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“If you think I’m just going to sit by and let this happen,” I started, focusing on Ash, “you’re wrong.”
Travis opened his mouth, but said nothing. Odd, because he was never at a loss for words.
“I told you I was going to fight for you,” I went on, oblivious to the awkwardness around me. “And I meant it. I meant every single word I told you, Ash. I’m going to fight for you, even if you say it’s pointless. I refuse to give up on you. You don’t give up on the things you care for, and especially not the people you love.”
That was as good a declaration as any; I just hated that Travis was there to hear it all.
Ash’s expression didn’t change. “You think I was choosing Travis over you?” she asked, smart enough to know, especially after reading Sabrina’s pink diary, that I had experience losing to Travis.
A vein in Travis’s forehead throbbed, and he muttered quietly, “She asked me to leave.”
“Oh,” Ash spoke, forcing a clearly fake smile on her face as she glanced between Travis and I, “you’re forgetting the rest of it—and I didn’t ask. I told you to go. Big difference there, Travis.” She paused for a moment, as threatening and intimidating as any girl could be while stuck in a hospital bed. “Go and never come back.”
Wait.
What?
I stared between her and Travis, confused. I knew I wasn’t Travis’s biggest fan—for obvious reasons—but hearing her tell Travis to leave and not come back was…strange. She was telling both Travis and I to go? It didn’t seem right.
“I’m not going to—” Travis started, but Ash silenced him with a look.
One look was all it took to shut Travis up, which stunned me to my core. Never had a girl been so in control when it came to Travis. Travis was the dominant one, I knew.
“If you don’t leave right now, I’m going to call those cops back and tell them everything,” Ash threatened, and even though I had no idea what she alluded to, I knew she was serious. “So I suggest, if you don’t want that to happen, you get your ass out of here.” Her storm grey eyes turned to me. “You too, Declan. I want you both to leave.”
Travis stared at her for a while, keeping to his silence. I was about to ask what the hell she was talking about—because it sure seemed like she and Travis shared some kind of secret, which if I was honest, made me all different kinds of mad—but Travis set a hand on my arm, pushing me toward the door, taking me out with him.
Once we were in the hallway, the door separating us from Ash, I pulled away from him, shooting him a glare. “But I—”
“She wanted us to go,” Travis muttered, gazing steadily at the floor.
I was growing so very tired of everyone interrupting me, as if nothing I said mattered. I mattered. What I felt mattered. What I wanted to say mattered. Everyone around me was too lost in their own head to show a shred of common decency.
“What did she mean?” I asked, taking a step toward him. I wasn’t above fighting in a hospital. It would get us both thrown out, though—and that would stop me from seeing Will. As hard as it was, I had to hold it in and hold it back, at least while on hospital grounds. Once Travis and I were out of the hospital, it would be no holds barred.
Travis was silent, glancing at the room. The curtains had been drawn, and he couldn’t see her.
So many possibilities ran through my head at that point. It really was better for everyone if Travis just told me what Ash meant, because if he didn’t, my mind would automatically pick the worst possible thing to go with. And I didn’t think any of us wanted that, because it involved Sabrina.
It had crossed my mind before, the possibility that Travis had strung Sabrina up after forcing her to write a note. I’d read the diary Ash had given me, and I knew Sabrina was afraid of him. Ash had been a distraction, but of course my mind wondered whether Sabrina had tried to break things off with him, tried to end it and come back to me, and Travis didn’t like it, so he killed her.
How could my mind not wonder that?
“I said—”
“I heard what you said.” Travis looked up, glancing at a nurse walking by. The nurse was a young one, pretty, and she nonchalantly checked both of us out as she went past us. “Come on.” As he shoved his hands in his pockets, he turned on his heel and started walking away, not even bothering to wait to see if I would follow.
I would, mostly because I wanted answers. I needed answers.
Since I apparently had nothing better to do, I trailed after him, though I was not happy about it. I never wanted to spend any time with Travis, and yet here I was. It was like fate had suddenly decided it wasn’t done with us yet, and threw us together just for the fun of it. At this point, fate could fuck off, and I didn’t say that lightly.
We headed to one of the exits, and Travis took me to an outside sitting area. The metal bench had been in the sun for the last five hours, so I was certain it was beyond hot to the touch. It was fine, though, because neither of us made any moves to sit down. The conversation we were about to have wasn’t one you had when sitting down and relaxing.
“I’m assuming by now she showed it to you,” Travis said, eyeing me up as if I was some experiment on display, a new species he couldn’t quite figure out.
I had no idea what he was talking about, so I asked, “Showed me what?” Ash had shown me a lot of things, and most of them involved me learning to live again and not shut out the entire world. What that had to do with Travis, I didn’t rightly know.
“The diary.”
