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For a moment she just stared at it in numb disbelief. In everything that happened, she had completely forgotten about it. She held the ring in her hand and inspected its exquisite beauty. She watched the way the light reflected onto her palm and how when she turned the ring, those reflections danced. It was the only thing he had ever wanted, and he had given it to her. Seconds ticked by while she fought to keep her fracturing emotions together. Was she feeling sadness? Yes. But was it also regret? And despair?
Maddy made a decision. He deserved to know. Although she could never be with him, and even though she would never see him again, he deserved to know the truth about how she felt. After what she had done at the station, she owed him that much. Getting up, she rummaged through her dirty jeans on the floor until she found her old flip phone. She turned it on, navigated to the recent call log, and dialed Gwen’s number.
The phone rang three times, then picked up.
“Maddy?” Gwen asked skeptically. Her familiar voice caused Maddy’s throat to tighten.
“Hey,” Maddy got out.
“OMG! Where are you?”
“I’m back home. Gwen, I have a favor to ask.”
There was a brief pause on the other end of the line.
“Yeah, anything. What do you need?”
Maddy looked at the Divine Ring in her hand.
“I need to drop off something. Do you think you could borrow your mom’s car and drive me?”
“I can’t,” Gwen said.
“Oh,” Maddy said, her heart sinking, “okay, then—”
“But I can drive you and then return it before my mom finds out, how about that?”
Maddy smiled in relief.
“That sounds perfect. Can you wait down the street?” She didn’t know if Kevin would let her go, so she wasn’t going to take any chances.
“No prob,” Gwen said. “I’ll come right now.”
Maddy flipped the phone shut. She dropped the necklace and the Divine Ring back under her shirt and felt the ring thump lightly against her chest.
Rifling around in her drawers, she found some old stationery and a pen. She thought only for a moment, then wrote:
Jacks, I’m sorry for being stubborn and impossible, and I’m so sorry for what happened. I know now that I am drawn toward you just as much as you are drawn toward me, and without you, I will always feel incomplete. I lied in the sta
tion, but I did it for a good reason. The truth is . . . I care about you very much. Please know that—and please never try to find me or contact me again.
—M
Fishing out a blank envelope from the desk, Maddy stuffed everything in her pocket. Then she stopped.
She didn’t know where he lived.
He had never taken her there, and she didn’t even know where to begin looking—beyond the assumption it was somewhere in the Angel City Hills. She paced back and forth for almost a minute before something occurred to her. She got down on her knees and looked under her bed. It was too dark to see, so she stuck her hand out and swept it back and forth across the carpet. Hair ties, old homework, her iPod box. Then her fingers curled around a folded crinkled pamphlet, and she pulled it out. Bingo. She threw her hoodie back on, stuffed the pamphlet in her pocket along with everything else, and slipped as quietly as she could out her bedroom window.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
“We’re going where?” Gwen’s tone was incredulous as she drove. She had just picked up Maddy in her mom’s blue Volvo, greeting Maddy with a crushing BFF hug. She was wearing a Team Maddy shirt that she had perfectly distressed to match her denim skirt and high-heel sandals.
“Relax,” Maddy said, “I know how to get there.”
“Oh, really? And how’s that?”
Maddy produced the crinkled, dusty Angel map from her back pocket, the one Gwen had bought last summer that had almost gotten them both grounded.
