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MILA
Idon’t go to school all week.
Dad’s worried, so much that he makes me talk to Kate on Wednesday. I tell her I have my period; my cramps are worse than usual, and I have been so run down, I think I have a cold coming on. I just need to rest, and I’ll be fine soon.
She’s sweet and tells Dad I’m fine. But she also tells me that, when I’m ready, she’s there to talk. But if I don’t talk to her, I should talk to someone. I love that she notices I’m not okay. My own mother, who still hadn’t spoken to me since I left, wouldn’t have seen this. She would have said, “Get up, get over it. Cramps are normal.”
“I’ve seen you getting close with Asher. If you want to talk to him, I can ask him to come over.”
Ugh…Asher isn’t going to help me. He would probably just go put his fist into Jace’s nose, and I can’t have that on my conscience. He has a game tonight, and Dad asked me to come. Asher texted me and told me he has a blue jersey waiting for me. But I couldn’t make myself go.
Hunter has been over every day. He’s been really worried about me, and just like he said, he brought me chocolate, ice-cream, and tampons…six different boxes because he didn’t know which ones I liked. I never asked for any of it; he took it upon himself to do that for me.
He has cheered me up, but when he asks what’s wrong, I don’t know how to tell him. He’s best friends with Jace and has been saying all week that “Jace will come around. He’s just being moody and shit.”
But where do I even go from here?
I have only ever felt like this once before…the weeks after Mom dragged me to live with her, and I missed my friends so much that I cried for three weeks.
Sleeping, sad movies, and chocolate have gotten me through this week, and I have ignored every one of Hunter’s calls to me tonight.
There’s a party somewhere, and he probably wants me to go.
I roll over, hug my old teddy bear to my chest, and stare at my laptop. It’s playing P.S I Love You for the tenth time this week. My eyes are raw from all the tears, but this movie, it just gets me every time. If I want to cry, all I have to do is look at the name of the movie, and the tears start to flow. Hell, maybe I should move to Hollywood and become an actress with how fast and easy I can cry to this movie.
My door slams open, and I gasp, scrambling from my bed. I get caught in my sheets and land with a thud on the floor. My heart races—someone’s in my room. Someone broke into my house. I panic, trying to find a weapon, but all I have is my sketch pads and a pencil beside me. I reach out and grip the pencil tightly, holding it out in front of me to stop whoever is in my room.
“Mila?”
“Hunter?” I look over my bed to Hunter, who looks worried.
“I called you on your phone and you didn’t pick up. And I’ve been calling out to you from downstairs.”
I press my hand to my chest to stop my heart form racing and try to even out my breathing. “Holy shit, Hunter.” I take a deep breath and slowly let it out while he watches what I’m doing. “You gave me a heart attack.”
“Shit, I’m sorry about that, but Roman’s in trouble. I need your help to get through to him. He’s gonna fight at The Shed tonight, and he’s still got broken ribs and his hand isn’t looking great either.
“I think it’s infected, but he won’t go get it checked out. He looks like shit. I need you to come with me. I think you’re the only one who can get through to him.”
I scramble up to my feet and rush to my closet, throwing on a pair of jeans and a hoodie over my sports bra. I don’t have time; we need to get Roman. God, I’ll be so devastated if he’s hurt because I didn’t answer Hunter’s calls.
I’d crawled into a deep, dark hole this week and forgotten about Roman. How he’d acted so different on Monday, pushing me away. All this week, I have sobbed and eaten my weight in chocolate while he’s been fighting his own inner demons, needing someone there to chase them away.
That person’s gonna be me.
The Shed is huge. I’ve heard about it before; it’s one of those places you hear about in a story. You don’t go there.
Men outnumber women here, like a hundred to one. For something underground and illegal, it’s set up well. There is standing room, and the stands surround all four sides of the ring in the middle of the floor.
Hunter keeps me close to his side, and I’m grateful. The way men leer scares me. Hunter isn’t strong enough to protect me from all of them.
“We need to find Roman or Arthur. He called me, told me I need to come down and talk him out of the fight,” Hunter yells over the men cheering.
They were cheering on two men fighting. I gasp, and cold chills run though my body. That tattoo…on his chest. A daisy. My Daisy. Hunter tries to pull me, but my hand is covering my mouth, and I can’t speak.
Roman’s face is covered in so much blood, it’s unrecognizable. Hunter finally looks over and see’s what I do. When we first looked over, I wouldn’t have known it was him. The other guy is landing blow after blow.
“Fuck, fuck, where’s Jace when all this is going down? Fuck’s sake.” Hunter pulls me through the screaming crowd; they’re not happy that we’re pushing in front of them. A few shove Hunter, but he just keeps on pushing through and dragging me behind.
