[ vivienne moore does not keep a stash of gin in the house, and it's only after scouring the liquor cabinets on his hands and knees that embry finds a nearly empty bottle of plymouth behind all her other far more expensive choices, a bottle he he probably left there the last time he visited. it feels like a pointed fuck you from mother to son, when she's well aware of his personal drinking preferences. funny, how she had plenty of morgan's favorite wine, which she guzzled happily like a harpy consuming blood.
he takes a full bottle of macallan 12 instead, his other favorite.
maybe he's just being sensitive from the way his phone has been buzzing all night with notifications about ash and greer's party — and his noted absence. he stops looking once the photos start rolling in, at least until after the house grows quiet, the moon a fragment of silver in the sky, a jagged reflection on the glimmering surface of the lake. he can't sleep, and not even the gin helps. hawk has already gone to bed, disappearing into the black hole of the guest wing, and morgan is nowhere to be found, her room empty.
his phone feels too bright in the dark, his gray trousers collecting grass stains as he sits on the bank of the lake, swiping through a photo gallery. the white house is decked out in some tacky 1920s theme that ash probably loves — he looks impossibly handsome in his suit, greer radiant in pearls and tassels, and their laughing faces make embry's lungs swell to bursting, the bottle clutched between his knees. it's the end of something, an end that he chose, and still he keeps checking his texts, thinking that ash might reach out, that he might tell him he misses him or that things would be better if he were there, but the night is painfully silent. he hovers briefly over hawk's name before swiping away from that, too.
picture after picture slides across his screen until his eyes blur, and then he has to pause to collect himself, his hand over his face as he inhales deeply, because crying at his mother's fucking lake house in the middle of the night is goddamn pathetic even for him. ]
— starry, starry night.
he takes a full bottle of macallan 12 instead, his other favorite.
maybe he's just being sensitive from the way his phone has been buzzing all night with notifications about ash and greer's party — and his noted absence. he stops looking once the photos start rolling in, at least until after the house grows quiet, the moon a fragment of silver in the sky, a jagged reflection on the glimmering surface of the lake. he can't sleep, and not even the gin helps. hawk has already gone to bed, disappearing into the black hole of the guest wing, and morgan is nowhere to be found, her room empty.
his phone feels too bright in the dark, his gray trousers collecting grass stains as he sits on the bank of the lake, swiping through a photo gallery. the white house is decked out in some tacky 1920s theme that ash probably loves — he looks impossibly handsome in his suit, greer radiant in pearls and tassels, and their laughing faces make embry's lungs swell to bursting, the bottle clutched between his knees. it's the end of something, an end that he chose, and still he keeps checking his texts, thinking that ash might reach out, that he might tell him he misses him or that things would be better if he were there, but the night is painfully silent. he hovers briefly over hawk's name before swiping away from that, too.
picture after picture slides across his screen until his eyes blur, and then he has to pause to collect himself, his hand over his face as he inhales deeply, because crying at his mother's fucking lake house in the middle of the night is goddamn pathetic even for him. ]