I don’t go to school all week.
Dad’s worried, so much that he makes me talk to Kate on Wednesday. I tell her I have my period; my cramps are worse than usual, and I have been so run down, I think I have a cold coming on. I just need to rest, and I’ll be fine soon.
She’s sweet and tells Dad I’m fine. But she also tells me that, when I’m ready, she’s there to talk. But if I don’t talk to her, I should talk to someone. I love that she notices I’m not okay. My own mother, who still hadn’t spoken to me since I left, wouldn’t have seen this. She would have said, “Get up, get over it. Cramps are normal.”
“I’ve seen you getting close with Asher. If you want to talk to him, I can ask him to come over.”
Ugh…Asher isn’t going to help me. He would probably just go put his fist into Jace’s nose, and I can’t have that on my conscience. He has a game tonight, and Dad asked me to come. Asher texted me and told me he has a blue jersey waiting for me. But I couldn’t make myself go.
Hunter has been over every day. He’s been really worried about me, and just like he said, he brought me chocolate, ice-cream, and tampons…six different boxes because he didn’t know which ones I liked. I never asked for any of it; he took it upon himself to do that for me.
He has cheered me up, but when he asks what’s wrong, I don’t know how to tell him. He’s best friends with Jace and has been saying all week that “Jace will come around. He’s just being moody and shit.”
But where do I even go from here?
I have only ever felt like this once before…the weeks after Mom dragged me to live with her, and I missed my friends so much that I cried for three weeks.
Sleeping, sad movies, and chocolate have gotten me through this week, and I have ignored every one of Hunter’s calls to me tonight.
There’s a party somewhere, and he probably wants me to go.
I roll over, hug my old teddy bear to my chest, and stare at my laptop. It’s playing P.S I Love You for the tenth time this week. My eyes are raw from all the tears, but this movie, it just gets me every time. If I want to cry, all I have to do is look at the name of the movie, and the tears start to flow. Hell, maybe I should move to Hollywood and become an actress with how fast and easy I can cry to this movie.
My door slams open, and I gasp, scrambling from my bed. I get caught in my sheets and land with a thud on the floor. My heart races—someone’s in my room. Someone broke into my house. I panic, trying to find a weapon, but all I have is my sketch pads and a pencil beside me. I reach out and grip the pencil tightly, holding it out in front of me to stop whoever is in my room.
“Mila?”
“Hunter?” I look over my bed to Hunter, who looks worried.
“I called you on your phone and you didn’t pick up. And I’ve been calling out to you from downstairs.”
I press my hand to my chest to stop my heart form racing and try to even out my breathing. “Holy shit, Hunter.” I take a deep breath and slowly let it out while he watches what I’m doing. “You gave me a heart attack.”
“Shit, I’m sorry about that, but Roman’s in trouble. I need your help to get through to him. He’s gonna fight at The Shed tonight, and he’s still got broken ribs and his hand isn’t looking great either.
“I think it’s infected, but he won’t go get it checked out. He looks like shit. I need you to come with me. I think you’re the only one who can get through to him.”
I scramble up to my feet and rush to my closet, throwing on a pair of jeans and a hoodie over my sports bra. I don’t have time; we need to get Roman. God, I’ll be so devastated if he’s hurt because I didn’t answer Hunter’s calls.
I’d crawled into a deep, dark hole this week and forgotten about Roman. How he’d acted so different on Monday, pushing me away. All this week, I have sobbed and eaten my weight in chocolate while he’s been fighting his own inner demons, needing someone there to chase them away.
That person’s gonna be me.
The Shed is huge. I’ve heard about it before; it’s one of those places you hear about in a story. You don’t go there.
Men outnumber women here, like a hundred to one. For something underground and illegal, it’s set up well. There is standing room, and the stands surround all four sides of the ring in the middle of the floor.
Hunter keeps me close to his side, and I’m grateful. The way men leer scares me. Hunter isn’t strong enough to protect me from all of them.
“We need to find Roman or Arthur. He called me, told me I need to come down and talk him out of the fight,” Hunter yells over the men cheering.
They were cheering on two men fighting. I gasp, and cold chills run though my body. That tattoo…on his chest. A daisy. My Daisy. Hunter tries to pull me, but my hand is covering my mouth, and I can’t speak.
Roman’s face is covered in so much blood, it’s unrecognizable. Hunter finally looks over and see’s what I do. When we first looked over, I wouldn’t have known it was him. The other guy is landing blow after blow.
“Fuck, fuck, where’s Jace when all this is going down? Fuck’s sake.” Hunter pulls me through the screaming crowd; they’re not happy that we’re pushing in front of them. A few shove Hunter, but he just keeps on pushing through and dragging me behind.
We get to the edge of the ring, and I can tell that one of Roman’s eyes is swollen shut.
“Shit, I’ve never seen him like this,” Hunter croaks. “Ever.”
I scream when the other guy lands a blow to Roman’s face and he drops to one knee. I’m shaking and numb. I don’t know much about this type of fighting, but can’t he tap out?
“Tap out already, stop,” I call out to him, and his one good eye meets mine just as a knee jams into his side and he lets out a painful groan.
“Roman, stop,” Hunter calls out. He’s moving away from me, leaving me on the side to watch this alone. “Roman,” Hunter yells from the corner of the ring, and Roman looks over at him now, spitting blood on the mat.
I feel an arm come around my shoulder, and I flinch away, but it doesn’t help. The man holds me even closer.
“Ah, what do we have here…a little angel come to see her boy beaten?”
I look at the man. His eyes are wild, and I try to push away from him, but another man grips my chin and turns me to face him.
“Call out all you want. We own your boy right now, and you can say nighty night to him.” His finger digs into my chin as Roman looks over at me now. His eye flares with something wild, and he lets out a guttural cry.
God, Roman. What have they done to you?
He charge toward me, but the other guy in the ring appears in front of him. All I see is a spray of blood. It hits me, covering my hair and face. It’s the same for the two men beside me as Roman’s opponent hits the mat right in front of me and lets out a small moan before closing his eyes and going limp.
Holy fuck. Roman just knocked him out.
The guys beside me roar out in anger. Roman doesn’t stop; he steps over the guy laying there, bleeding out while the ref is trying to wake him, and he reaches down over the rope, grabs the scruff of the hoddie I’m wearing, and hauls me up and over the rope and into the ring.
“Roman, oh god,” I cry, my hands reaching out, wanting to touch him but not even knowing where to start that isn’t already bruised or broken.
He doesn’t look at me. He just carries me over to where Hunter is now beside Jace. I don’t have time to think about that. Roman’s injured, and he needs a hospital.
“Why did you bring her? I said to never bring her here,” he yells at Hunter.
Roman shoves me at Hunter and I turn, reaching out to Roman. He just spins and walks to the other side of the ring. My voice cracks as I call out his name, but he doesn’t turn around. He leaves the ring and me.
“What just happened?” I demand from Hunter as soon as I’m wrapped up in his arms.
He shakes his head and looks over to where Roman had walked away.
“I don’t know.”
I don’t sleep at all. I can’t. Hunter has been out all night, looking for Roman. No one has seen him, and I’m worried something bad has happened. Like, he went to sleep and is so injured that he passed out and is bleeding to death.
My stomach won’t settle as I pace my room, biting my nails and thinking of all the bad things that could have happened.
Mila: did you try his dad again?
Hunter: yes, he hasn’t seen him.
Mila: the lake?
I’m grasping at straws here.
Hunter: tried there, Arthur is out looking for him too.
I can’t sit here, but I don’t have a car. Dad stayed over at Kate’s last night. He has no idea what’s going on, and I don’t want to tell him. Not yet. I don’t want him looking at Roman differently because of this.
His mom? Would he go visit his mom? Shit, why didn’t I think of that earlier?
I run down the stairs two at a time, shove my feet into my trainers, and run out to the shed. My old bike is there. It’s pink and covered in cobwebs. I pull it out, making a racket as I do. I place it down in front of me and test out the tires. They’re all good. I jump on and wobble a little. But I start to pedal, and it all comes back to me.
“Like riding a bike.” I smile to myself.
But then I remember why I’m on the bike. I let out a deep, shuddering breath and make my way to the cemetery to see if Jeanie Valentine knows where her son is.
My chest burns and my legs feel like jelly as I ride into the cemetery. It’s big, but I know exactly where she is. As I get closer, I can see that he’s not here, and my heart sinks. I’d been hoping he would be. I see a daisy bush not too far away and jog over and pick five flowers off of it. I smile down at them. Roman and I would pick them once a week when we visited here.
I make my way over to Jeanie and kneel at her headstone.
“Hey, Jeanie, it’s been a long time since I’ve been here, and I apologize. I should have come sooner and under different circumstances. But I’m here now, and I need your help.” I place the flowers on top of her headstone and smile.
“Have you seen Roman? I bet you have. If you could tell me where he is, give me a sign, I would be forever grateful. I don’t want to sound rude, but I don’t want him visiting you just yet. I want to keep here with me a lot longer. So, if you see him up there, tell him to come back to me. He can’t stay with you. I’ll miss him too much.” A tear slips from my face.
My phone buzzes in my pocket.
Hunter’s calling me. I answer. “You find him?”
“No, where are you?” he asks.
“I’m visiting his mom. I hoped he came here, so I rode over on my bike.”
“I’m at your place. Do you want me to come get you?”
“No, my bike will mess up your car. I‘ll meet you at mine. We can go out and look for him together.”
“Okay, I’ll see in you in twenty.”
I hang up and put my phone back in my pocket.
“Promise me you won’t keep him if he come to you, Jeanie.” I kiss my fingers and press them against the cold, hard stone then stand. I walk over to my bike and start my way back home.
“Give me a sign,” I call out to the sky, pedaling as fast as I can to meet Hunter. Every minute we’re not looking is another minute that Roman could be dying somewhere. And time seems to be against us today.
I’m about five minutes into my ride when I hear a car pull up beside me. I look over; it’s black and shiny but not Jace’s car. The window glides down, and a face I recognize from last night is behind the wheel.
“Well, hello there, angel.”
