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Declan didn’t ask me the question of the day. Instead, he said, “You look tired, Ash.”
I smiled, about to say that I was the most tired I’d been in years—which would’ve been a lie—but Declan shushed me by leaning off the chair, reaching for me. He pulled me into his arms, and I was too shocked at his forwardness to stop him. I did look in the hall nearby, my heart twisting as if Ray was standing there, watching. Hint: he wasn’t, but my paranoia knew no bounds when it came to him.
Since Ray wasn’t there, I let myself get lost in Declan’s arms, leaning my head against his neck. My body was stiff, but pumped so full of medicine that I hardly felt pain when he touched me. His arms wrapped around my back, holding me tight but not too tightly. Just enough for him to wordlessly tell me he was worried about me, that he needed me…that he cared for me.
Which, in the end, was going to make this so much harder than it had to be.
No, my life couldn’t be normal. My life couldn’t be just a typical eighteen-year-old’s. Nope. I wasn’t so fortunate. Luck was never on my side.
One of the arms holding me to him moved, fingertips grazing my jaw as he tilted my face toward his, kissing me with a suddenness I didn’t know he was capable of.
Just a quick, chaste kiss. A kiss that was over in a matter of seconds, but one that I still felt on my lips moments after we parted. Declan sat himself back in the chair, his dark gaze level with me.
My stupid lips were tingly, and I was sure if my body wasn’t hopped up on whatever they gave me, I would’ve felt tingly in other places, too.
“I should never have let you run off,” Declan murmured, running a hand through his hair. The way he stared at me made me feel all different kinds of strange, but I’d be lying if I said it was a bad kind of strange.
Fuck, I liked Declan. I didn’t want to hurt him.
“You couldn’t have known,” I said. Who could’ve known that me running off meant I’d be hit by a car shortly after? No one was psychic. No one knew the future. And if someone did, could they find their way to me and tell me what I had to do to make this situation better? When Declan pursed his lips, I added, “Please don’t blame yourself.”
If anyone was to blame, it was me. I was the one who told him off, told him all those things, and then ran off like a child throwing a tantrum. I should’ve known by now that life wasn’t about running away, even when you were scared. Life was about facing things head-on and hoping, praying that you’ll live through it.
“But I do,” Declan whispered.
I found myself reaching for him, hating that he felt this way. My hand found his, and our fingers intertwined. A foolish thing to do when I had to put distance between us, but I couldn’t take the sad puppy dog look he wore. I wanted to make everything better for Declan, to save Will and protect him. After everything he’d been through, it was the least he deserved.
Declan was a little rough around the edges, but he deserved a good life, and a good girlfriend, both of which he could never have while I was around.
“Don’t,” I said, squeezing his hand as hard as I could. Probably not that hard, considering how weak I felt. “It’s not your fault.” The boy beside me had a penchant for blaming himself, especially with what happened to Sabrina. This, what happened to me, was not his fault, and I wanted him to know it.
“If you would’ve died, I…” Declan quieted, gazing down steadily at our entwined hands. “I don’t know what I would’ve done. I can’t lose you and Will.” His shoulders slumped, and if I wasn’t stuck with an IV, I would’ve gotten out of this bed and crawled onto his lap to comfort him.
Not a position friends took with each other, but we were past that point, now. Far past it.There was no pretending with us.
“You’re not going to lose me,” I told him, firm, “and you’re not going to lose Will. We’re stronger than we look.” I wished I knew for a fact about Will, but I also knew that if Ray wanted him dead, he’d be dead. This was a warning, and by God, I was going to heed it.
No more mistakes.
Declan gave me a soft, pained smile, as if he was the one who was just hit by a car. Ludicrous. He reached into his pocket, pulling out…my phone, cracked screen and all. Shattered after being dropped on the bathroom floor. The police officers must’ve told him about it. “I’m going to run to the store,” he said. “Get you a new one. I’ll have them transfer everything over and pay for it.”
These rich boys and their money, flashing it around for everyone to see. I didn’t want to take the charity, but at this point, I was neck-deep in medical dept—unless he was paying that again, too. I was going to owe my firstborn child to the Briggs family for everything they’d done for me.
I didn’t have the money to pay for a replacement, and I sure as hell didn’t want to call my mom and tell her about what happened—and I really, really hoped Dean Briggs would mind his own business and not call her, too—so I said, “Thank you.” Taking the charity with a smile on my face was ridiculously hard. Practically impossible, but I managed.
His fingers tightened around mine after he returned the phone to the pocket in his jeans. “Ash, what you said before running off…what did you mean?” Declan chose to ask the one question I didn’t want to answer, ever. “You said everything was your fault, that it wasn’t about me, it was about you.”
He didn’t have to repeat my words. Though I’d spoken them all in a panic, I remembered them well enough; I just didn’t want to talk about them or discuss them in any way. Was that too much to ask?
“What did you mean by that?” Declan pressed further, leaning over towards me, his mouth a thin line. He was serious, intent on me, and for the life of me, I could not look away. “Is there something I should know?” Secrets were the one thing Declan wasn’t a fan of, and after Sabrina, who could blame him?
But my secrets weren’t exactly along the lines of I’m having an affair with one of your best friends. My secrets were dangerous, and unlike Sabrina, I didn’t keep a journal—or two journals, technically—of all of my thoughts. Everything in my head was strictly in my head, which, perhaps, was the reason I appeared so confident and collected, calm and cool, the picture-perfect girl who could handle anything Hillcrest and its monstrous rich boys threw at her.
The truth? The truth was I wasn’t. The truth was that it was all a facade, one I hoped everyone would believe, even me. If I pretended to be so strong, surely it would become a real strength. When you wore a mask, eventually that mask became a part of yourself, or at least that was the goal.
That had been the plan…but just like my plan to forget Ray and everything about him, all of the time I’d spent with him, it was shot to hell by the reemergence of the one person I never wanted to see again.The infamous man himself.
I was slow to pull my hand from his, looking away, fixating my gaze on the windowsill on the other side of the room. A part of me pictured Ray popping up like fucking Spiderman on the outside of the window, and I rolled my eyes at myself. So stupid. Ray had me feeling…not at all like myself.
