"Evie?"

Eric presses his fingers to his sleep-heavy eyelids before opening then, squinting as he finds the lamp switch.

"Evie, what are you doing?" He whispers.

I shuffle on the carpeted spot, suddenly feeling very exposed.

"I thought maybe I could sleep in here... with you."

His eyes on me are careful, and I tell myself it's because he's just waking up, but when he sighs and the silence goes on a little longer, my hearts breaks a little.

"Evie..." he starts, sitting up, "love, I don't think that's the best idea. Your dad being just downstairs and all."

He's right – I know he is. But after all this week's madness, I don't think I care. I just want to be by his side.

"I know..." I murmur, gnawing at my lip, "I just... Dad's room's on the ground floor anyway, so I doubt he'll even come up when the night's over, and it just felt a bit weird not to go to bed with you for the first time in, like, a week, and I was thinking about how when we get home it'll probably be months before I get to again, and..."

I exhale, trailing off before I babble on any longer. There's no use. He's right.

"No, you're right. It's not a good idea. I'll just, I'll just see you in the morning."

I turn on my heels to leave, but as I wrap a hand around the doorknob, darkness falls again with the click of the bedside lamp.

"Come here,

After this week, it feels instinctive to nestle into him like this – pressed to his side with his arm around my back, holding me infinitely closer as he strokes my hair and draws patterns on my back to lull me to sleep. I don't know how quickly sleep will come tonight, but I feel warmer in his arms – safer.

"Do we need to lock it?" He asks, and my eyes dart up and across the room to the keyhole in the polished golden doorknob. I shake my head.

"Once he's said goodnight, he doesn't tend to come back upstairs." When I feel him nod above my head, and his tensed torso relax, I snuggle further in, curling my legs beneath me so he can hold me closer.

With a deep chuckle, he happily obliges.

"Comfortable?" He teases.

"Yes, thank you."

He breathes in deeply, and I can hear his heartbeat, fast and steady in the evening's silence.

"She's so pretty," I say.

"Hm? Who?"

I nod up at the poster of the pinup model on the wall. The girl's a buxom bottle blonde, leaning over a BMW bonnet with a red-lipped smile.

She sort of looks like his ex-girlfriend, Lea. Only sort of. But that's all it takes for Kitty's 'specific path' and 'certain sort of woman' talk to find its way back into my head.

"Huh," he says, "I didn't even notice that there."

I snort, nudging him in the stomach. "Yeah right." He laughs too.

I let a beat of silence pass before I whisper, tracing shapes on his chest,

"I wish I could look like that."

His soothing designs on my back still abruptly.

"Evie."

"I didn't mean it in a bad way, I just think she's gorgeous and most people would like the way she looks. Don't worry, I won't get the plastic surgery until I'm way older."

I'm kidding of course (I think), but he doesn't respond, and when he starts to sit up, he doesn't let me go.

In the darkness, he cranes his neck and squints so that he can see my eyes, and holds me with warm hands on my shoulders.

"Evie, don't say that. You are beautiful."

"Eric, I was kidding."
"Well, don't even joke about it. Okay? You're the most stunning girl on the planet."
I roll my eyes. "You've seen other girls before, right?" I joke.

"Evie." He holds my gaze with intent eyes as he moves his hands from my shoulders to my cheeks. "I'm serious. Say it back."

"What, that I'm beautiful?" I say, almost laughing.

"Yes."
"Is this some sort of self-worth exercise? Because I'm good, I swear; I have the same healthy amount of self-loathe as every other teenager."

"Evangeline."
"Okay! ...I'm beautiful."
"Good," he says, and I feel like I'm in an eye exam when he pauses to study me again. "Remember that, alright? And believe it. Love, nothing that happens can ever change that, okay? Never think any differently, Evie. You're absolutely perfect."

I pull gently away from his grasp momentarily, to sit back with my hands in my lap. It's my turn to look at him. His face is wrought with concern, I can see his furrowed brows even in the shadows, and I can't help but smile at how sweet he is – even if I was just kidding.

"You're so weird," I laugh, lying back down and patting the space beside me. He breathes out as he lays down, looping his arm around me again, holding me even tighter than before. I close my eyes and breathe in his sandalwood scent when he presses a kiss to my head.

"Evie..."

"Mhm?"

"Are you... happy?"

The question catches me off-guard and I laugh again. "Bloody hell, someone's existential tonight." He relaxes beneath me, letting out a little laugh of his own, and his gentle patterns on my back resume.

"Seriously," he pushes, "are you?"

"Yes," I say without hesitation.

"Why?"

"Why am I happy?"

He nods.

"Because I'm with you."

"No, but I mean apart from me, us, this. Are you happy overall?"

I hum as I consider his question, and imagine my 'overall'. School's going okay – exams are coming up and I'm not totally shitting it. I've got mates in school, and Caz and Babe to rely on. Scott and I are properly talking again. Mum sounds like she's finally doing better after Walt, August's doing good, Erys is adorable as ever, and I love all three of them to death. Dad and I have our issues, but he's trying, and as father's go, he's not the worst. Things are pretty great, 'overall'.

"Yeah... I think I am." I sit up, with a gentle hand on his chest. "Why? Are you?"

He nods, but with a non-committal shrug that makes me question him. "Eric, come on. Is something wrong?"

"No, no," he sighs, "everything's fine."

I glare for a moment more, just to be certain, before I lay back down against him. "Okay... You'd better tell me if something is, Mister."

His chuckle is light, but I hear it in his chest and that's the sound that will lull me to sleep, finally.

"I love you," I say, as my eyes close. Although he's silent for a moment, I feel it in the warmth of his touch, and hear it in the quickened beat of his heart. But, soon enough, he says it aloud, too,

"I love you."

I fall asleep with a stupid grin on my face, because his words are louder than the sounds of 'Mumford & Sons' and smashing bottles and the drunken national anthem through the floorboards.

——

"Evie."

Eric's patting on my back takes me from sleepy and stirring to wide awake, and whatever time it is now, it's too dark to see him when I sit up. But the shadowy outline of his frame is stock-still, like a hare in headlights.

"Evie, what's that?"

"What?"

It's a faint sound over the floorboard-muffled 'Mumford & Sons', but it's fast and heavy, like axes on a butcher's chopping board... or footsteps marching up a two flights of stairs. Shit.

"Is it your dad?"

Now I'm still, trying to quiet my breath and identify whoever's coming up the steps. The feet hit the oak stairs like cement rain. There's more than one person.

"I don't, I don't know," I say, breathing fast, "I don't think so, it sounds like a couple of people, maybe some people from the pub took a wrong turn, I don't know."

"Alright, don't worry," Eric whispers, his line of sight fixed on the door, "it's okay."

But it's not. The cement steps come closer and closer until they're stamping down our hallway.

"Eric..." I whisper, my heart beating so fast I feel like I'll puke.

"Don't worry," he says again, with a slow, comforting hand on my thigh. I lean into him, my eyes still on the dim door.

"But what if-"

The old door wobbles as it flies open and off the hinges. The light from the hallway spills into the room, illuminating only a few scenes – the window curtains flapping in the gust of wind, Eric and I nestled together in the bed, and the faces of the people at the door: Jerome, Walt and Dad.

"You motherfucker."

"Dom, look," Eric stutters, "I-I can explain, I-"

"You son of a bitch!"

It's all too dark, too angry, too loud to decipher, but what I see, clear as day, is the looks on their faces. Walt's gone white as a sheet; his jaw as tight as his fists. Jerome's face is stern and hardened with wrath. Dad snarls with his teeth bared like a wild wolf, and eyes just as feral, as he grabs Eric by the back of his neck and drags him out of the bed.

"No... No!" I start to shout, and the blood is pumping so fast in my ears that I can hardly hear myself, but Dad doesn't hear me either as he throws Eric against the dresser and clasps his rough hands around his throat, growling as he squeezes tighter and tighter, and watches Eric gasp and flail beneath him.

"Dad, stop it!" I cry, then again, louder, when he doesn't hear me, nailing Eric to the floor as he raises his fist. "Stop!"

I shout, and all the fear in my body wells up and paralyses me, but nobody hears me, and I'm powerless – like I'm asleep as I watch my worst nightmare unfurl. But this is real.

All he sees is red. All he wants is blood.

"Dad, you'll kill him! Dad, I'm begging you! Please!"