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Of course it was about Ash. Who else would it be about? Even the world’s densest, stupidest person would know who this fucking letter was about. I folded it back up, how it had obviously been neatly tucked into the envelope, and handed it to him.
I sounded bored when I asked, “Where’d you get this?” Bored, uninterested. As if I’d seen the letter before.
“It was shoved through the mail slot, in an unmarked envelope,” Sawyer said.
As he went on about what it could mean, I wondered what Ash was doing right now, if she was thinking about me as much as I thought about her. She was all my mind thought about, and it was hard to pay attention to Sawyer when I really just wanted to wrap my hands around his neck and tell him that Ash was off-limits.
No, my friend was a big, strong guy. I had to be smart about this. We’d try making a girl dye her hair pink first.
Chapter Four – Ash
As I was signing all the paperwork the nurses needed to fully release me, I kept getting reassured that it was all being taken care of. I needn’t worry about a thing. A bunch of other stuff spoken in soft, hushed voices, meant to be kind, but I just found them insulting. I didn’t need a rich guy to pay off my debts. I…well, okay, maybe in this instance, having a rich guy paying off my medical bills wasn’t something I should argue against. One less thing to pay back in the future, even if I’d always feel like I owed him something.
Once everything was good, they let me leave. I headed through the confusing hallways of the hospital until I reached the ER’s doors, stepping outside. A gust of fresh air blew past me, and for a moment, I let the cool air hug me, a welcome embrace during this terrible night.
I gazed around the parking lot, seeing the road a good ways away. I was sure a bus station was nearby, somewhere, but I didn’t know the area. And with no wallet, well, I doubted the bus driver would take me all the way back to Hillcrest University out of the generosity of his or her own heart. They only took cash, and I was severely lacking that right now.
I moved to a nearby bench, the bench made of metal and totally uncomfortable. It looked out at the parking lot, and for a moment, I let myself just be. No squaring my shoulders up, no tough girl act. I sat there, let my frown grow, and remembered coming home to all that blood.
Bad things had a way of following me. I should’ve known it was only a matter of time before everything caught up with me. What if Travis was my penance? What if Travis’s obsession with me was because of what happened back in high school?
Shit. I didn’t want to think of that, and I sure as hell didn’t want to think of him. I’d done my best to push him from my mind for months now. He was so far removed from my mind that I had even tried to forget his name.
But I couldn’t. There were some things you could never forget, and he was one of them, just as this night would be. This was a night I’d never forget. It was one of the worst of my life, and that was saying something.
My shoulders slumped, and I set a hand on my face. My splinted hand rested in my lap, feeling weird, out of place. I’d never broken a bone before, never had something as bad as a dislocated anything. All in all, and especially considering what I’d lived through, I’d been lucky. Too lucky. It was only a matter of time before my luck ran out, and now that I was at HU, I think it was just about squeezed dry.
No more luck for me. No more lucky breaks.
I didn’t know how much time passed, but soon another presence stood near me. I didn’t have to turn my head to see who it was. Will. He smelled like Declan, which was just insane to me. I knew what Declan smelled like, and I liked it. Musky, a bit, manly in every way.
He smelled like home, like someplace I’d want to be.
“He’s going to be okay, right?” I asked, needing the reassurance. Even though I might’ve saved his life with that tourniquet, I didn’t feel like a hero. If Travis did this, he did it for me. That was the thing about people like Travis. Everything they did, they did it out of urgency, because it needed to be done, at least from their eyes. As sick as it was, he thought he was doing it for me.
Locking me up in his room? For me.
Keeping me there? My punishment for my date with Sawyer.
Hurting Declan? Declan’s punishment for daring to get close to me.
Hanging Sabrina? I hazarded a guess, but maybe it was Sabrina’s punishment too, for something she did, or something he thought she did or would do. The only person who could get inside Travis’s mind and truly know what he was thinking was Travis himself. I never wanted to enter a mind so dark. I was fucked up enough on my own, thanks.
“He is,” Will spoke, his hands in his pockets. He stood beside me for a while. “Visiting hours are over, but I plan on staying with him.” I felt his gaze on me, even though I wasn’t looking at him. “Let me call you an Uber, or a taxi.”
Another bit of charity, more money of his I didn’t want.
“I know the way,” I said, I think. Of course I wasn’t one hundred percent sure, as I was in the back of the ambulance for the ride; paying attention to where it turned and when it headed straight was the least of my worries at the time. “I can walk.” Having my phone and GPS would help, but of course Travis still had that, so using my phone to find my way back was off the table.
Walking in the middle of the night, when anyone could pull their car off the road and grab you wasn’t my idea of a fun time, but again, I was at the point where I didn’t rightly care. If a psycho wanted to kidnap me and torture me, go right on ahead. Fucking Travis would somehow find me, and re-kidnap me for himself.
Tonight was a night for depressing thoughts, I guess.
“Stubborn,” Will remarked, eyeing me up.
I glanced at him, even though I really didn’t want to. He wasn’t exactly a Declan lookalike, but he was close. He had a few years on Declan, and his nose was a size or two bigger, but all in all, he was gorgeous. The kind of gorgeous that made you wonder just what sort of romantic comedy you fell into.
But that’s the thing—my life wasn’t a rom-com. It was…well, it was more like those documentaries the news stations play late at night. The kind of documentary old people sat and watched together, trying to figure out if they would’ve spotted the psycho sooner than me. My life was a cautionary tale.
