Re: The woods
She opened her mouth to tell him to find someone who wasn't rich, maybe, but he snapped, and she winced. She started shaking her head. No, no, of course she wouldn't say anything. But she couldn't even get the words out; she couldn't find her voice. But she didn't look away. She let Luke pull her toward the door, and she let him pull her out, but she never looked away from that broken man in the room. Part of her wanted to stay and try to fix it. Oh, God, she wanted to fix it so badly. But she couldn't, and she knew it, and she just wanted to run away from all of it. To forget how cruel he could look, and to forget just how broken he could be. And it wasn't killing people, no, he hadn't gone that route, but it was just as bad. Just as bad.
Once the door closed, she wrapped her arms around her Luke's waist, and she held on so tightly that she knew there would be bruises at the small of his back, but she didn't care. It didn't matter, and she didn't ever want to let go. She murmured against his chest, her words muffled by fabric, but she didn't even want to pull back enough to make herself intelligible. She cried, and she cried, and she finally tipped her head back to look at him. Her grey eyes were searching for something in his face, for proof, for a reminder, for something, and her fingers unwound from his waist to touch his cheekbones. So similar, so, so very similar. "Luke-" she began, but the sound of a water sprinkler caught her attention, and she looked around.
They were outside.
Not in the Thomas Inc. hallway, and not in the snowy woods either. And, oh, God, not again. Please, please, not again. She was back in her nightgown, but he was dressed differently. Jeans and a t-shirt and sneakers on his feet. But she knew this place and, for a second, she thought it was all over. Maybe the hotel had just put them in the wrong spot. Maybe they could just go home. Maybe.
Because they were standing on a Las Vegas sidewalk, and they'd gone to see houses in the neighborhood just weeks before. The place had turned out to be too expensive, and too selective. It was the kind of place where a hefty maintenance fee ensured that all the lawns behind the white picket fences looked perfect, despite being in the desert. And it was the kind of place that had a Homeowners Association that had to interview all new residents and their pets. The houses they'd seen had been a little out of budget, but it was the background check that had kept her from even following through with an application at the time. There was no way they would approve her. Luke, yes, and Gus, and even Finch, but not her. It would take a letter of recommendation from Thomas to bring about that miracle, and she hadn't even mentioned it to Luke.
But their neighborhood was just a few blocks off, and they could walk. It wasn't very far, and it was early in the morning if the sun in the sky was any indication, sunny but not warm yet. The houses behind them were decorated for Christmas, and slumbering-lit trees could be seen through their front windows, and she finally turned to Luke again and tried to speak. It was hard, she found, and she didn't even know what to say, so she just tugged on his fingers and shyly pulled on his hand.
Not a second later, a tiny bark broke the sprinkler-silence, and she turned her head to see a little basset hound, no more than a few months old, running straight toward the intersection and traffic up ahead.