Chapter Text
12. things you said when you thought i was asleep.
"Sometimes I'm scared I'm going to lose you."
It's breathed into the spaces where their bodies don't touch between one breath and the next. Cammie wants to tense up but doesn't, keeps her breathing even and her hands soft where they're tangled with Zach's against her stomach.
"Actually," he whispers on a sigh (she can picture him already, eyes closed in defeat with the tiniest furrow between his brows; the same expression he always makes right before he admits to something he's kept locked up inside to fester and bleed for far too long).
"I'm always scared I'm going to lose you."
She squeezes her eyes closed against the sudden rush of emotions, the desperate need to turn around and throw her arms around him, press her face into the crook of his neck and whisper reassurances that they'd never be able to say in the light of day.
Their apartment has always been a safe place, a place where they feel safe and warm. Locked up in their bedroom, the shadows here don't scare them, don't trap them in darkness, blind and lost and so so confused. No, here the shadows keep them protected, hold all the words whispered between them against the walls of their bedroom. Wrapped up under covers, wrapped up in each other they can share their secrets with each other without worrying about them being picked up by prying ears to be used against them later on.
But this.
This isn't something Zach has ever told her (isn't something he will ever tell her). This isn't something that he's whispered against her skin with soft lips, something for only her ears to hear in the quiet hours when dark and dawn melt into one.
It's for him and it is not for her to hear.
Cammie knows the value of secrets, knows how they can break and bend and shape people. She knows that some secrets need to be told otherwise they will eat you alive and some need to be buried deep inside because they already do.
And some - some she knows need to be said out loud but are meant only for solid walls to hear and hold, trapped between floorboards and ceiling corners that will wear with age and dust till the words are nestled into the worn down cracks.
Because she understands that, she doesn't say anything, just sinks further back into Zach's arms, sighs the way she knows she does when she's comfortable in a deep sleep and breathes.
His arms tighten around her and he squeezes their joint hands once, twice before pressing his lips against the skin of her shoulder in the barest resemblance of a kiss.
They both sleep.