When You Come Back to Me (Lost Boys #2) - Emma Scott Page 0,47
shock in anyone else. “Whitmore?”
I nodded. “I’d rather not talk about it. Except Amber’s night and mine have some surprising similarities.”
Ronan snorted a laugh and then was quiet for a minute, his eyes as gray as the ocean. “I was thinking about bringing someone here.”
I frowned. “Who do you know besides us? And Vice Principal Chouder doesn’t count.”
Chouder was in charge of student discipline. Ronan spent more time in his office than in an actual classroom.
“Shiloh Barrera.”
“Don’t know her. Or him.”
“Her.”
It was one syllable and yet the hairs on my arms stood up the way his low, rumbling voice infused it with something close to reverence.
“It’s fine by me, but do you need majority approval?”
“I haven’t asked Miller yet,” Ronan said. “I will.”
The fact he asked me first was enough to have me reaching for my flask, but I’d emptied it before the end of the school day.
Ronan turned his head to me slowly. “If you ever want to bring—”
“No,” I said flatly. “Not going to happen. His baggage plus my baggage exceeds maximum limits.”
Ronan nodded. “If anything changes—”
“It won’t.”
“If it does,” he said, his tone hard, “bring him.”
Night’s shadows creeped across the floor of the guesthouse. It wasn’t hot enough for a fire, but I had the fireplace going anyway while I sat at my desk, scribbling in my journal. My hand moved across the page in a blur.
River hadn’t been in class for the last two days.
His empty chair conjured all kinds of terrible metaphors. Absence. Solitude. Isolation. In the immortal words of Miss Britney, my loneliness was killing me, but at least seeing River in class once a day—even if nothing could ever happen between us—was something. Now there wasn’t even that.
A little after one a.m., I stretched my fingers as my phoned chimed a text from an unfamiliar number.
Hey, it’s River. Another text came while I panicked like a dope. Can I call you?
You don’t feel like a stranger anymore.
I jabbed, Yes.
My phone lit up and I played hard-to-get—I let it ring twice before answering.
“It’s late,” I said coldly.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
His voice sounded haggard, as if it’d been dragged through the mud, crumbling my defenses instantly.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s my mom. It’s been bad lately. It might… It might be the end. And I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t be calling you. I didn’t know who else… I don’t have anyone else I can talk to. None of the guys get it. It’s too fucking real.”
My throat suddenly felt thick. “Where are you?”
“In the hospital. She has some kind of infection…spiked a fever. I’m in a hallway somewhere. I didn’t know what else to do. I feel like I’m going crazy.”
River’s words tapered to a whisper and I could see him in a cold hospital hallway, maybe leaning against the wall, letting it prop him up.
I hated that he was alone.
He came back on the line, his voice breathy and tight.
“Sorry.”
“Stop apologizing,” I said softly, and another image came to me, one of River reaching out in the dark, grasping for something—someone—to hold on to. I scoured my collection of therapy sessions for something that would help him. But none of it helped me because no one asked the one question I’d been begging someone to ask.
“River.”
“Yeah?”
“What do you need?”
I held my breath until I heard him exhale his. When he spoke again, the pain had loosened its grip on him a little.
“I don’t know. Just talk to me. I need to get out of my head for a minute. I’m so fucking scared. I don’t know what’s going to happen next, and I’m having a thousand terrible thoughts, one right after the other.”
“Pick one.”
“What?”
“Pick one terrible thought. Grab it out of the air.”
“Okay.”
“Now tell me what it is.”
“I…I hate that she’s suffering,” he said, his voice cracking. “And I can’t take it from her. But I would. I’d take all of it…”
And this time he broke. I heard his sobs, muffled and low.
“I’m here,” I said. “I’m here, okay?”
After a few moments, he inhaled deep and let it out on a shaky exhale. “Thanks, that helped. It helped to get some of it out.”
“I’ll have to try it sometime.”
A silence descended and Saturday night at the pool slowly crept in between everything we weren’t saying.
“Holden…”
“Don’t.”
“I want to. To apologize.”
“I told you, I’m not asking anything of you.”
“I know but… I’ve been a dick in class and now I’m calling you up in the middle of the night and dumping my shit in your lap. Things are just