Me Without You

"Give me five reasons why you love me."

The air tasted stale. It was dry and lifeless. It touched Camila's skin and left a cold marking. She felt dead.

Or maybe she felt that because she knew very soon she would be.

24 Hours Earlier

"Maybe we should get a dog," Camila broached as Lauren handed her a bowl of fruit and yoghurt. "Like...a husky or something, you know?"

"Camila, we live in an apartment and the last time you had a dog it was blonde and wouldn't stop blabbing on about how it came up with our ship name." The brunette frowned at her girlfriend for a moment before she clicked onto what Lauren was talking about. Dinah...Dinah was the dog.

"You're a jerk." Camila sneered down at her breakfast and then shot a glare up at Lauren. "You don't have class today."

"I know, idiot, I'm coming to the studio with you." Lauren leaned down and pressed a hard kiss to Camila's cheek. "Want to see my girl in action."

And try as she might, Camila couldn't fight the smile that threatened to spread on her face. The day felt like a good day, it felt like not everything in her life was being threatened and she wanted that little sense of normality with Lauren for a little while.

She was excited for her girlfriend to be in the studio with her as well.

It was weird spending an entire day with Lauren again. The pair had been so busy with their separate lives that they'd always only caught each other later in the afternoon, which didn't leave them with much time for activities other than watching some movies on the couch or...well sex. Lauren always had early classes or Camila was always ready to hit the studio at some ungodly hour.

They forgot how nice it felt to spend a day together. They both forgot, momentarily, that there was someone out to ruin that.

After breakfast, the pair decided to go for a walk. Initially Camila had been hesitant, she didn't want herself or Lauren so exposed to everyone...Camila, despite the lightness of the morning, was still terrified.

Lauren, however, wasn't about to let some scumbag ruin her time with her girlfriend and insisted countless times that nothing would happen to them. Because Lauren would ensure nothing happened to them. To say the green-eyed girl was feeling overprotective would be an understatement, she wanted nothing more than to pummel whoever the hell was causing her girlfriend to fear her own shadow.

But she'd promised Camila she would leave things to the authorities...and thus, she would act the concerned girlfriend.

It went against every instinct Lauren possessed to not try to find whoever was doing this, she wanted to be more involved, talk to the police, find out what they knew, connect dots...something of use but she couldn't. She couldn't because she promised.

She couldn't because she still recalled Camila sitting across from her in that hospital room with her face buried in her hands crying while Ally comforted her because she couldn't. The raven-haired girl had been stuck in a hospital bed unable to comfort her crying girlfriend.

And it was because she had to act the hero with Lucy.

And Lauren never regretted it, she never would, but she never wanted to relive Camila's anguish ever again. She would fight tooth and nail to never see the girl cry like that again.

So while the older girl couldn't do too much in protecting her girlfriend, she decided to do the next best thing. She decided to show Camila that they could still be happy amongst all the drama that surrounded their lives.