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“The longest one he broke up with before starting university. She was going to Scotland.”
Good, she can stay there.
“I must be the most blind person on the planet. I had no idea about any of this.”
She laughs, and we get out of the car. “You’re not blind, Ainsley. He’s very good at acting.”
Penelope lets us into the house and leads me to a room off the foyer. I spot the table just before I follow her: the place I was arrested. That feels like a lifetime ago.
She flicks the light on and turns to me. “This is Casper’s office. Well, it’s a study, really, but he wants to sound more important than he is. Dad gave it to him when he got into uni. Not sure why since he was moving, but I guess he needed somewhere to work, and his bedroom is hardly big enough.”
I move deeper into the room. Facing me is a large oak desk with a high-back, black chair, as well as a whiskey decanter. Ever the professional.
“Why are you showing –” As I turn back to her, I gasp, spotting the reason she brought me here.
On the wall opposite a rather large desk is a framed photo ofme.
I step closer, and that’s when I see a bowl on the side table beneath the picture. In it is one of my coil hairbands, a wristband from a festival we all went to—one that Casper and I argued the entire weekend at—a black beaded bracelet I thought I’d lost at one of their parties, and a broken keyring I’d once had on my keys in the halls.
“Oh,” I mutter. “He kept this stuff.” I look up at myself on the wall. His panic to get me out of the house in case I snuck around and saw this makes sense now. He wouldn’t explain it, either. Probably because we had just started seeing each other, and let’s be real, this is kind of insane. Nothing will make someone run for the hills like having their photo on your wall and random old crap they once owned sitting in a bowl. Or it should. I’m not running because I’m equally as obsessed with him.
All of this is me. Little pieces of me. I feel the stitches on my heart mending lacerations from every horrible thing he’s ever said or done to me. I reach out and touch each item. Memories of times we’d been horrible to each other stare back at me—ones that mean so much to him that he kept them safe.
Penelope gets a phone call while I pick up the bracelet. These few things are all he had of me. When you get so little of someone, you take whatever you can. This is his whatever. Random junk I had forgotten about.
“What do you mean?”
Penelope’s tone pulls my attention back to her.
I turn to see her ashen face and teary eyes.
She lowers her phone. “Ainsley, that was my mum. The hospital called. Come on, we need go right now.”
My legs turn to jelly.
No.
CHAPTERTHIRTY-SEVEN
I can’t focus, and I can’t think rationally. Dante was wrong about his nine circles of Hell bullshit; I’ve visited more than a thousand of them since this morning. Hell isn’t physical torture, it’s someone you love being hurt.
“What did your mum sayspecifically?” I ask, needing confirmation.
“That he’s taken a turn for the worse.”
Red-hot pain pierces through my chest. “A turn for the worse, how?”
“I-I don’t know, Ainsley. I don’t know.”
He stopped breathing. His heart stopped beating. What? What the fuck is it?
Don’t they have machines to do all of that for a person now, though? They could put him on one of those until he’s stronger. Why would we need to prepare for anything?
There is no amount of preparation that could ever make you ready to say goodbye to a loved one. Absolutely none. All I can do is hold on and hope I won’t have to.
How many times today have people told me that he’s strong and will make it?
The lies we tell ourselves have a nasty habit of creeping up and reminding us that we have no control over anything. Eventually, we have to face the bitter truth, and I’m so scared that I’m going to walk into that hospital and have to face my worst nightmare.
