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“Promise me, Shiloh. Promise me you’ll live your life. Don’t wait for me.”
“No, I’m not going to promise that. I can’t.”
“You have to.” He swallowed hard. “I’m letting you go, Shiloh. You have to let me go, too.”
I stared, agony clawing at my heart. “No. No. I will not let you do this. I will not…”
Right before my eyes, the love fell out of Ronan’s expression. Turned ice cold. Sto
ny. His gaze flattened; his tone emptied of humanity. “I did it. I beat up Frankie. I wanted to kill him for messing up your shop.”
I sat back, pushed by the sudden danger emanating off of him. “You’re lying.”
“I’m going to take the plea deal.”
“No. You can’t. You’re just saying this to push me away. It won’t work.”
He rubbed his bruised knuckles as if drawing my attention to them. “I couldn’t protect my mother, Shiloh. I can protect you.” He tilted his chin up, the dead tone in his voice sending shivers down my spine. “Frankie won’t bother you again.”
“Ronan…”
A CO stopped behind him. “Time’s up, Wentz.”
“No, not yet,” I said, panic rising in me.
This cannot be how it ends. It cannot…
“Time’s up, Shiloh,” Ronan said gruffly, the emotion he’d been trying to hide seeping through the cracks. “End of the road.”
Quickly, he looked away and let himself be taken from me.
I sat, stunned and unable to move, a sick, heavy feeling settling over my chest—years of being without Ronan, pressing me down.
“No…”
It was a tiny whisper, lost in the muted conversations of the County Jail visitors’ center that faded away to nothing.
The next day, I sat in a Santa Cruz Superior Courtroom, wedged between Bibi and Maryann Greer—one of Ronan’s tenants. They squeezed my hands, held me up as Ronan entered a plea of guilty. The judge’s words would jolt me from sleep in a cold sweat for a hundred nights after.
“Ronan August Wentz, for felony aggravated battery resulting in great physical injury and injuring with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, you are hereby sentenced to ten years at the federal penitentiary, San Quentin State Prison.”
It was so simple. Over so quickly. With one slam of the gavel, the judge snatched ten years from Ronan’s life and ruined mine. Before I could even begin to process it, a guard was walking him out.
Ronan looked back at me, and for a split second, the hard exterior he’d shown me in the jail, cracked. His eyes revealed everything—the agony in their smoky depths.
They said goodbye.
Someone let out a sob, and I realized it was me.
The following week, I tried arranging another visit, but Ronan wouldn’t take my calls. Then I tried showing up and found out my name wasn’t on the approved visitor list.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “Who approves the list?”
The woman behind the glass smiled pityingly. “The inmate, honey.”
A few days later, after Ronan had been transferred to San Quentin, I tried there too. I got the same response. Ronan had meant what he said about me moving on and living my life. Not waiting for him.
Except he was my life and waiting for him or not wasn’t a choice I could make.
