Chapter 108: Underneath
I didn't sleep that night as I was too worried to shut my eyes.
Even with Caspian's arm wrapped around me, his body a heat and weight beside me, my mind still reverting back to that phone call. The silence on the other end had been more frightening than the words. It was intentional. Calculated. A reminder.
We hadn't left the bed lights on, but I could make out the faint shapes of the room-the soft curve of the headboard, the sweep of the curtains in air, the bright red flash of the alarm clock. 3:04 a.m.
Caspian rolled over next to me, his breathing even, but I knew he wasn't sleeping either.
"You still awake?" I whispered quietly.
There was a pause, then: "Yeah.".
We lay in this precarious position of truth, the night surrounding us.
"What if it never ends?" I asked quietly, so quiet that the wind almost killed it. "What if we never become normal once more?"
There was no quick answer. I could sense the rise and fall of his chest as though he measured how seriously to take a question.
"Maybe 'normal' was an illusion," he whispered. "But peace… peace is still within reach."
"I don't know that I believe in that anymore," I said to him.
Caspian's gaze locked onto me. Even in the dark, I could feel the crease of his brow, the soft light in his eyes. "Then let me believe enough for both of us."
We never uttered another word to one another after that. But his hand inched over mine under the bedclothes, and in the silence there was less space between us.
Dark grey light seeped in gradually in the morning. The villa slumbered, save for the creaking far away of wood and the muted splashing of water in the distance—the gardener working by the fountain outside.
I stood barefoot on the balcony, robe loosely fastened around my waist, as the mist rolled over the olive groves beyond the fence. My coffee had gone cold hours before. Caspian sat on the phone in the living room—presumably to private security, or perhaps a friend he hadn't yet introduced me to. He was practiced at that: keeping his weights within the house.
Today, though, I wasn't going to let him. I descended the stairs, my foot over the terracotta floor into the study. He paced back and forth, phone clamped to his ear, voice low but biting.
"I don't care what it takes. Just find out who rented out that line."
There was a silence.
"No, I don't want her to catch a glimpse of what you're doing."
I refused to budge.
"No, she's already on something, and if she gets it in her head that somebody was at the villa—"
"What?" I snarled, my voice ripping through the room like wire rasps.
Caspian turned, his face dropping at once from frustration to apology.
"Lily—"
"You weren't going to say anything?"
"I was looking out for you."
"No," I spat, moving forward. "You were deciding for me. Again."
He set the phone back down on the counter then headed back the way he'd come.
"There were hints," he said. "Scratches on the rear gate. Tracks in the flowers. Nothing definitive. Nothing discarded."
I had my arms hugged around me. "So they were here."
He nodded. "But now they're gone. I cleaned the property out after we read the letter."
"And the call?"
"Burner. Odds are, it's already been burned."
A thick silence descended, but this time I did not shiver.
"You can't make decisions like that on your own, Caspian. I have to know when someone's desecrated our sanctuary."
He looked at me, affronted. "I just. I didn't want to be a burden to you regarding this. Haven't you had enough?"
"I have. That's why I couldn't fake it anymore."
He edged over slowly, his face softer now, his hand moving out towards mine. "Then we don't pretend anymore. From now on, we do it together."
I hesitated. then nodded.
—
Later in the afternoon, Caspian asked us to go for a walk on the sea. "Fresh air might sort our heads," he said.
The ocean was never something cozy to me—choppy and stagnant all at once. We stood quietly, initially, toes buried in sand slightly. Aft gray sky, seagulls overhead in flight.
Ever regret it?" I asked, voice almost devoured by the waves.
"Regret what?"
"Us. How everything turned out. What was lost."
He slowed, cutting into his gait. I reached up to grab him.
"I wish I hurt you," he said to me. "I wish I couldn't always protect you. But I never once missed a moment, ever, when I loved you."
The words seared.
I stood and stared out at the ocean, uncertain of how to feel—fear and guilt and love, all poised on some uncertain quivering ledge.
I hadn't had a chance to respond, before Caspian's phone beeped from his pocket. He pulled it out, then scowled.
He hesitated, then put the phone on speaker.
A low, strange, but clear voice spoke.
"We found something. Not one set of prints. Two. And a shoe that's not among yours."
Caspian's whole body tensed. "Where?"
"The east garden. Behind the fountain."
The call cut off.
My heart skipped a beat. "So someone… wasn't alone?"
He looked at me seriously. "No. And they're getting bold."
—
At the villa, anxiety caught up with me once more. Guards now. Security. Cameras.
They did not protect me, though.
That evening, a few hours after Caspian's bedtime, I sat on the library floor, candles and books left behind around me. My thoughts disintegrated, knotted with venomous threads.
What did they want?
Why now?
And then what?
When I was leaning forward to blow out the final candle, I heard it—a tiny knock.
Not at the front door.
On the window.
I gasped quietly as my eyes rolled behind my head.
Slowly, I turned around.
A figure crept just behind the glass. And then—it disappeared.