“Ross!” I hear Pete’s voice but I don’t stop.
I can’t.
It feels like someone just ripped the band-aid off and I’m bleeding out emotionally. The grief comes roaring back like this just happened yesterday, and I almost can’t breathe.
All I can do is keep moving.
I’m going to pack my shit and get on the first plane out of here.
I don’t even know where I’m going, I just have to get the hell away from here. From this. From them. I thought they were my friends. Found family. And it turns out they’re all liars. That hurts almost as much as losing Clara and the Rock-its all those years ago.
That pisses me off all over again.
Fuck this and fuck Onyx Knight.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Wynter
It’s been a week and I haven’t heard from Ross.
Not a phone call, text, or email.
Nothing.
Like we haven’t been planning a future together and falling in love and talking about moving in together.
No, he just decided to disappear without a word to anyone.
He quit his job and vanished. His phone is off, because it goes straight to voice mail, and all my texts stay on delivered instead of read. I was hurt the first few days but now I’m beyond annoyed. Worried. Scared.
If I’m honest, I go back and forth between concern and anger.
I didn’t know anything until Harley called to tell me about the letter Ross got and what happened between him and Tommy. Frankly, I was horrified for everyone involved. To make things worse, she said Tommy had no idea. He knew his father had been convicted of vehicular homicide, but his mother divorced his dad and moved them to California right after it happened.
He never knew who was killed or the details of what happened, and he legally changed his name to Thomas Bane when he was nineteen, wanting to separate himself from anything to do with his father.
Thomas Bancroft had been a mean, abusive drunk, so Tommy’s mother was glad to get as far away from him as possible. And at twelve years old, Tommy was just relieved that no one was knocking him or his mother around anymore. It never occurred to him to look up who his father’s victims were. Why would he? By the time he was an adult he completely cut his father out of his life without looking back.
And Ross never gave him a chance to explain. To talk things out. Instead, he quit his job and literally disappeared. The band is still reeling about the way it all went down and I’m both worried and hurt because he’s ghosted me as well. No one has been able to reach him, like he’s dropped off the face of the earth.
Luckily, work keeps me so busy I don’t have time to think about him until late at night, when I lay in bed and start overthinking everything.
Is he okay? Where did he go? Does he have anyone to turn to now that he’s not speaking to anyone in the band? As far as I know, he’s a loner. Onyx Knight is his job and his friend circle. He has acquaintances but I’ve never heard him talk about friends or family members he’s close to. People he could go to in a crisis.
That’s part of what makes this so hard. I want to be there for him and it bothers me that he won’t let me.
I understand why he got upset but he should have at least had a conversation with Tommy, gotten the whole story, before going off the deep end.
But even if Tommy knew the details of the accident, it’s not like it would have changed anything. He was a kid when it happened—it had nothing to do with him. He couldn’t control his father and went out of his way to distance himself from him once he became an adult. It was a long time ago, so I truly can’t understand why Ross didn’t give him a chance to explain.
Tommy was as confused and shocked as the others until Sasha filled them in after the fact.
And with each passing day I realize that our relationship probably wasn’t what I thought it was. He can’t possibly be as invested as I am if he could turn his back on me like this.
Can he?
It’s hard to know what to think, and I stare at my phone, willing it to ring.
