Asher dropped his keys on the kitchen counter when he entered the house, flipping the nearest light switch. The light above him flickered feebly and then died out with a small puff. Asher groaned and moved for a step stool, clearing empty bottles of alcohol and a layer of dust away from it before setting it down, unscrewing the light bulb and replacing it with a new one. The light shined on an average-looking kitchen covered with an unwavering mess. A pile of dishes was in the sink, leftover food lain out on the counters. Upon seeing the mess, Asher wished he hadn't turned the light on at all. Seeing the mess reminded himself of his situation, of what he had been left with. He grabbed a granola bar from the cupboard and glanced warily at the clock. It would be another hour until his brother got out of school, so he had to wait, had to stay out of trouble until then. He forced himself to pull his school books from his bag, clearing a space on the kitchen table to begin his work. As he tried to read, though, the letters seemed to dance on the page, flipping backwards and upside down until he could not decipher one from another. He groaned in frustration, closing the book with a thud. He would just have to deal with another bad grade, it wasn't as if he weren't used to it by now.
He journeyed upstairs to his bedroom where he pulled a comb from his bedside drawer, running it through his lengthier hair in attempts to make himself seem more presentable. Eyeing himself in the mirror he sighed, his glance stopping at the baggy pants that covered his legs. Moving to his closet he reached toward its very end, stopping when he found an acceptable pair of khakis. He changed from an equally baggy hoodie to a polo shirt, and threw a nicer jacket over that. Once again he went over to the mirror, much more pleased with his appearance. He looked more like a role model brother, even if it was just a façade.
His brother was happy to see him, running to the car and tackling him in a hug. He was six years younger than Asher, his hair shorter and spiked into a faux-hawk. He was dressed the same way Asher was, in a preppy, mildly sporty outfit. He carried a soccer ball under his arm and a picture in his hand, and when Asher let him into the car it was the first thing he put into his hand. Asher smiled, looking down at the picture.
"I drew it for you, Asher." In it were two boys, one noticeably taller than the other. The taller one had longer hair and a little triangle goatee on his chin, just like Asher. The second had a soccer ball next to his arm and was grinning, the other hand holding Asher's. That one was his brother, he guessed.
"That's great, Zane. I love it. You're getting better at this, you need to stop before you're better than me at everything." Zane laughed as Asher reached over to give him a noogie, shouting in protest.
"I could never be as good as you at things, Asher. You're good at everything."
"Yeah, like what?"
"Cooking and skating and taking care of me. Especially taking care of me. That's why mom and dad left you to take care of me when they went on vacation, right?" Asher swallowed a lump in his throat but did not change his facial expression, keeping his eyes on the road and both hands on the steering wheel. He choked out a response through a shaky, nervous breath.
"Yeah, that's why." He had never told such a large lie to his brother, but he couldn't have him face the truth.
(….)
Layla smiled as she walked down the hallway with Oliver. He was carrying her books like a true gentleman, as he had been for the past few days. She liked Oliver, the way he always seemed to be so attentive. Especially the way he never seemed to care that she was a year younger than him. They liked to talk to each other, tell each other stories about their lives past and present. He was always an interesting person to have a conversation with, Oliver. It seemed as though he always had some big plan, something new he desperately wanted to try. Unlike Layla, who was stuck in who she currently was and enjoying her high school career, he was all about the future. And sometimes, it scared her, the way he would open up to her about everything. She had only known him for around a month at this point, and yet she felt like she knew everything about him. This, of course, was untrue. Everyone had the one thing they didn't like to share, and neither of the pair had opened that part of themselves up to each other yet.
They were talking about an assignment she had gotten in English when she felt someone grip her arm from the other side rather tight. She turned to the new companion and rolled her eyes, moving her hand toward his face in attempts to push him away. The male scoffed and gave her a matching eye roll, smacking her playfully on the arm. He was clearly irritated, though, and Layla could tell. She said her goodbyes to Oliver reluctantly and began to walk with the other male, who gave her an angered cold-shoulder that made her insides boil.
"Come on, Lennon. What's your deal?" The aforementioned male crossed his lanky arms over his chest and shook his head, keeping up the annoyance that had set into Layla. Lennon was her brother, her twin by nothing more than genetics. She jokingly called him her worse half, although she would never say it to his face. She and Lennon had a great relationship as twins, and although Lennon was one of the largest stresses of her life, she wouldn't change his presence for anything else.
They did have their differences growing up, though, and that's really what caused them to get into their petty little rows. Lennon was a science man, a math and computers and video games sort of guy. He never seemed to understand Layla's passion for music or her ability to pick up an instrument and just learn it as easily as she did. Many of their childhood days were actually spent apart, the two unable to agree on anything whatsoever. Layla would get mad when Lennon took the TV, and Lennon would yell at her when she practiced her music too loud. With them, neither could win, and neither could have a childhood day without fighting amongst themselves. That's why Layla had begun to cling so close to their younger sister Julie, only around eighteen moths younger than her. Lennon, however, had nobody. A boy in the midst of four girls, his only escape was his computers.
Their relationship did not remain so rocky, though. Somewhere along the lines of arts versus science fights, of days of not talking to each other for no reason, they had become friends. They had put their differences aside and bonded with each other, the singular reason something they never liked to advertise. The reason of their new friendship, strangely, was the skeleton in their family closet.
"I don't like him."
"Who, Oliver?" Her brother nodded and she groaned, stopping mid-step and pulling him to the side of the hallway with haste. "Are you serious right now, Lennon?"
"I just don't think he's your type."
"Artsy, chivalrous, cute…oh yeah, he's definitely not my type." She scoffed and he ignored her, turning his head the other way and pretending not to hear her,
"What is my type, then?"
"Not him. I just…I don't know, sis. I don't think bringing a guy home is a good idea right now."
"Why not?"
"Did you check the day on the calendar today?" Layla looked back at Lennon, her brown eyes squinting a bit while her nose wrinkled. Then, she knew. She knew why her brother was having such a hard time, why he was being so protective of her all of a sudden.
"I didn't check the date."
"I know you didn't. You of all people. You know what, Layla? I don't understand you anymore. She was your best friend. And all of a sudden it's forgotten? You're just going to ignore the fact that-"
"Don't you dare put any of this on me! You don't understand what I'm going through, how dare you make assumptions about me that aren't even remotely true." She was shouting at him now, and several heads had turned to glance at them in curiosity. Upon noticing this Layla pulled Lennon into an empty classroom, pushing him into an empty chair and standing in front of him. Her eyes were lit like the largest of summer bonfires, and it scared him a bit as she pointed a shaking finger at his chest. "You don't know what I'm going through. You don't know what it's like. Don't pretend that you do because you hardly ever even talked to Julie and I before the incident." Her voice was becoming softer with each sentence, breaking with each word until she was fighting to speak through a squeaking, barely there voice. "How could I forget? I'll never forget."
"I know, I know." He tried to move toward her but she protested, crossing the room and standing next to the door, feebly wiping her tears from her face.
"I never forgot, Lennon. Not one second." The hallways were still abuzz with student activity when Layla finally emerged from the classroom, leaving Lennon behind. It was the end of the day, and many of the students of Franklin were hanging around, leaning on lockers and chatting while they waited to go home or for their activities to start. Among noticing the slowly shrinking crowd of students, Layla noticed that she was not quite along. A taller figure was walking by the door of the classroom at rapid speed, and the two almost collided instantly. The other person stopped to apologize, but Layla backed away. The person she had almost bumped into was Asher, and he attempted to put his arm on her shoulder as he apologized.
"Whoa, where's the fire?" He chuckled but she could not seem to see the humor in his voice as nothing but bitter, nothing but the way he had been to her the first time they met.
"Get away from me, Asher." She pulled away from his touch and his face fell, but before she could get too far away he had caught up and began to walk with her.
"Listen, I'm sorry about last time." She rolled her eyes but he would not give up, would not let her get away without getting his point across. "Just hear me out, please." In her head, Layla had already come up with several quips in response to Asher's pleadings.
"I barely even know you, why should I bother listening to you?" Her mind was racing as she looked over at him, brown eyes alight with the beginnings of a fire. Their first encounter ran through her head, the way he had whispered in her ear so threateningly, the shiver of discomfort that traveled in rigid motions down her spine.
"Fine." She was too nice. She'd always been too nice, too forgiving. Something about him drew her in, though; made it impossible for her to say no to him. "What's your excuse?"
"I would give you my excuse but you'd never believe it. Besides, it's not something I like to advertise." He moved to cross one leg over the other and Layla cast her glance down at his pants. They weren't bunched, they weren't baggy. He was wearing a belt, and she was taken aback to find a pair of khakis on his legs. He seemed to notice her surprise because he chuckled again, gesturing to his pants. "I'm going for a new look, a change. Do they make me look too much like a golf player?" Layla giggled in spite of herself and shook her head. He smiled and gave his pants another look, putting one foot in front of the other and posing for Layla. "Really? Because I was going for more of a modern day casual business man sort of look."
"Oh then I definitely see it."
"Really?"
"No. You're definitely a golf player in those pants, sorry." They kept up their banter until they were outside of the glee classroom, and Layla nodded her head toward the door. "Well, this is my stop." Before she could enter the classroom, though, he called her name to stop her.
"Thanks for giving me a second chance. If that's what you were doing, I mean." She didn't answer him at first, searching his features for that same sign of malignity she had seen during their first encounter. Not a trace could be found. She let a small smile play on the corners of her lips and slowly progressed through the door of the classroom.
"We'll see." She said, and waved goodbye to him. He grinned and walked the opposite way down the hallway, finally preparing to re-define himself. If not for his own sake, but for the sake of the brother that looked upon him so highly. This would be for him.
(…..)
Grenwich crossed the room, standing as per routine next to the glossy baby grand piano at the front of the choir room. After scanning her group of students and taking a mental attendance, she cleared her throat.
"This week's theme is secrets." Her Broadway-worthy voice could often be heard from the hallways, but this day was an exception. She moved to sit on an empty stool, crossing one leg over the other while making sure that her straight-lined skirt did not hike up. Grenwich leaned in and rested her head on her elbow, lowering the tone of her voice to one that none of the students-not even the well-trained veterans-had heard from her before. "Anything you feel, anything you've been keeping to yourself. The song itself doesn't necessarily have to tell all-that'll be up to you-but I want to feel your experience, I want to find out more about you. I want to know why your secret's still a secret at all." She paused as a room full of anxious students looked between each other in a mixture of both nervousness and a hidden atmosphere of pain, of suffering. "I know this assignment can be hard, and you know I never force you to sing alone. If you're not comfortable with this, then you can sing backup for somebody else. I urge you to give it a try, though. You never know what you'll find by letting yourself be, by expressing the things you've been hiding. Who knows, maybe this will make some of you feel better about the skeletons you've been hiding in your closets."
(…)
"So what are you doing for this week's assignment?" Devon was driving Ally home after a long rehearsal that night, one hand on the wheel as he tried desperatey to make casual conversation. She shrugged and leaned her head on the cool glass of the window, listening to the newly pouring rain as her eyes wearily scanned their surroundings. The closer they got to their neighborhood, the more withdrawn she became. "You don't have any ideas?"
"I think I'm just going to sing with Layla on this one, back her up. I don't really think this assignment is for me."
"Why not? No skeletons in that walk in closet of yours?" He chuckled and she cracked a smile, one that only pulled minutely at the corners of her mouth. One that seemed insincere to the smiles she usually wore around him. "Al, what's wrong?"
"Nothing. I just don't want to do the assignment, that's all." He had pulled up to her driveway then and she still sat in the car, hand tentatively hovering over her seatbelt. Looking out across the now rain-soaked lawn before her house, she noticed a black car had been parked in her driveway. She felt her heart skip a beat in her chest and her breath hitching in her throat. Ally looked back at Devon as if to say something, but the words were caught in her throat. She wanted to tell him everything; the meaning of her reaction to the car, the reason she wouldn't do a solo for the assignment this week. Instead, she reached over the middle console and engulfed him in a hug, resting her head on his shoulder and taking in the light scent of his cologne. Before he could ask what the long embrace was for, she had given him one last faltering look and walked slowly across the lawn, not caring that the rain was now pouring in buckets on their small town.
He didn't see Ally at all the next day. When he had finished getting ready for the day, she wasn't hanging around in his bedroom. She wasn't playing with his little sister or his dog Jackson. She wasn't making small talk with his mother or eating their food like she usually was. He gave his mother a quizzical look and she shrugged, seeming just as confused as his mom and step-dad were. It was unusual for there to be a morning without Ally in the Rogers house. He pulled out his phone and fired her a quick text, wondering why she hadn't come over like she usually did. Although her sleeping in was always a possibility; If there was one thing Ally loved more than performing, it would be sleeping, right next to eating.
"Not coming to school today. Came down with a really bad cold. Need to stay in and rest. Don't bother bringing work for me. I'll get it when I come back." He read her reply with an even more confused mind, handing his phone over to his mother in question. Once again she shrugged, playing it off.
"I hope she gets better soon, that's too bad."
"You don't think it's weird, the text?" He was tossing his phone between his hands, moving toward a window toward the back of their house to glance over at hers. His mother made a disapproving tsk sound and moved toward her son, escorting him away from the window and shoving a pancake into his unwilling hand.
"Leave the poor girl alone, Devon. I'm sure she's fine." When she looked up, though, his mother saw the apprehension written all over her son's face, and her own softened a bit, touched by the way her son cared for this girl.
"If it makes you feel any better, I'll go and bring her over some pancakes before I leave to drop your sister off for daycare and go to work, alright?" He nodded reluctantly, his mother practically shoving him out the door. Something didn't feel right to him, and he couldn't help but stare at the black car in Ally's driveway while backing out of his own, a strange feeling forming in his gut. Something wasn't right.
When Ally came back to school, Devon had the same feeling that he had had when she was absent. She seemed distant, different almost. She spent most of the day avoiding him, turning her head or pretending she didn't hear him when he began to talk to her. He wanted to persist, to get her to answer his prompts or make the same bitterly sarcastic comments she was so keen on making. He wanted to hear her laugh, to see her toss her head back the way she did when she was laughing at something she found especially funny. She didn't do any of that that day, and it moved him. Something about the way Ally was acting was a shell, a skeleton of the person she had been before she had taken the day off from school the day before.
When he entered the choir room she was already on one of three stools set toward the front of the room next to the grand piano. Layla was in the middle, Jenna on her other side.
"I've been having a really rough time this week because of the skeleton in my closet. Not that I didn't know what it was, that the theme was so relevant to what's been going on in my life lately. I know I'll never be rid of the things I feel because of it, but it's because of all you guys-especially Jenna and Ally- that I'm slowly starting to recover. So this is my skeleton in the closet."
She sang before playing the guitar, a simple, soft melody. The club hadn't heard her sing outside of her audition, so they seemed shocked upon hearing the smooth voice that came out of her mildly shy body. As a person who seemed to hide herself in her instruments, Layla had chosen a song she felt was directed more by the voice, by the emotion the singer let show while singing it.
" If I die young, bury me in satin.
Lay me down on a bed of roses,
Sink me in the river at dawn,
Send me away with the words of a love song."
As with the performances that had already happened that week, Layla's voice had become shaky after only a few lines of the song. She shook away her tears and continued to play the guitar, Ally and Jenna coming in for the harmonies in the chorus of the song. They hung back, letting Layla have her moment in the spotlight, letting her use her song as a tribute. Although they did not know what she was singing about, the rest of the club were touched by her words, the way she sang them so softly and yet with so much passion. Her facial expression switched from nervous quickly, turning into one of finally surfacing sorrow, the same emotions she had been trying to hide from everybody, even Lennon. Emotions she didn't like to let show. In front of this club, though, it seemed easy. It seemed as though maybe she'd be able to heal.
(…..)
"Hey, I heard you singing when I walked by the choir room today, you were great." Asher had managed to find Layla yet again and she tucked a curl of hair behind her ear and smiled in shy response to his compliment.
"Thank you, that means a lot."
"I mean it, you were awesome. And the song too, surprisingly. I don't normally like music like that but there was something about it. What were you singing about?" To this question Layla turned her head and began to look at her feet while she walked. Sure, she had begun to trust Asher more. Some could even say that they were sort of becoming friends. But she hadn't told anyone, and she wasn't sure Asher was the best place to start. "Sorry, sensitive subject?"
"A little. And a long story too, I guess."
"Well, if you ever want to talk about it, I'll be here." She was taken aback by Asher's open invitation, and before leaving him to walk to his car, she gave him an incredulous look, half teasing half serious.
"When did you decide to become this nice guy who…cares about people?"
"That's my little secret. Maybe some day I'll tell you, but for right now, that stays with me."
(…..)
"I need another story, something to get off my chest.
My life gets kind of boring, need something that I can confess.
'Till all my sleeves are stained red from all the truth that I said
I come by it honestly I swear,
Thought you saw me blink, no
I've been on the brink so…"
Ally stood in the center of the stage, a spotlight on her as she sang the opening line to their first group number. Her voice was hauntingly beautiful, a sort of echo ringing through the near-silent theater as she sang to an empty audience. As the cello began to play she stepped back, letting the next soloist take the lead as she and the others sang back up.
"I love you, Ally. Your dad will be home from work tomorrow so you'll only be alone for a little bit. Don't worry, it'll be fine. My meeting's only for two weeks and then I promise we can do some girl things when I get back. Ok?" She didn't want to let her mother go, but her plane was boarding. She was running out of time, running out of moments to tell her mother why she didn't want her to go. She was slowly but surely running out of courage, so she hugged her mother, telling her to have a safe flight before getting back in the car and driving home. She threw her keys on the counter before moving up to her bedroom and sitting on her floor, putting her head in her hands. She had one night before her father came home, one night before she knew everything would fall to shit again.
"My God, amazing how we got this far
It seems we're chasing all those stars
Who's driving fancy big black cars.
"And every day I see the news
All the problems that we could solve
And when a situation rises just write it into an album
Singing straight to cold,
I don't really like my flow, no.""
Oliver returned home from school that day to the sound of shouting coming from the walls of his house. He could hear them coming up the driveway, and he cautiously opened the front door just in time to watch his sister fly up the stairs, slamming her bedroom door while her parents merely stared at each other, hatred and anxiety crossing their older features. Oliver gave them a quizzical look before moving to console his sister, whom he could hear crying from where he was standing.
"Bridgette?" He opened the door to find her sitting against the door of her closet, knees tucked up to her stomach and head rested wearily on top of them. Her pretty blonde hair was done in soft, delicate curls that hung across her face in disarray now, and she looked up at her older brother with watering green eyes, tears falling across her freckle-dusted cheeks. "What's wrong?" She patted the area next to him and he sat cross-legged, putting his arm around her and hugging her to him in attempts to calm her.
"Kyle got me pregnant. He got me pregnant and now he won't talk to me. Mom and dad found out, they say I can't keep it. They said I have to give it up or…" She fell silent for a moment, draping her hand carefully along her barely developed stomach. "People are going to find out soon, they're going to wonder. But I don't want to get rid of it, I want to keep it. I want to show mom and dad that I can do this." In that moment, he no longer saw Bridgette as his little sister, as the five year old he'd saved from a group of bullies on the playground. He saw her as her sixteen year old self, as someone who had made a stupid mistake and had to face the consequences. He saw her as someone he had to help.
"I can help you, Bridgette. Just because Kyle is an asshole doesn't mean you or this baby should have to suffer. We'll show mom and dad that we can take care of it together, ok? We can do this." The little blonde crashed into his arms and he held her tight, a lump forming in his throat and an anxiety about his promised responsibilities becoming all too real.
"So tell me what you want to hear,
Something that'll light those ears
I'm sick of all the insincere
I'm gunna give all my secrets away."
"Allyson! I'm back from running errands!" She heard his slightly slurred voice boom from the kitchen downstairs and took a deep breath, hesitating by her window before moving to see her father. He looked the same as he always had, save the new car it seemed he had bought before he had come back from his meeting. His arms were spread as if to welcome her to a hug but she stayed where she was, holding on to the banister of the stairs and staring back at her father. The fake smile on his face fell and his eyes ignited. He crossed his arms across his chest and looked at her with disapproving scorn. "You're going to play this game with me?" She didn't answer her father, merely avoided his gaze, continuing to take shaky breaths. She remembered the days events, sitting in the car with Devon before going into her house. She had been so close to escaping then, so close to getting away from her father. But he had been watching out the window, she noticed, and she had been forced to go in. She couldn't put Devon in the sort of danger she was in in this moment.
"Don't make this any harder on yourself than it has to be, Allyson. You know what I want." He crossed the kitchen to her then, closing the distance between them as she felt her heartbeat quicken, her body freezing in place.
"This time, don't need another perfect life
Don't care if critics ever jump in line
I'm gonna give all my secrets away."
"Well then I hate you too!" Layla stood in front of her younger sister by eighteen months, her hands placed defiantly on her chest. She was truly acting as the older sister, trying desperately to reign in Julie before she had had enough. Now, Layla and Julie were in the middle of a heated argument, the first in their fourteen years of sisterhood as well as friendship. They were lucky the only other person home was their bother Lennon, because the volume of their argument had raised to levels neither of them had ever heard before.
"If you hate me so much then maybe I should just leave." Julie turned her back toward Layla and moved toward their front door, slamming it on her way out.
"Fine! See if I care!" Layla watched her sister leave, watched her walk out of the door feeling nothing but anger boiling inside of her. Her sister had never been so cross toward her before. There was a moment of eerie silence, the noise of their argument having been the only one floating around the whole house, enveloping it in the hate they had felt for each other. Then there was a crash, a violent, awful noise of metal against something they couldn't define. Layla was the first out of the house, the first to see the driver of the car hobbling away from the scene. Lennon was the second out, the one that first noticed the tiny body wedged between the car and the telephone pole. Lennon was the first to notice their sister Julie, pronounced dead immediately.
"Got no reason
Got no shame
Got no family
I can blame
Just don't let me disappear
I'ma tell you everything"
Devon used his spare key to get into Ally's house, the pile of her homework and bowl of soup weighing his hands down before he moved to set them down in the kitchen. The first thing he noticed was the disarray, the complete disorganization of the place. He knew Ally's neat-freak mother was away, but Ally was just as bad as her and the mess was still on the floor. He began to pick things up, leaving them on the counter for the family to organize before he heard the first shout. It was a muffled sound, something that set panic in him immediately. Even through the muted air, he could tell that the pitiful sound belonged to Ally, that she was in trouble. He took the stairs by two and stopped at the top of them, looking down the hallway. His glance stopped at the end of the hall, at her parent's open bedroom door. His glance stopped at Ally's father, in a dominant stance at the head of his bed. At first Devon couldn't tell what he was doing, Ally's father blocking the rest of the bed. And then he heard another shout, saw her father's hand connect with her cheek as he began to yell at her again.
"Hey!" He didn't know what he was doing until he had shoved Ally's father away from her, standing between him and the bed, crossing his well-defined arms over his chest. He could tell that Ally's father was sizing him up, was trying to assess his situation. He tried to look behind him at his daughter but Devon put his arms on his shoulders, stabilizing him and his perverted gaze.
"I haven't seen you in a while, Mr. Rodgers."
"You need to leave."
"I don't have to do anything. This is my house, my bedroom, and my daughter."
"I don't think you heard me, Mr. Wesley. You need to leave right now. Or I'll do more than just call the cops on you." Her father stood in place for a while, contemplating his situation. He removed Devon's hands from his shoulders with all of the force he could, shooting a frightening look to his daughter.
"Don't think this is the last you'll see of me. Your mother will never believe you, the police will never believe you. Who would ever believe a teenaged girl like you?" Devon watched her father leave, making sure his black car was out of view before turning to the bed.
Ally hadn't moved since Devon had come in, but now that the argument was over, she wanted nothing more than to hide herself from him. She wanted nothing more than to have his image of her remain the same, not turn into what she was now, half-clothed and forced to the same bed she was sure she had been conceived in. There was no escape, though, and she flinched as he moved toward her. He paused for a moment, a hurt feeling sinking into his chest upon seeing her reaction toward him. She was frightened. He shook it off, reminding himself gently of the situation she had just been in. He continued toward her and she did not flinch so he removed his hoodie, wrapping it around her bare upper half before gathering her in his arms.
He carried her across the same lawn they had spent their childhood crossing, playing tag and hide and seek, building snow forts and having picnics underneath the aged willow on the line separating their properties. This time, though, he did not feel the same giddy feeling he often felt on this lawn. The situation had changed drastically. He let himself into the house and laid her gently onto his own bed, thankful that for now, his mother was at a mommy and me class with his sister. He wanted a moment to deal with this alone, without his mother breathing down his neck.
"I won't let him hurt you again, I promise." He covered Ally with a few blankets and moved to leave the room, leaving her to her own space. Before he could make it out the door, though, he heard his name whispered in a shattered fragment of the same sweet soprano he had spent his childhood growing to love. He sat on the recliner in his room instead and she began to settle into bed more, but she was still tossing and turning, restless and anxious.
"Would you mind if…" She paused for a minute, unsure of how to phrase the question. Every shadow seemed like it would be her father's, every noise a new jolt of a memory. "If I asked you to lay here with me tonight?" He nodded and got up, crossing the room tentatively. She moved over to make room for him and they said nothing. Devon, noticing the fear written on Ally's face, took a change and gathered her in his arms once more. This time she did not flinch, but let herself relax, burying her head in the crook of his neck before dozing off. It finally felt safe enough for her to sleep, but what would become of her in the morning, when she would have to face reality with the morning son poking through Devon's curtains and not her own? When her mother called to talk to her father and Ally would have to reply that he had gone, that not even the police could find him. When her mother asked why the police were looking for him? But for now, she was safe and the questions could remain unanswered, even for just one night of peace.
"So tell me what you want to hear,
Something that'll light those ears
I'm sick of all the insincere
I'm gunna give all my secrets away.
"This time, don't need another perfect life
Don't care if critics ever jump in line
I'm gonna give all my secrets away."
Credit where credit is due:
Layla's song: If I Die Young by The Band Perry. The cover I used for inspiration is by the Gardiner Sisters on YouTube.
The Group Song: Secrets by OneRepublic. The cover I used for inspiration is by Maddi Jane on YouTube.