While playing with Clay's arm hair out of boredom for what felt like an eternity, I finally saw the sunrise and decided that it's a good sign for me to get up.

After the bathroom I went straight to the kitchen to make myself a cup of coffee, feeling like it would solve every single problem that I had. But my main problem was in the kitchen, making coffee for himself.

"Morning." Nick's voice was quiet and he didn't dare to move his gaze from the coffee machine to me.

"Hey." I hated myself for being dry, but that's all that came out.

"Do you want some? I can make you." Noticing that I was getting ready to make myself coffee, Nick offered his help.

I shook my head, proceeding to make it myself, but still thanking him for the gesture.

I was uncomfortable the whole time. If I knew he was awake, I'd at least wear something to pair with Clay's oversized shirt.

Anyways, when my coffee was done, I decided to take it back to the room and have it there instead of staying in the kitchen with Nick.

"Hey uh, is Clay asleep?" Nick spoke hurriedly when he saw me leaving.

"Probably." I shrugged, stopping for a second.

"He ignored my texts the whole day.. yesterday. Maybe he's awake and just doesn't want to see me..?"

"He can't use his phone." I had to take a sip of my coffee at the end of my sentence cause it looked very tempting.

Nick processed my words for a bit, but still ended up getting them wrong.

"Oh my god.. he went blind? Oh shit-"

I facepalmed, taking a long exhausted breath and waiting for him to calm down so I could speak.

"He has a severe concussion now. He's not even allowed to be exposed to bright light and loud sounds."

After containing myself for a while and trying my best to not hurt anyone with my words, I think I failed. But there was some negative energy trapped inside my body from what happened to Clay, and even though I blamed myself as much for it as I blamed Nick, still, I had to express it in some type of way. And in this case the perfect solution was by telling him the truth.

He went silent, motionless even. I could see the terror in his eyes, the pure fear and guilt that stopped him from even taking a breath.

"Did I.. did I do it?" I've never heard him sound so scared before.

I stared him dead in the eyes, not finding proper words to say. And my glare paired with the silence said it all.

"Put the ointment on. That looks horrific." With a final look at his bruise, I went back to the room, leaving his question unanswered. I think it's better to leave him alone with his thoughts for a while.

And there was a strong contrast of the atmosphere when I entered the bedroom and saw Clay peacefully sleeping with a pillow between his arms. His expressions looked so smooth and heavenly, not a single wrinkle visible on his soft features.

I carefully climbed on the bed, keeping myself busy with my phone and the coffee, while Clay slowly made himself comfortable on my thighs and drifted back to sleep. I'm not even sure if he woke up to do that or if it was a reflex, but the end result was having his heavy head on my lap.

A few minutes of me staring at the screen of my phone and I got a notification that made me raise a brow.

did he come back?

I think there's no point for me to play stupid and ask questions that I already know the answers to. But I still did, cause why not.

who? My dad?

If you're calling Nick daddy then yes

only in his wildest dreams

Hmm interesting

Are you gonna tell me what happened?

no

I changed my ticket and I'm packing my stuff atm

I huffed, not even being able to be happy from the news because of the pressure. I already know how his arrival is gonna go. He's just going to force us to speak and come up with idiotic solutions on how to save the situation.

But ignoring his message wouldn't be nice, if anything, it would be pretty rude, so I asked him about the flight. And turns out it's in a day and a half, which I don't think is enough time for any of us to mentally prepare.

Luckily Clay started to slowly wake up, saving me from the heavy silence. He planted a kiss on my thigh before rolling away and trying to go back to sleep. But the doctor said that sleeping too much wasn't ideal either, so I started speaking, trying to engage him in the conversation so that sleeping wouldn't be an option anymore.

It took us a while to finally come out of the room and go to the living room. I had already prepared Clay to expect Nick there, so when we saw him standing infront of the mirror and applying the medication to his face, we didn't react that much.

However, Nick reacted, "Hi- how are you? Are you okay?" He turned around to look at Clay, even though they could see eachother clearly through the mirror.

"Hey. I'm okay, Liz is taking good care of me," Clay practically rubbed that on Nick's face, "how about you?"

Nick ignored the question, "I know you don't care and a sorry's not gonna fix this, but it's the least I can do right now. I'm sorry."

Clay gave him a small nod. Then he turned his attention away from Nick, causing him to do the same - focus on applying the ointment.

When Nick turned around to face the mirror, both me and Clay were taken aback by the bruising on his back, especially around his spine where he had some prominent bones.

I chose to force myself to ignore it, yet Clay got up and made his way to the mirror, grabbing the tube and squeezing some medication on his fingers. At first I thought he was going to use it on himself, but then realized that the target was Nick's back.