Noxious

31 | not the last

Charly 

I had fallen asleep. 

I didn't know when it had happened. The last thing I remembered was listening to Tommy talk about his little sister. Maybe I had been conditioned to the pain, perhaps I was a psychopath, but I only felt a twinge of pain in my chest for him. 

We all had fucked up stories. 

I guess it really mattered how we survived. I was definitely no stranger to making mistakes and trusting the wrong people. But, I never made the same mistake twice, and neither did Tommy. 

I had stopped trusting people around me when I slept. It was a survival instinct, I guess. If I did sleep, it was hidden somewhere and only for a few hours. Even at the abandoned building, I hardly slept. Especially not around men. 

I slowly stirred from my sleep. 

My brows furrowed immediately when I realized two things. 

First, there was a horrible pain low within my stomach, and it grew the more I wakened. I knew what it was. Secondly, my cheek was pressed against something soft and warm. I would have usually sprung awake within the blink of an eye but I didn't. 

I could tell we were still in the car, I felt the motion of the road and the hum of the tires. 

Slowly, I peeled my eyes open. 

It was then I realized that I had fallen asleep and I had fallen across the seats. 

My cheek was resting on Rowan's leg. 

I pushed myself upright in surprise. Why the hell hadn't he pushed me away? How long had I been asleep like that? 

His hand fell away from my shoulder where it had apparently been resting and my eyes zoned in on his face. I felt some relief when I realized he was asleep.

His head was wedged between the seat and the window, his lips slightly parted as he breathed softly. I watched him for a moment and I wondered if he had been awake when I had embarrassed myself. 

Speaking of which, I jumped upright. 

"We need to stop," I blurted, scooting forward between the front two seats. My voice was slightly panicked when I felt the familiar sensation of my time of the month. There literally wasn't a worse time than now. It was embarrassing but I pushed it aside, "Tommy, we have to stop." 

Tommy met my eyes in the rearview mirror, "Where?" 

"A supermarket, preferably," I said, my leg bouncing, "A gas station, maybe. I don't know, I... shit." I realized I was in a car with three men. Did they remember sex-ed? Probably not. I wasn't in the mood to explain a fucking period to them. 

Kyle was looking at me as if I had grown three heads. My panicked voice had woken Rowan and he blinked blurrily at me. 

"What happened?" Rowan asked, groggily. 

I sighed, frustrated, and then groaned from a painful cramp, "Fucking hell, I hate myself." 

"What the fuck is going on?" Kyle glanced between Tommy and me, his eyes demanding an explanation from one of us. 

I might have been lucky for once because Tommy pulled off the road--I hadn't realized we had left the highway sometime during the early morning--and he turned into a parking lot. I felt relief wash over me when I saw a supermarket in front of us.