Mirrors

Chapter Thirty Eight

When Edie first opened her eyes, the sun harshly hit them. She closed them again. Sometime later, she opened her eyes again and the room was filled with darkness. She closed them again and rolled over. A while later, she opened them again and the sun was softly peeking through the curtains. She moved her hands to her face to rub her eyes and turned herself over onto her other side. She felt her body dip into her bed and when she opened her eyes again she was face to back with someone.

Her eyes widened a little and she looked down at herself and saw that she was dressed and that he was dressed in her sweatpants. She then remembered everything that had happened the night before. 

"Niall," she whispered, softly enough that he wouldn't hear her.

She looked back up at his back and saw, for the first time, the scars on his back from the bullets going right through. They were worse than the ones on his chest, larger, more jagged. The others were actually much smaller because of point of entry. Exit wounds, not so much. She inhaled sharply, remembering what he had done to try to reach her; to convince her she wasn't alone. She also remembered how he had initially found her and the look on his face.

"Oh, god," she mumbled, bringing her hand back to her face.

When she looked back over at him, she could tell he was still asleep from how softly and steadily he was breathing. She moved the sheets back down a little to get a better look at his back. She slowly moved closer to him and reached out, her hand coming to rest on the scar below his heart. It was rough but also smooth. She lightly traced her finger along the ridge of his scar. She inched a little closer, leaned in and kissed his back, in the same manner he had purposely kissed her scars, she kissed his.

He moved at her touch and began rolling over to face her. She rolled back away from him and closed her eyes hoping he would think she was asleep. She listened as she felt him move his arms, to what she only assumed, was to rub his eyes before opening them.

"Edie?" he whispered. She didn't move. "I know you're awake. I felt you."

She turned over to face him and saw two sleepy blue eyes looking directly at her. "Sorry," she whispered back.

"Don't be."

She meekly smiled at him and he did the same. They laid there for a few minutes, neither appearing to know what to do next.

"Niall?"

"Hmm," he said. He had closed his eyes again.

"I'm so sorry for the way I've been treating you." She said it so quietly she wasn't even sure she had said it out loud.

He opened his eyes and smiled at her, "I know. But I gotta ask....why?"

She looked away for a moment and then turned onto her side to face him better, he did the same to her. "I was scared. I am scared."

"Of what? Me?"

"No. I just got so self-conscious about it all. I wanted your help but I didn't want you to know everything that had happened. I guess it suddenly rushed into my head that there was no way you could read any of that and ever look at me the same way. You're about the only friend I have right now and I guess...I don't know. I don't know, I just got so angry. I hadn't been angry about all of this, not in the way I clearly became."

"Why the club?"

She shrugged, "I don't know, I guess I thought maybe he had been there that night."

"I'm so confused on exactly what you were trying to do?"

She shook her head, on the verge of tears again. She moved to where she now laid on her back and blinked several times to get the tears out of her eyes as she watched the ceiling.

"It started as me just wanting to go and see if anything or anyone seemed familiar to me. It turned into something completely different and immensely stupid."

"I hope you mean the part where you end up in a back room," Niall said.

Edie cringed. She hated that he had seen her like that. The look he had had in his eyes; there were so many different emotions written all over his face in that moment.

"Yeah, about that," she started but she had to stop. "Hold on, I've got to pee." She got out of the bed and went into her bathroom. When she came back he wasn't there. "Niall?"

"Out here. Sorry," he said, returning to her room with the shirt she had given him back on and a phone in his hand, "So, uh, we slept a long time."

"What do you mean?"

"It's Thursday. We passed out just as the sun was rising on Wednesday morning."

"Holy shit."

"Yeah, now it's my turn for the toilet," he laughed as he walked into her bathroom and shut the door.

She climbed back into bed and grabbed her own phone and saw that yes, they had indeed slept for over 24 hours. "We needed it," she whispered as Niall came back out.