Her breath hitches as her eyes swing across and lock with mine.
“If the courts had stepped in and assumed guardianship over you, then I wouldn’t have had a choice. Doctor Mayfair would have taken custody of you and plopped you into that group home. Maybe that would’ve been the right choice. Maybe Mayfair could’ve made you feel safer last night when that shit was going down. Maybe you wouldn’t have had nightmares in the first place, since you would’ve been in an environment not wildly different from the hospital. It’s entirely possible putting you in a room in my home triggered your nightmare, Rose, and if you won’t talk about it, and you won’t eat, and you regress into this person who won’t even talk to me, then what else am I supposed to think except that I chose wrong?”
A single, devastating tear trickles onto her cheek, searing a line over her pale flesh and down to dangle from her jaw. She lowers her eyes to my offered spoon, the overflowing Frosted Flakes, then she exhales a shuddering breath and hooks her hand around the bowl of Cocoa Krispies instead.
She picks up the spoon I’ve already eaten from and shakily brings it to her mouth. “He hurt you.”
Stunned, I rock back on my stool. “What?”
“In my dream.” She presses a trembling hand to her chest. “He stabbed you. Over and over and over again. I tried to stop it,” she whimpers. “But I couldn’t.”
“Who?” I become the ultimate hypocrite, setting my spoon down and ignoring my breakfast. “Who stabbed me, Rose?”
“Liam, I think.” She sniffles and stares down at the counter. At the overflowing vase of flowers. At the lint on her hoodie. She stares anywhere but at me. “Liam is my friend. He said you were my friend, too. But then the storm rolled in, and he started shouting at me. Then you had…” She shakes her head, an errant tear falling from her jaw and into her cereal. “I don’t want to talk about it, because I thought Liam was my friend. And I don’t want you to get hurt, especially not because of me.” She drags shimmering, tear-filled eyes up and cuts me with her devastated gaze. “Maybe it’s not a dream at all.”
“Rose—”
“Maybe it was a premonition, and if that’s true, then Ishouldhave gone to The Wallflower. You’ve spent the last two weeks trying to helpme, but what if the only person truly at risk isyou?” Her breath hitches, bouncing painfully through her chest. Angry, she sets her spoon back in her bowl. “I don’t want to be the reason you get hurt.”
“I’m not in danger.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you don’t know what came before, remember? You didn’t dream of the past, and you can’t predict the future. And sinceI’myour best friend now, youronlyfriend, at least until we get this mess figured out, your subconscious cruelly taunted you with the idea of losing me.” I reach across the counter and lay my hand over hers. “I’m not going anywhere, Rose, and I’m not in danger. I just need your subconscious to calm the hell down andnotattack my friend the way it did last night. I need you to eat. And not freeze me out when something happens.” I tuck a loose lock of hair behind her ear, clearing it off her face, and, searching her eyes, I paste on the kindest, most convincing smile I can muster. “Everything’s gonna be okay. Okay?” I lay my hand atop hers once more. “I promise.”
ROUND TWENTY
OLLIE
I walk through the gym’s front doors two days after Rose’s discharge from the hospital, my training bag in one hand and my buzzing phone in the other. It’s cold as balls outside, and my stomach aches at the thought of leaving Rose at the house alone. But I need to face the fire and see my friends. Show proof of life, since text replies are, according to them, not good enough. I need to spar before I vibrate clear out of my fuckin’ skin. And Rose needs a chance to stand on her own two feet.
According to her.
Go, Ollie.
I’m fine, Ollie.
I’ll just sit here and watch a movie. I have to get used to this, right? Because you’re back on shift tomorrow, and if I can’t handle an hour alone, how the hell will I handle twelve?
Just because she speaks sense doesn’t mean I have to like it. But here I am anyway, walking face-first into the sweet stench of old sweat and dirty boxing gloves. And better yet, my sister isnotwaiting for me at the front desk, which means I breathe a little easier for the extra five seconds afforded to me.
Not that it lasts.
“There you are!” The moment I stop in the doorway to the main section of the gym, Eliza tosses her phone and tears the guard out of her mouth, tucking the rubber in the waistband of her training shorts for safekeeping. She cuts a sharp path across the room, and while she moves, Tommy’s eyes come up. Chris’. Cliff’s.
They were rolling. Now, they stare. They were working hard, all of them, while school is in and most others with a gym membership are at their day jobs, but now they pant, searching for fresh air and glaring across at me.
“I was coming to your place this afternoon if you didn’t show.” Eliza stops in front of me and slams her hand against my solar plexus, damn near folding me in half with the power of her strike. But then she steps into my arms and hugs me anyway, burying her face against my chest and crushing my ribs with the tight wrap of her arms. “You’ve always been the nice one, Ol. But not the stupid one. Not impulsive.” Pulling back, she stares up at me through glittering blue eyes. “You’d give a stranger the shirt off your back. Your last ten dollars. Your truck, even. But yourhome? And then you just up and disappear on us?”
“I didn’t disappear.” I toss my bag onto the mats, thethwumpechoing throughout the expansive room, followed by the creak of the gate on the cage as it opens and Watkins men—two of them, identical, sweaty, and bloody—stride onto the black rubber mats. Cliff follows, his eyes narrowed as he looks me up and down.
“Ollie!”
“I replied toallof your texts.” I bring my focus back to my sister. “Every single one of them.”
“And you avoided the gym,” she snaps. “Because texting is a cop-out and you know it. It’s not facing accountability head-on.”
“I’m not avoiding accountability! I’m trying to help a scared woman settle into her new home.”
