Chapter 17: Adela
Istandinfrontof my mirror at six in the morning, staring at the girl looking back at me.
She's not crying anymore. Her eyes are still swollen from last night, but her jaw is set. Her shoulders are straight. She's wearing black jeans and a simple sweater that covers her wrists — nothing special, nothing that screams grieving girlfriend. Because that's not who I'm going to be today.
Today, I'm closing a chapter.
My phone buzzes on the dresser. Beckett. He left early and promised he would come back.
I'm outside.
I grab my keys and leave without looking back at the pillow we shared on the floor, at the scissors still sitting on my desk, at the space where the laptop used to be.
When I step outside, he's leaning against his car, and the morning light makes the bruises on his face look worse somehow. Purple and yellow are spreading across his cheekbones. His lip is still swollen. He straightens when he sees me, and there's something in the way he moves — careful, protective, hovering just slightly closer than necessary.
I notice.
But I don't comment.
"Ready?" he asks.
I nod and slide into the passenger seat.
The drive to the hospital is quiet. Beckett doesn't try to fill the silence with small talk or reassurances. He drives, one hand on the wheel, occasionally glancing over at me like he's checking to make sure I'm still holding it together.
I am.
I think that worries him more than if I were falling apart. I don’t know how to explain it other than the look in his eyes when I catch him watching me.
The hospital comes into view. We park in the same lot where Beckett found me crying in my car just days ago. A lifetime ago.
I get out before he can come around to open my door.
Beckett falls into step beside me, close enough that our arms almost touch as we enter the building. We walk past the waiting room and into another place where I can talk to a nurse.
I focus on keeping my breathing steady. I've rehearsed what I'm going to say to Cody. How I'm going to stand beside his bed and tell him exactly what I think of him. How I'm going to say goodbye to the lie I've been living.
“I’m here to visit Cody Ravenshaw.”
She looks at her screen and opens the door for us.
“Thank you.”
I walk down the familiar hallway, past the nurses' station where they've started to recognize me. Past the other rooms.
To room 447.
The door is open.
I stop in the doorway, and the world tilts sideways.
The bed is empty.
Stripped bare, mattress exposed. The machines that kept him breathing are gone. The monitors that tracked his heartbeat — gone. The IV stand — gone. Even the chair I used to sit in while I cried and begged him to wake up has been removed.
"Where is he?" My voice comes out flat.
Beckett steps up beside me, his hand finding the small of my back. "Adela—"
