The pink-orange glow filtering in through the curtains suggests that the sun will be breaking over the tops of the trees any minute now, and the pinched tiredness behind her eyes only corroborates this, as she carefully folds herself into the bed she shares with her husband.
Letting her head fall back into the pillow, Lydia takes the opportunity to look over at the sleeping form beside her. She uses the moles dotting across his neck and cheek to trace the sharp line of his jaw with her eyes. She wonders, some days, how she could have ever missed these little details about him.
But then she remembers werewolves and kanimas and darachs and a scrawny little thing that trailed after her like a shadow, from third grade all the way up to high school. She remembers the way he used to put her up on a pedestal, idolize her. Remembers how uncomfortable his gaze once made her.
She can't stop the corner of her mouth from turning up when she thinks back on how that changed, how they'd both grown up, had both taken the time to get to know each other as friends, devoted themselves to each other platonically, long, long before they shared their first kiss.
(And she hardly believes she kissed him first either, when she looks back on that small peck to the corner of his mouth, under autumn's first full moon-)
She thinks that's what made all the difference, though. All the three-in-the-morning milkshake runs after researching until their eyes refused to corporate; all the eye-rolls and sassing and the would-be be barbed words that crumpled to dust on their tongues because their lives were just too exhausting to push away one of the only people who understood. She knows that this is how they came together, pouring themselves into the spaces between these moments, not crashing violently like she expected, but slowly, like the sea to the shore; no less powerful, but made somehow infinitely more passionate by the inevitability of their meeting and infinitely stronger by the permanence of it, the understanding that she will rise up to meet him again and again until death closes his fist around her heart.
That's not to say that falling in love fixed what was broken inside of her. She still has nightmares sometimes; they come in the shape of eyes likes rubies, and lit road flares and scarred faces peering out of fire-
But it's easier, when there are soft kisses on her pulse point after she jolts awake at night, when she can concentrate on the sound of his voice and let the liquid honey of it drown out babies crying and lovers counting down, when she can grab his hand and let everything but the warmth of him fall away. She's spent a long time learning to live with these shades from her past, and often all she needs to think about is all the good things that life has given her- the space between her lovers arms that seems to have been molded for her body, the way Allison's face lights up when her three-year-old calls for mommy, the field's medal tucked into a shadowbox, hanging in the center of the foyer- and within minutes she has her head pressed to the pillow once more.
Despite the bone-crushing fear she lived with in high school, and the nights that she still wakes with a scream stuck in the back of her throat, it's truly a blessed life she's led.
And sometimes it still sends a little jolt through her, when she takes the time to pause and look behind her, to see the convoluted route she'd taken to get her, all the little twists and turns she could have never dreamed of when she'd laid in bed as a little girl wondering how her life would be.
But if she had the opportunity to talk to that little girl now, she'd tell her it was worth it. All of her fear and anger and sadness and pain was worth living through for the life she has now; for guilty pleasure marathons of house hunters and waking up to the smell of pancakes and fantastic sex and the sheer amount of laughter her husband pulls out of her on a daily basis. It was worth it for the unexpected thrill of being alive and being able to share it with the person she's come to love more than anything, day after day.
These thoughts leave a soft smile on her face as a long day of airports and jet lag exhaustion starts to pull her under into sleep. Just before she goes, she feels a soft kiss at the back of her neck, and the vibrations of a warm, slurred voice scratchy from sleep:
"Missed you,"