Chapter Text
“Mind if I join you?”
Lydia jumps at the whispered voice so close to her ear, whipping around around on the barstool to find amber eyes looking down at her, an unreadable expression behind them.
“Stiles!” she nearly screeches in excitement at the sight of him, a huge grin spreading across her face.
“Lydia!” he calls back to her, laughing as he mimics her drunken happiness. He stumbles when she suddenly throws her arms around his neck and winces when he gets a whiff of the vodka on her breath. “Wow, holy alcohol…”
She giggles loudly, pulling back. “You need a drink. They have really good drinks.”
Stiles eyes Lydia strangely, because she just giggled, and steps closer to her. “Oh, do they?”
“Well, I mean it’s just soda and vodka I think. But it’s the best.” She beams at him and raises her hand, to call over the bartender.
“You know, I think I’m good,” he assures her, immediately taking hold of her hand and bringing it back down on the bar.
“You’re not gonna drink?” she pouts. “But you’re at the bar.”
“‘Cuz you’re at the bar.”
“Oh,” she breathes, eyeing him curiously. She’s spent so much time scrutinizing everything he says and does lately but it’s too hard when everything seems kind of hazy and the music is so loud.
Her eyes drift toward the packed dance floor of their own accord, an idea taking hold. “Then you should dance with me!”
Stiles laughs at the suggestion, even if he is definitely tempted when she leans in closer, almost suggestively if he didn’t know any better. “No offense, Lydia, but I’m not sure you could even stand on your own right now, let alone attempt to sway to the beat of this abominable techno.”
“I’m not that drunk,” she snaps, scowling at his rejection and judgement. “So you’re really not gonna drink or dance?”
He shakes his head, a hint of a smirk on his lips at her irritation.
“Do you understand the point of a club at all, Stiles?”
He shrugs. “I told you. I’m here because you’re here.”
She raises a brow at him because that answer seems all wrong.
“Fine, Danny text me.” He nods over across the bar to where Lydia can see Danny and a few of the guys from the lacrosses team huddled together doing shots. “Said you were here alone.”
Lydia huffs, “Of course.”
Because he always has to be worried about something awful happening to her. It can never be simple. They can never be normal teenagers. There always has to be something ruining everything.
Suddenly beyond annoyed, she yanks her hand away from his - she hadn’t realized they were even holding hands - and waves over the bartender.
“You know, it’s perfectly normal for someone our age to drink. I’m not being an idiot. I’m not here getting trashed.”
“I never said you were,” he points out, furrowing his brow at her as the bartender refills her glass.
“Well then why are you here? Not everything is a rescue mission. I don’t need you to run in here and save me,” she bites, attacking him seemingly out of nowhere. “I’m fine.”
“I know that,” Stiles goes somber at her words, watching her carefully as he can’t help but remember an actual rescue mission from not so long ago.
Lydia takes a couple of sips from her drink. It’s stronger than the last one and burns her throat as she swallows it.
“And also, could someone please explain to me why the hell everyone is always texting you about me? Nobody ever texts me about you.” She scowls at her drink, swirling it with her straw as she avoids eye contact. “Like everyone knows you’d drop everything to come save drunk Lydia from the big bad bar, but me? Oh, no. No one would ever believe I’d drop everything for you.”
The bass of the music is pounding but it’s drowned out by her words hanging in the air between them. She can feel his gaze burning into the side of her face, studying her, but he stays silent.
She downs the rest of her drink.
“I guess it makes sense though,” she shrugs to herself, bitterly resigned. “You have Scott, and if there were ever a time he couldn’t be there then there’s always Malia, and if something were serious enough that we were that far down the intrinsic list of your emergency contacts, your dad would get a call. Outside of you, I don’t know who anyone would text about me.”
“Lydia…”
She chances a glance up at him to see his eyes watery and soft, his mouth open as if he wants to say something but can’t decide what. She quickly looks away. “I think I need another drink.”
“I really don’t think you do,” Stiles speaks up, his voice thicker than it should be. “Let me take you home.”
“Don’t want to go home.”
“Then we’ll go somewhere else,” he offers, reaching out and laying his hand gently on her shoulder. “Let’s just get out of here, okay?”
She looks at him skeptically but his eyes are warm and pleading and it’s Stiles, so she finds herself giving in pretty easily. “Okay.”
She leaves some cash on the bar and pushes herself up from the high stool only to stumble as she tries to stand. Arms quickly catch her before she hits the ground and suddenly she’s dissolving into laughter as she clings to her safety net.
“Oh my god,” Stiles mutters, helplessly smiling to himself and tightening his hold on her on her as the tension between them breaks with her laughter. “Are you sure you’re not wasted?”
“I’m not!” she protests and continues to giggle, clinging to him as they head for the exit. “I just haven’t stood at all since I started drinking. Also, I think I need fresh air.”
“And maybe some food would be good?”
“Oh, yes! Food!”
Stiles snorts at her as he pushes open the door and leads her out into the cool night air.
“Hey, don’t laugh at me,” she fake pouts, letting him guide her across the parking lot. “It’s not my fault my tolerance to alcohol is so much lower than it used to be. We never, ever drink since the vast majority of our friends heal too fast to even begin to feel the effects of alcohol.”
“Oh, the plight of the unsupernatural in Beacon Hills.”
“Hey, I’m supernatural,” she points out, opening the door of the Jeep and starting to crawl inside. “I just can’t heal.”
His face falls. “Believe me, Lydia, I’m aware of that,” he mutters mostly to himself as he closes the door behind her, before rounding the Jeep to get in the driver’s side.
They pull out of the parking lot and Lydia fusses with the radio, unconcerned with where they are headed- wherever Stiles wants to go is fine with her. Everything on the radio is awful but she knows where he keeps his CDs tucked away in the glove compartment and she heads straight for them without asking. She knows he won’t mind.
“Hey Lydia? What do you want?”
She looks over at him with a furrowed brow before realizing where they are. In a drive thru, the next car up to order. She crinkles her nose. “Fast food?”
He rolls his eyes. “We’re under age and you’re at minimum quite tipsy, bordering on mildly drunk. I can’t take you inside anywhere right now. So it’s either this or we go to a gas station and I go in to get us-“
“Fine,” she cuts him off with a huff. “This is fine.”
He smirks at her. “Good. So what do you want?”
She looks at him blankly and shrugs.
“I could just get us some fries and cokes? That sound good?”
“Diet coke.”
He nods, rolling his eyes again.
Within minutes they are driving down the streets of Beacon Hills, a bag of fries between them on the center console.
“I never eat fries,” Lydia comments as she grabs another hand full. “They’re so bad for you.”
“They are terrible for you,” Stiles agrees with his mouth full. “I never really eat them anymore either in solidarity with my dad, but they’re so good.”
She takes a sip of her drink, nodding in agreement. “They are so good.”
Eventually the food starts to disappear and Lydia digs back into the glove compartment, picking out a CD for them to listen to. The songs are slow and they’re a bit sad but it fits her mood. She slides it in and then busies herself with cranking down the window, letting cool night air into the tiny space of the Jeep.
“So where are we going now?”
Lydia looks over at him as she settles back in the seat. “Maybe we could just drive for a little bit?”
He nods, smiling softly at the way her hair shifts from the breeze and the street lights dance across her face. “Okay.”
Turning up the music, he continues to drive aimlessly though their small town. Eventually he gets sick of the stop signs and red lights and makes his way to the highway. He doesn’t want to have to take her home yet and somehow he knows that she doesn’t want him to either.
They don’t really talk as they drive but it feels comfortable just being together. He notices how Lydia bounces her head just the slightest to the music and he can hear her humming along when it gets to the quieter parts.
He’s not sure how far they’ve gone when she leans against the door, her face turned toward the open window. The last couple songs on the CD play out and she goes quiet. He smiles to himself, convinced she’s fallen asleep. Reaching over, he turns off the stereo before the CD starts over and pulls off into a rest area to turn around.
Lydia shifts at the lengthening silence broken only by the clicking of the Jeep’s turn signal and turns toward him, her eyes wide awake and watery with something heavier than sleep. She reaches for his wrist on the gear shift as he pulls into the rest area, her fingers shaky against his skin.
The contact throws him, truthfully her whole shift in demeanor does, so even though he means to turn around in the empty parking lot and head back to Beacon Hills, he doesn’t. Instead he quietly parks the Jeep and intertwines their fingers the second he turns the engine off.
She remains silent as she takes his hand and wraps it in both of hers, pulling it into her lap.
He waits for her to speak and can only watch completely transfixed as Lydia fumbles with his fingers, studies his chewed down nails, and carefully rubs her thumb across the skin of his palm.
“I think I had a panic attack today,” her whisper breaks the silence, sounding somehow far away. “Everything felt like it was crushing down on me. My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my whole body and I couldn’t get myself to take a deep breath no matter how hard I tried. The whole world felt like it was tilting and spinning around me but I couldn’t stop it.”
“Sounds like a panic attack to me.” He leans closer across the console, frowning. “I didn’t know you ever had those.”
“I don’t. Not really. I mean, I had one when I was a kid but I never told anyone,” she admits, glancing over at him through shining eyes before looking away just as quickly. “The night before fourth grade started— I’d been dreading going back to school all summer because I just knew it was going to be another year without any friends. I didn’t fit in with anyone; they barely noticed I was even there. My parents didn’t really either since they were always too busy fighting. I felt invisible everywhere. Like I didn’t matter at all.”
Stiles squeezes her hand, encouraging her to continue while completely captivated by her rare vulnerability.
“So that night, I couldn’t fall asleep because I couldn’t turn my mind off, I was so worried about school the next day. Eventually, my parents must have assumed I’d fallen asleep because they started screaming all these awful things at each other and I heard all of it. I don’t know what happened but suddenly it was like I couldn’t breathe. My heart was pounding so fast and I was so dizzy I couldn’t even move. It felt like I was going to be trapped there forever, stuck in that moment where everything was so horrible. I realized then that something had to change, that I had to make it change, and my mind just started racing with all of these plans. I thought and overthought nearly every detail of my life going forward and eventually I felt like I could breathe again.
“That’s when I decided I wasn’t going to be the boring, brainiac anymore — I wouldn’t let anyone see how smart I really was. I was going to act like the popular girls did; start dressing like them, too. Then someone would have to notice me. Of course, I would still get the best grades in class and keep taking extra work when I could find a way to hide it, I was too smart to let myself destroy my own potential. I decided then that I would graduate early, at least by the end of junior year, and I wouldn’t tell anyone at school about it before I left.”
A tear drips onto the back of his hand where she holds it in her lap. Dazedly, she rubs it into his skin as she continues on, her voice barely a whisper.
“I’d just be gone one day. Off to college on the other side of the country. I’d never set foot in Beacon Hills or talk to anyone from here ever again.”
“Lydia,” he shakily breathes her name, unable to keep quiet any longer. He blinks back the wetness from his eyes and brings his free hand up to push her hair behind her ear and cup her cheek. “If that would have happened, if you had just disappeared forever, I- God, Lydia…” He trails off and shakes his head at her. “You weren’t invisible— Not to me. You never were.”
She presses her lips together, blinking back tears at the ferocity of his words and the look in his eyes.
“We weren’t even really friends back then but I noticed you. I remember exactly the way you were in third grade and I always wondered why you changed. I missed the real you,” he tells her adamantly, fire in his eyes as they dart between hers. “You know how unbelievably smart you were - are - but you were so caring. You cared about everything and everyone so much back then. The way that you do now even though you still try to hide it.”
“Stiles…”
“I would have wondered about you forever. In the back of my mind, I would have always wondered about you.”
Taking a shaky breath, she lets her eyes fall shut and leans into his touch, overwhelmed. His words feel like too much, hit too close, but she knows he means everything he says. Stiles has somehow always known her in a way she can’t explain logically but has always felt real, even when she used to force herself to deny it.
Just like she knows she doesn’t have to explain to him why she didn’t leave Beacon Hills at the end of junior year; why she stuck around to take a couple measly classes when she could already be off acing her freshman year of college. She knows Stiles understands how everything is different now without her having to say it out loud.
“You know, it was because of you, actually, that I figured out what happened that night was a panic attack,” she tells him after she gathers herself enough to speak again. “I overheard you talking to a teacher after you had one at school. You were explaining how it felt and everything you said just clicked.”
“My mom was diagnosed the summer before fourth grade. I had panic attacks all the time back then.”
Her lips fall into a frown, her heart going out to him. She’d had only two of her own and been witness to his once and all three of those experiences shook her to her core. She can’t bring herself to think about him suffering through so many more of them. She brings his hand that she won’t let go of up, pressing her lips against their intertwined fingers.
His pulse quickens at the simple touch. When she brings his hand away from her lips and lifts her eyes to his, he carefully presses her. “So you had one today?”
She barely nods, swallowing roughly. “ I, um… I finally read all the responses I’ve gotten on my college applications.”
For a moment he falters because it’s been so long since any of them talked about what’s going to happen after high school and he has no idea where she stands on the vision anymore. Hell, he doesn’t really know what he thinks about it anymore either. “And?”
“I didn’t get in.”
His stomach drops. “To Standford?”
“To MIT, Harvard, Princeton, and Columbia. Sincerest regrets across the board.”
“Oh,” he breathes, shock and confusion twisting his features, partially because he didn’t even know she was applying to any of those places in the first place but mostly because there’s no way that can be right.
“I don’t know if I would have actually gone to any of those schools,” she amends in a rush, letting go of his hands for the first time to fidget with her own fingers. “I just- I wanted to know if I could have made it in. I needed to know if I was smart enough to; if all my work was enough. It was my plan, you know? Since the beginning of fourth grade, through my parents’ civil war of a divorce and spending so long acting like a vapid ditz so that people at school would acknowledge my existence, having this plan in the back of mind is what got me through it. But I couldn’t even…”
Stiles heartbreaks for her as he watches her trail off, her bottom lip trembling, yet he still feels like he must be missing something. “But how is that even possible? Those schools should be falling over themselves trying to get you to pick them. Your SAT scores were a few points from perfect and your grades—“
“It doesn’t matter,” she quietly cuts him off. “None of it does now that I’ve been institutionalized and diagnosed with psychosis severe enough that I had to have trepanation performed on me.”
“Wait, wait, wait– That’s why you didn’t get in?” he hisses incredulously, indignation flaring in his chest. “That’s bullshit! They can’t do that—“
“They can do whatever they want,” she tells him in as firmly as she can manage, “and I don’t blame them. On top of everything that’s happened this year, I also have over a years worth of disastrous sessions with Morel on my record, along with absolutely no extra-curricular activities other than a well documented history of showing up at violent crime scenes, and a beyond spotty attendance record due to a stay at the local insane asylum and a myriad of other incidents that I can’t offer them any explanation for. I wouldn’t let me in either. I’m too much of a risk.”
“You can’t really believe that.“
“It’s the truth. Now all there is left to do is wait for my rejection from Stanford. Let that plan get ruined too,” she concludes shakily. She tries to blink back the tears gathering in her eyes but ends up sending them falling down her cheeks instead. “I’m never going to get out of here.”
“That’s not true! You’re going to go study math and win a Fields Medal and -“
“No, Stiles. I’m not. That’s- That’s not possible anymore. Not after after everything. I’m going to be in Beacon Hills with the Nemeton and the supernatural for the rest of my life.” She deteriorates quickly into a mess of tears and shaking limbs, barely able to hold herself together as she looks desperately to Stiles. “I- I’m going to be stuck here alone.”
He reaches out to her instantly, taking her face in his hands and forcing her to focus on him. “Never, ever will I let that happen. We’ll figure something out, okay? If you don’t get in to Stanford, which I think would be fucking ridiculous, then we’ll figure it out. I promise you're still going to write an insane mathematical theorem that wins you a Fields Medal, even if the path to it has to shift a bit.”
“Stiles-“
“Hey, hey,” he coos, wrapping his arms around her trembling body and pulling her into him, meeting her halfway between their seats. “It’s all going to work out, okay? You’re going to be fine. We’ll get through this.”
Pressing her face into the warmth of his neck, she can’t seem to do anything but cling to him as she cries herself out, her panic from earlier that day threatening to rise back up and over take her again. But as Stiles rubs her back and whispers words of comfort against her hair, she slowly gets a hold of herself.
Eventually, she pulls herself together, her tears slowing and her breath evening out.
Stiles doesn’t let her go though, won’t stop his palm trailing rhythmically across her back.
It’s a bit impulsive when she kisses his throat then, her lips pressing against his skin where it’s damp and salty with her tears. Really though, she does it because it feels right, like something she needs to do now and has been wanting to do for way too long. She feels his Adam’s apple bob and his heartbeat pick up before she pulls her lips from his skin.
Leaning back, she moves just enough to see his amber eyes watching at her with rapt curiosity, his mouth hanging open. She wants to kiss his lips so badly, wants to do much more than that actually. She’s a mess though and she’d been drinking earlier, things she doesn’t want Stiles to think have anything to do with it which he would because he’s Stiles and he over analyzes everything.
So she leans back a little further, back into her seat, and Stiles reluctantly releases his hold on her as he tries to calm his own racing heart.
Before he can pull away completely though, she grabs his hand to stop him. “Stiles?”
He squeezes her hand and meets her gaze with an intensity shining in his eyes that grounds her.
“Thank you,” she whisper him with a small, sad smile. “I don’t think I say that enough to you, or ever really. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Well, I don’t know what I’d do without you either, so…” he trails off with a shrug, mirroring her small smile. He studies her carefully, eyes sweeping across her features before he slowly and purposefully leans forward to press a kiss her cheek. He hears the way her breath hitches and his smile loses it’s hint of sadness when he pulls back again. “We’ll figure things out.”
She sighs and shakes her head at him fondly, trying to get her breathing under control again. “Where did all that trademark Stilinski anxiety go?”
“Oh, it’s still there, believe me. I just don’t think there’s anything to be anxious about. Not with your future.”
Her heart warms at his words, his ever enduring confidence in her infectiously making her suddenly a bit more optimistic herself.
“You want to go home?”
She hesitates before shaking her head. “Maybe we could drive a little bit longer?”
The corner of his mouth quirks up at her softly and he nods in answer. Then he turns the ignition and restarts the CD in the console before heading back toward the highway.
Lydia curls up in the passenger seat again but this time she faces Stiles, her small hand fitting around his wrist over the gear shift once again. She listens to the quiet hum of the music and focuses on the thrum of Stiles’s pulse under her finger tips and never wants to let go, keeps her grasp on him steady for miles and miles, even as her eyelids grow heavy and she slowly drifts off to dreams of a future she’s too scared to hope for.
———
The letter from Stanford is waiting on the kitchen counter when she gets home from school along a note from her mother to call her with the good news after she’s opened it.
Her heart pounds as her fingers glance the envelope with the printed seal in the corner.
The last chance she has to go to college, the last school she’s waiting to hear from.
Anxiety floods her veins the longer she stands over it, staring it down as if willing it to be what she wants and needs it to be. She can feel panic building and it threatens to over take her because she knows this could ruin everything.
She refuses to lose it though. She will not be this weak.
With a huff and a roll of her eyes, she forces herself to grab the envelope up and rip it open, eyes quickly skimming across the letter inside.
Dear Ms. Martin,
We regret to inform you that we will not…
Her heart drops, breath choking in her throat and the world fading out around her for a brief moment.
When she realizes herself again, she’s crumpled the letter into a little ball in her hands, her whole body shaking as the news settles in.
This can’t be happening. It just can’t.
Striding over to the trash, she quickly throws the offending letter away, getting rid of the awful thing as quickly as she can. She doesn’t even have to think about what she does next, her feet simply carry her out of the kitchen, through the front door, and right back to her car.
All she knows is she has to get to Stiles. He’s the only one who knows about any of this. The only one who understands.
He said they’d figure it. They’d get through this if it happened.
Well she’s going to need him to figure this out for her because she can’t.
The drive to his house only takes a few minutes and she bounds to the door as quickly as she can. After only a couple knocks, it swings open to reveal the sheriff standing there, absolutely beaming.
“Lydia!” he laughs out her name as he rushes forward to pull her into a fatherly hug, completely oblivious to her unsteadiness. “Did you hear the good news?”
Her brow furrows at the sheriff when he pulls back. “Good news?”
“My boy got in to Stanford. Stanford!”
For a second it’s like she can’t breath. “He- He did?”
“He did!”
He’s grinning like an idiot, too wrapped up in his own joy to notice the sheer heartbreak in her eyes. She’s glad about that though because it gives her the chance to collect herself and force herself to smile.
Stiles is going to leave her.
“I always knew he was smart enough but you know how he gets, what with the sarcasm and the ADD-“
“Thanks, dad.” Stiles’s voice cuts in from inside, getting louder as he approaches them. “Are we just pontificating on my flaws to everyone who comes to the door now, or is this a special occasion?” He reaches his father’s side and stops at the sight of the banshee, a hesitant smile curling his lips as he tries to read her.
“Hey, you’re the one that once wrote an essay about the history of the male circumcision on a test in your Economics class.”
Lydia lets out a strained laugh, digging her hands into the pockets of her jeans anxiously.
Stiles shrugs as he steps closer to the doorway, eyes only on Lydia. “Oh well, it doesn’t matter now.”
She meets his gaze and forces a smile. “You got in to Stanford.”
He nods, still unsure of her reaction. “I did.”
“He did.” The sheriff repeats proudly, clapping him on the back.
“But I don’t know if I’m going to go there yet,” Stiles quickly adds, stepping closer to her and starting to ramble. “I mean, I was thinking I might want to work in law enforcement in some way and I don’t know if that’s really-“
She knows what he’s doing. He’s leaving an out for himself incase she doesn’t get in, so he can follow her wherever she goes because of the other night and how unbelievably weak she’d been.
For some reason in that moment all she can think of is the tunnels under Eichen, when she yelled at him with everything she had to run and Parrish had to drag him away when he didn’t budge an inch from her. She knows he’ll never let himself go to Stanford if she’s not going to be there too.
Well, she’s not going to let him ruin this opportunity for himself. Not because of her.
“Me too,” she blurts, effectively cutting off his rambling. “I mean, I got in. To Stanford. That’s what I was coming over to tell you.”
Stiles’s hesitant smile grows genuine, the tension visibly leaving his shoulders in relief. “Really?”
Lydia purses her lips into a watery smile and barely nods once before he’s stepping forward and wrapping her up in his arms. She feels absolutely sick as she hugs him back, pressing her forehead against the front of his t-shirt and trying to keep herself calm.
The sheriff turns suddenly sentimental as he looks between his son and the banshee. “Well, that decides it. I’m going to change out of my uniform and then we are all going out for dinner to celebrate.”
Her stomach clenches with panic at the suggestion and she quickly pulls out of Stiles arms, looking over at the sheriff with what she hopes portrays a natural expression of slight regret. “That sounds really great but I can’t. Still have to go find my mom and tell her the news.”
Stiles’s eyes soften. “You came here first?”
“Of course.”
God, she feels like an awful person. An awful, awful person.
“Well then I guess it’s just the Stilinski men tonight,” the sheriff amends his earlier plan before stepping forward to hug the banshee again. “Congratulations, Lydia.”
She can’t really formulate a response before he leaves because she feels almost as awful for lying to the sheriff as she does for lying to Stiles.
Lydia takes a step back, crossing her arms over her chest to stop herself from fidgeting. “You should have told me you were applying there.”
Stiles simply shakes his head. “I didn’t tell anyone I was, not even Scott. I mean, I never thought I would actually get in.”
“You always underestimate yourself,” she rolls her eyes fondly, because it’s such a Stiles thing to do that she can’t help it. “You’re the smartest person I know. I could have told you that you’d get in if I’d known that’s what you wanted.”
“I wouldn’t have believed you.”
“Well then if you were so convinced you couldn’t get in, why did you apply?”
He shrugs shyly. “I knew that’s where you were going to go. I had to try.”
She shakes her head at him, her anxiety rising. “Stiles…”
“Lydia, I just got into Stanford.,” he repeats to her in absolute disbelief.
She smiles up at him and she doesn’t have to force it this time because she is happy for him. Impulsively, she steps forward and hugs him again. “I’m really proud of you, Stiles.”
He wraps his arms around her tight and presses his face against her hair, his lips lingering near her ear. “I’m so proud of you, too.”
She bites her lip hard, focusing all her energy on keeping her breathing even, her heartbeat calm.
“I told you it would work out.”
She pulls back, avoiding his gaze because she has to. “I should go. Your dad will be ready soon.”
He nods and reluctantly lets her go. “Text me later? We can talk about next year, start figuring out what is near the dorms or if we’re close enough to Scott that you, me, and him could all get an apartment-“
She lets out a nervous laugh and takes a step back. “Aren’t you getting a little ahead of yourself?”
“Lydia, I’m a planner. You know this and you’ll have another four years to grow to appreciate it.”
She rolls her eyes at him and tries to swallow the bile she can feel in the back of her throat. “Looking forward to it.”
He is absolutely beaming at her before she finally allows herself to turn around. Heart is pounding with nerves, she gets back in her car and drives away as quickly as she can, knowing Stiles is watching her until she turns onto another street.
Her mind is blank the whole way home, too overwrought with racing thoughts and anxiety to focus on anything. She pulls into her driveway and turns off the car and simply sits there, letting the last hour of her life play over in her mind.
Slowly her bottom lip starts to quiver, tears gathering in her eyes.
It occurs to her then that she’s never lied to Stiles before.
Never, ever, ever.
Tears drip down her cheeks and she drops her forehead against the steering wheel, her knuckles white as she grasps it tight.
What a stupid lie to tell. There’s no way she’ll ever get out of this. At some point, he’ll know she lied right to his face. To his dad, too.
But she couldn’t let him pass up an opportunity like Stanford because her life is suddenly crumbling to pieces.
God, she wishes it was just the truth.
Dissolving into sobs she can feel the panic crawling through her veins and catching in her throat.
No college. No pack.
No Stiles.
The whole world feels like it is spinning out of control all around her and she’s stuck, her whole body shaking against the force of it all.
She can’t move, she can’t breathe. All she can do is panic.