Page 66 of Let the Light Shine Through

She glances at me over her shoulder, and this time, there’s no mistaking the water filling her eyes.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this. You weren’t supposed to be like this.”

So she did feel it. She does feel it. She knows this is different. This has potential. We have potential. But she’s scared.

“You’ve already stayed the night here before. It’ll be just like that.”

There’s a riot inside my chest. An absolute uprising to the point that I’m pretty sure Gia can hear my heart thundering its objection. This isn’t just like that. This is so much more.

“It’s easier if I don’t.”

I bark out a watery laugh, stunned by the foreign sound. Am I crying? Excluding the day I failed to dig Salvy out from the avalanche’s debris in time, I can’t remember a single time I’ve actually cried.

What the hell?

“I don’t want you driving right now. Just…sleep here. I’m just asking you to sleep in my bed for the night. Nothing else.”

As the seconds tick by, I start to lose hope, so pretending like there’s only one choice worth choosing, I lie back, taking Gia with me, positioning us like that first night in my room with her head on my shoulder and my feelings on my invisible sleeve.

“Don’t go yet. I need you—”

“You don’t though. You don’t need me.”

My eyebrows pull together in the dark.

“I want you here still. You said I needed to tell you what I want and you’d give it to me.”

“Roz—”

“I want you here. I want to fall asleep with you in my arms and wake up with you still in them. No running off.”

A long silent pause follows that eats away at my confidence until finally, she sighs, saying, “I’ll stay for breakfast.”

After a while, she melts into me, and I breathe out a shaky sigh of my own, knowing that even though I haven’t won the war, I won the battle—tonight.

Roz

The next morning I’m standing at the kitchen counter, waiting for my coffee to finish brewing, when Fletcher sits up from his spot on the couch, cradling his head in his hands, and groaning.

He mumbles out a greeting when he finds me eyeballing him, but I don’t bother returning the gesture. Something set Gia off last night, and as much as I’d like to believe it was blind jealousy, my roommate did seem suspicious as fuck with the way he was talking to her, and since neither one came out and told me what exactly went down, I have no choice but to assume he is.

“You get in a fight with a vacuum or something?” he asks, and I follow his gaze to the dark purple bruise on my shoulder.

“Or something.”

He mutters something to himself, but Annalise, stumbling down the other set of stairs, keeps me from asking him to repeat it. Her short hair’s sticking out in all different directions and her makeup-lined eyes are glassy as all hell. She widens them when she sees us staring back at her and says, “Umm, hi?”

Hi? Did she not know we’d be here? In our own house?

“Bad night?” I guess.

There’s hungover and then there’s this. She’s the one that really looks like she got into a fight with a vacuum cleaner. No hickeys, but, her hair, it definitely took a beating.

Annalise squints up the stairs she just came from, saying, “I’m not sure. The last thing I remember is us,” her eyes skitter over to Fletcher, “kissing, then puking all over somebody’s…feet? Maybe? Maybe not.” Her hand goes to her forehead, pressing her palm against it like a human bandage. “I don’t know. It all went black after that.”

I busy myself pouring the coffee into my mug. She doesn’t even know whose room she passed out in? That seems…dangerous. I mean, not in this house. Nobody living here would even think about messing with an incoherent girl. If I even thought they would…

I dart my eyes over to Fletcher again, but Gia bounds down my staircase, robbing every ounce of my attention. She’s back in her romper, but has the flannel from last night buttoned all the way to the top. She’s also wearing one of my beanies pulled down low over her forehead, but she’s still barefoot.