One of the detectives standing beside Knox speaks gently. “It may help establish where she was going and her state of mind before the assault. If he was luring her somewhere or following her and she found out, that could explain her Jeep cockeyed in the road and corroborate the witnesses saying he cut her off.” The detective looks back at Charm and Aura. “We need to know what happened before the assault.”
That word hits the hallway like something ugly and official.
Assault.
Aura’s jaw tightens. Charm starts crying harder, and every second they stand there trying to protect Bliss’s privacy while Bliss is somewhere behind those doors makes something violent and desperate crawl up my throat.
“Why did she leave the apartment?” I ask.
Aura looks at me, wrecked.
I step closer without meaning to. Ryan’s hand lands between my shoulders, not stopping me, just reminding me there are people around us, detectives, cops, her father, her brothers, a whole hospital hallway I cannot tear apart because I can’t get to her.
“Aura,” I say, and my voice comes out too sharp, too loud. I drag in a breath and force it down even though every part of me is shaking under my skin. “Just fucking tell me why she left! Sheknew I was meeting her there after practice. Why the fuck did she leave?”
They cry harder as Ryan squeezes my shoulder.
“Please, just tell me what you know!”
The please breaks something in their faces.
Charm reaches for Aura’s hand, and Aura holds on like they need each other to carry the weight of it.
“She was coming to you,” Aura says, her voice barely steady.
Everything in me stops.
Charm wipes at her face and nods quickly, like if Aura started it, she can make herself finish. “She was freaking out all day, but not in a bad way. She was happy. Scared, yeah, because she’s Bliss and feelings make her act like she’s being audited by the government, but she was happy. We got her ready. She wore your hoodie, the cropped one, and her jeans and her white Nikes, and she kept checking her purse because she had this whole plan.”
My throat closes. “What plan?”
Aura swallows. “We went with her to Trinkets and Things.”
Knox’s eyes flick toward one of the detectives, who immediately starts writing something down.
“She bought you a Never,” Aura says.
For one second, I don’t understand the words because they are too small for what they do to me.
“What?”
“A marble,” Charm states. “A blue one. She picked it because it looked like your eyes.”
The hallway blurs at the edges while one of the detectives looks at Knox. “What’s a Never?”
Knox starts explaining my girl’s wild therapeutic marble addiction to a detective like any of this could make sense to someone who doesn’t speak Bliss.
“She bought it with us,” Aura says, looking straight at me now, because she knows this part matters. “She wanted to add good back into her Nevers. That was the whole point. She said if Cindy was still alive, she would have told her all about you. She was coming to tell you that you were a Never.”
I can’t breathe.
Physically can’t.
“I’m a Never?”
“A good one. She hasn’t had a good Never in a while, Cade. She wanted to talk to you about catching feelings for you and show you your marble.”
Anyone listening to this would think it is nonsense, but to me, it is everything.
