"Take me on a date." Lauren looked to the woman beside her with pleading eyes. "Please."
This stunned everyone in the waiting room, their eyes littered with curiosity on how Camila would combat this new challenge with Lauren.
Because everyone knew Lauren couldn't leave the hospital, not when her little girl currently had a team of doctors rooting through her head trying to resect a tumor that had doubled in size since it's first discovery. Lauren couldn't leave because if she did and something happened, everyone knew she wouldn't be able to live with herself.
"Babe, we're not exactly out to the public yet and the very last thing you want is to be bombarded by the media." Camila took her love's hand and gave it a soft squeeze. "You need to be here."
"And do what?" The green-eyed woman looked around the room and met the gazes of Ashley, her mother, Sinu...and none of them held answers in them. "They said the surgery would take hours and we're sitting here waiting for them to update us but what are they gonna tell us? That she's still in there? We know that. I want to get out of here, I don't want to sit here and simmer in my nerves. Take me on a date, Camila. Take me somewhere where I'm not picturing my baby bleeding out on a surgical table."
The brunette looked to Lucy, because if anyone was going to give her a right answer in this situation, it would be the older girl. She'd always just known what to do when Lauren wasn't okay. And Camila never really needed to know because Lauren was always the one taking care of her.
Lucy looked to her best friend and clenched her jaw for a moment, watching the desperation swimming in those emerald orbs, praying for a miracle where there was none. So Lucy nodded to Camila, because if neither of them could offer a miracle, the very least Camila could offer was solace.
"Okay," The brown-eyed woman stood from her seat and offered her hand to the woman beside her. "But we're gonna try to limit exposure, okay? It's gonna be...just us."
And though it wasn't exactly what Lauren had asked for, she nodded. She couldn't just think of herself in that moment, she needed to think about how her exposing her relationship with Camila would impact her family. How Ashley would be exposed in the process along with Natalia.
The pair left the waiting room, each with different concerns spotlighted in their minds. Lauren clung to Camila's hand as if it were her very lifeline and Camila let her because she couldn't think of a single other way of offering her love peace.
The clouds outside seemed to sense the mood of the day and Camila found herself hatching the perfect plan for Lauren. She knew exactly what she could give the woman she loved to offer her even a sliver of relief for her concerns.
She opened the door for Lauren before making sure to shoot through a message to her PR team about her possibly being spotted with the green-eyed woman. She knew she'd be swarmed by their responses so she silenced her phone and left that headache for later, slipping into the driver's seat and peeling out of the parking lot with a silent Lauren in the passenger.
"You know," She spoke up after a few minutes of silence. "A date is usually about getting to know your partner a little better."
"You know me." Lauren looked to the brunette, her tone soft...timid.
"I know teenage Lauren," Camila reminded her girlfriend. "This Lauren...I'm getting to know her daily." She brought their locked hands to her lips and kissed the older woman's knuckles. "I love everything I learn."
"Are you upset that she's all dark and gloomy lately?"
"Are you upset that I'm all dark and gloomy lately?" The singer arched a brow. "Because I have too, you know? I haven't been bright and happy either. I hate everything about this too."
"Because you love her the same." Lauren nodded, having accepted this information for a while now. "It's how I know you'll stay. If not for me, then for her."
"I'll stay for both of you," Camila looked to Lauren for only a second. "For my small family, hell, I'll even stay for Ash."
"She's family to you." Lauren spoke it...not so much as a question, but there was a hint of shock in her tone.
"She is," Camila nodded. "She's Lia's mom, she's your ex-wife and she's my...friend...but I feel like it's more than that. I feel like she's supposed to be in my life, you know? We're all supposed to be in each other's lives." Camila found her letting out a soft chuckle. "Plus I've got her blessing."
"What? To have me?" Lauren arched a brow curiously.
"To one day...maybe adopt Lia as mine as well." The brunette spoke with hesitancy, not sure how her love would take that tid bit of information.
"Wow," Lauren kept her eyes settled on the road ahead but her mind was racing. "Would you want that?"
"One day," Camila nodded slowly. "Pending your trust in me and us and my readiness to commit to being a mother."
"You already are," Lauren scoffed, earning a frown from the brunette. "You don't even know it because it happened slowly, but you're an amazing mom, Camz. To that little girl, you are a great mother. She loves you like you are as well."
"You think?" A warmth began to spread throughout the brunette's entire body, a happiness she hadn't allowed herself to believe in until that very moment.
"I'm surprised you agreed to leave the hospital with me."
"Everything in me is telling me to turn the car around so just don't talk about it," Camila smiled over to her girlfriend. "Fuck, I am a mother."
"It's why I was more than a little tempted to accept your proposal, because I know how we all could be. Because I know I've found my perfect in you. Because I know my daughter will have the best mothers."
"I'm still marrying you one day, Jauregui," Camila winked playfully. "It's not a matter of if anymore, it's a matter of when."
"Even if I'm a walking mess?"
"Would you love me less?"
"I never did."
"There's your answer." Camila pulled the car over, confusing the green-eyed woman as she looked to see only trees on either side of the road. "Come on, let's go on the most unconventional date ever."
"We don't even have food," Lauren looked up at the sky as she slipped out of the car. "And I'm pretty sure it's gonna pour down soon."
Camila rounded the car and offered her hand, raising a brow as if challenging Lauren's faith in her. But because the green-eyed woman couldn't for a moment entertain the idea of her love ever wavering for the woman before her, she took her hand. Placing every bit of trust she had in the woman before her and knowing she wouldn't be misled. It was liberating; to know with absolute certainty that her trust wasn't misplaced.
With Ashley she had always been a little hesitant. Worried about the future because of the woman's spontaneity but it was different with Camila. She couldn't hold back her feelings with the woman and she didn't want to.
She knew with absolute certainty that she could live without Camila but never did she ever want to again.
The pair walked through the trees until they came to a clearing that dipped to the edge of a cliff but not before saving room for a small patch of grass.
"After Matthew you took me to the beach because you wanted me to see the world again but you didn't want to force me." Camila watched as Lauren's eyes widened. "I want to show you the world, Lauren, always, but I want to show you to the world when we're all ready. When you're ready to be seen by it and not a second before. So I'll let this small portion of the world see you for now, because it'd be selfish of me not to."
A ray of sunlight beamed through the clouds and glistened onto the water below them, like crystals dancing on the wet surface.
"And I want you to scream." Camila began shrugging her jacket off. "I want you to scream at the world for what it allowed to happen to our little girl, for what it allowed to happen to our father. Because you lost him the same day I did and you are as angry as I am for what our daughter is currently facing."
"Our daughter," Lauren spoke softly, her eyes finding Camila's. "She's yours."
"I want forever with both of you, a forever with just you isn't enough for me anymore." Camila smiled gently. "You are the love of my life, Lauren, but you and Natalia together...you're my soulmates. It's how I know she'll make it. I can't believe in a life that would threaten my soul to be torn twice in one lifetime." Camila watched as Lauren began to tie her hair back. "So yell."
And she did.
Lauren's voice took over every sound that could be heard for miles. Her voice travelled over the sea and through the beam of sunlight and it tore at Camila's heart as she screamed her pain away. As she cursed out the world around her, as she cussed at the red string of fate...as she swore with everything in her that she would find the Fates themselves and tear them apart if anything were to happen to their little girl.
And when she couldn't scream anymore, Camila chimed in and gave Lauren the voice she'd lost. Camila yelled with everything in her. She didn't care of she tore her vocal cords or if she forever ruined her throat, no, she couldn't care. Because in that moment, she felt...free.
And when the rain decided to grace them, she was quick to put her jacket over head and usher Lauren back to the car only to find the green-eyed woman shaking her head and sitting down. She proceeded to lay down and let the rain pelt down on her tired body.
"What are you doing?" Camila called out over the rain.
"Washing it all away." The older woman smiled as she spoke.
And Camila thought that Lauren could not have looked more beautiful than in that moment, washing away all the pain and hurt and loneliness she'd ever felt while she stood on watching.
Lauren had always been the most naturally beautiful creature Camila had ever come to know and in that moment, it served as proof. Lauren was as beautiful as the rain, as striking as that first green sprout of growth after fire had purified a forest.
Lauren was ethereal.
Camila retrieved her phone to capture the moment but her eyes soon found a message that brought her back to their reality.
She's out of surgery.