter when I go for her ribs again.
She shrieks, arches away from me, then accidentally slams back into my chest, trying to escape.
Which shoves both of us too close to the edge of the bed.
I realise it exactly one second too late.
THUD.
We hit the floor in a heap.
Izzy lands half on top of me, hair everywhere, one arm sprawled across my chest. I let out a grunt of air, leaving my lungs in a rush.
“Jesus Christ,” I grunt, air leaving my lungs in a rush.
There’s one stunned second of silence.
Then she bursts out laughing.
“Damn,” she gasps between breaths, cheeks flushed pink. “Karma moves fast, baby.”
I huff, rubbing my neck, "Yeah, I guess I deserved that."
She pushes herself upright, still laughing softly while brushing curls out of her face. Then her smile drops and her eyes narrow. "You wanna tell me, me fighting for my life made you this hard?"
I suppress a groan as she shifts slightly on top of me, pressure dragging against my already painful erection. My hands immediately land on her hips.
“Would it help if I said I was hard before that?” I ask hopefully.
“I don’t know,” she says, pretending to think about it. “Maybe.”
Then she shakes her head firmly. "No. You shouldn't be hard at all after your attempted assault on me. You're gonna burn in hell for that."
"Hell? You were the one talking about murder only minutes ago."
"Never said I won't be in hell too." She says as a matter of fact. "As if I'd ever let you have your piece down there."
"Oh, so you'd follow me even down to hell?" I tease.
Before she can answer, I flip us carefully, making sure her head doesn’t hit the floor. She lands beneath me with a quiet laugh, hands immediately sliding up around my neck.
“You’re obsessed with me,” I inform her.
"You misinterpreted that. I'd run hell too."
“Would you now?”
“Obviously.” She nods once, completely serious. “Efficient dictatorship. Extremely organised. Cold-hearted suffering.”
I snort. “That goes against literally all your morals.”
“Shit.” Her mouth pulls into a pout. “You’re right.”
"Aren't I always?"
"Literally never."
I lean down and smile. This time, she doesn't protest when I kiss the pout of her face. And like always with us, it escalates far too quickly.
One second, it’s teasing.
Next, her fingers are in my hair, and my hands are sliding beneath the hem of her shirt. Her mouth opens softly against mine when I press closer, and Christ.
That sound alone could ruin me.
Her legs hook loosely around my waist, keeping me close, and I swear she smiles every time she feels how badly I want her.
“Freckles,” I murmur against her mouth, half tortured already. “You’re killing me here.”
She chuckles, like the evil person she is and pushes slightly against me. I let her flip us over again so she's back on top. "On the floor or-"
"The floor is fine by me."
She pulls her shirt over her head, and reaches for her nightstand, getting a condom, while I kiss and nipple on every sink of hers I can reach.
She drops the condom on my chest, getting her shorts and knickers off at the same time. I get my sweats down and the condom on.
We both let out a groan when she sinks down on my, hands on my chest for balance, and I thrust upwards.
If there is a heaven, I'm pretty fucking sure it would feel like this.
I'm already prepared to flip us back over when her head turns sharply toward the window, and she gasps. "Holy shit."
With that, she jumps off me.
What the fuck?
She’s already dragging clothes back on at record speed.
“Freckles?”
No answer.
She bolts out the bedroom door.
I stare after her for half a second before hauling myself upright and yanking my own clothes back on.
“Iz?”
I follow her downstairs, finding her already halfway into a coat at the back door.
Then she throws it open and disappears outside.
I shove my arms through my jacket and step out after her-
And something freezing smacks directly into my face.
I recoil immediately. “What the-”
I wipe snow off my cheek and blink upward.
White flakes drift lazily from the sky, thick and soft and endless. And standing in the middle of the snow-glazed garden is Izzy. With a smile that could light up this whole town, eyes sparkling.
"It's snowing!" She announces.
No shit.
｡☆✼★━━━━━━━━━━━━★✼☆｡