12. Roman
Chapter 12
Roman
I ’ve been restlessly tapping my fingers against the sofa for the past thirty minutes, trying to shake off this gnawing feeling in my gut. My phone’s been buzzing with missed calls from Elijah, but I haven’t picked up yet.
Part of me is avoiding him. Something is telling me that when I answer that phone, our whole world is changing. The other part of me knows that whatever he wants to talk about, it won’t be good. Because Elijah doesn’t make phone calls, he texts.
I’m too fucking restless to think straight.
Crew’s lounging on the couch, his eyes glued to the TV, but I can tell he’s not really watching. He’s been quiet for the past hour. Too quiet.
Whatever’s hanging in the air, it’s heavy.
My phone buzzes again. Elijah’s name flashes on the screen.
I hesitate for a moment before answering. “Hello?”
“Roman,” his voice cracks. I’ve never heard him like this before, and my heart skips a beat. It’s a little too broken. “I need you to meet me somewhere. Now. Bring Crew.”
“Why?”
“It’s about Sc...” he clears his throat, “It’s about her.”
A cold wave of dread rushes over me. My throat feels tight like someone’s squeezing it from the inside. “What’s happened?” I almost shout, but I keep it steady, trying not to sound like I’m already losing control.
“I don’t want to tell you over the phone. Meet me at unit ten.” Elijah’s voice falters, and his words sound jagged like he’s fighting to get them out.
“We’ll be there in fifteen.”
I hang up the phone, and the silence that follows is deafening. Crew doesn’t say anything, but the way his eyes narrow tells me he already knows something’s wrong. My pulse is hammering in my ears, and the weight in my chest is unbearable. I can’t breathe properly, like I’m drowning in some bottomless, dark pit.
“We need to meet E at the unit. It’s about Scar.” I say, my voice hollow. “Let’s go.”
Crew stands up, his body stiff, but he doesn’t ask any more questions. We both know we won’t get answers until we’re at the unit.
The drive feels like it takes forever, even though it’s only a few minutes away. The air is thick with dread. I keep glancing at Crew, but he’s focused on the road, not giving me anything, which is terrifying. He could lose his shit, go completely off the rails or shut down on us and take months to find his way back. I’m not sure if either of us knows what to say or if we’re just trying to avoid saying something we might both regret.
We’ve done a lot of that lately. Hurting people we shouldn’t, but we do it to survive.
We finally pull up to the unit, and I turn off the engine. The parking lot is deserted since we bought out the unit and the ones surrounding it. We needed a place that was just ours, with no strings attached to my dad. There is nothing here he can hold over my head to make me compliant.
Elijah’s car is already here. He’s probably been waiting longer than us, stewing in whatever he needs to tell us.
We get out of the car without a word and make our way to the entrance. The hallway is dimly lit, the flickering light overhead casting an eerie glow. I reach for the door handle, but my hand stops just before I touch it.
I don’t want to go in, and I don’t want to hear whatever Elijah has to say.
But I have to.
I open the door.
Elijah’s standing in the middle of the room, his face pale, eyes red-rimmed from crying or lack of sleep —maybe both. The look on his face hits me like a freight train. His body’s tense, like a man who’s been holding everything in but is now close to falling apart.
“Elijah?” I say, jolting him as his red-rimmed eyes flick to mine. “What happened?”
He doesn’t answer right away. Instead, he looks away, his eyes trained on the ground, almost like he can’t bring himself to look at us.
Finally, he opens his mouth, his voice ragged. “She’s gone.”
The words hit me like a punch to the gut. Gone? What the hell does that mean?
My thoughts scatter, trying to latch on to something—anything—but nothing makes sense.
She can’t be gone. Maybe we could go after her and drag her back?
“Gone?” Crew repeats, stepping forward, his eyes searching Elijah’s. “Can’t we just go after her?”
Elijah looks up at us, his eyes haunted, and I know that neither of us are going to like what he says next.
“She’s dead, Crew.”
The words hang in the air, heavy, suffocating. I blink, trying to make sense of what Elijah just said. His words don’t register at first. Dead? What the hell is he talking about?
She can’t be dead.
Not Reyes.
I glance at Crew, expecting him to say something, to make it all make sense, but he stands there, frozen, his face draining of color. I turn back to Elijah, my mouth dry, trying to form a response.
“Dead?” I repeat, but it feels wrong, as if I’m trying to make sense of a foreign language. “How... how do you know? Maybe you’re wrong. Maybe it’s a mistake.”
Elijah doesn’t answer right away, his gaze falling to the ground again. His chest rises and falls with each labored breath like he’s struggling to hold himself together.
“They found her bag on the beach, all her schoolwork inside. Soaked from being out in the water.”
“And what about her? Did they find her ?” I ask, needing him to say it. “Maybe she’s just gone for a while,” I say, trying to push the words out, even though they sound ridiculous as soon as they leave my mouth.
Gone for a while?
What the hell does that even mean? But I can’t stop myself from saying it because if I don’t, I’ll have to accept the truth. And I can’t do that. Not yet.
Crew is still standing there, but I see the way his fists are clenched at his sides. The way his jaw is tight. He’s not saying anything, not even moving. It’s like he’s waiting for something, like he’s hoping Elijah will say that he’s joking.
“Crew?” I look at him, but he doesn’t look back. His eyes are glassy, and for a split second, I swear he looks like he’s somewhere far, far away.
“No body...” Elijah chokes out, “They didn’t find a body, but they found her shoes and her bag. She’s gone,” Elijah says again, his voice barely a whisper now, like he’s not even speaking to us. His eyes lift, red and puffy, and I see the devastation there, raw and real.
As if we haven’t been making her life hell the last few years.
I can see the guilt in his eyes—the kind that twists your insides until you can’t breathe.
Could we have done something different? Something to change the outcome?
But there’s nothing to change now. There’s nothing to fix, and we need to just get on with it.
I say as much, hating how they both flinch at my words, but we have a plan, and the loss of the girl who used to be our best friend won’t stop me from finally taking down my dad.
Crew suddenly takes a step back. His entire body tenses like he’s about to snap. His eyes are distant, lost, and I can see him shutting down right in front of me.
I want to grab him, shake him. Make him understand we can’t turn away from the plan, but it’s like he knows my next move because he moves out of my reach, shaking his head. “Don’t,” he rasps. “Don’t fucking touch me.”
Elijah’s still standing there, barely holding it together.
He’s broken in a way I’ve never seen before, not even after his dad left him for dead on the floor.
“We can’t stop,” I say, my voice sounding hollow, like I’m trying to convince myself as well as them. “We can’t stop just because she’s dead. She iced us out. So what if she’s gone?”
Crew’s gaze flickers towards me, and I see the rage in his eyes. He’s never dealt with loss well, not since losing his parents when he was young. He wants to react, to hit me and unleash the monster that we all know lurks under the surface, but he’s lost in the fog.
I can feel it too — an ugly mix of rage and sorrow, but there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
“Don’t do that,” Elijah says, his voice barely audible. “They said she must have drowned. They’re still searching, but...” he stops himself. “She’s gone, and yes, we made her life hell, but it’s because we were told to. I never stopped caring.”
I scoff before I can stop myself. “Could’ve fooled me. You liked seeing her hurt.”
“Because she left us!” he roars, his fists clenching at his side. “She left us and never told us why. All we got after was silence, and it killed me because I couldn’t fix it, and now she’s gone. I liked hurting her because she hurt us, I didn’t want her fucking dead.”
“Exactly, she’s gone. There’s nothing to fix anymore, so we need to focus on the plan.”
I glance at Crew, hoping to see he understands, but he’s pacing, his fists clenches at his sides, jaw set. His movements are jerky, like he’s trying to keep himself together, but it’s all too much. I know he’s hurting, but he needs to be on my side.
“You need to snap out of it, Crew,” I say, the words coming out sharper than I intend. “We don’t have the luxury of caring about a girl who stopped caring about us. We need to stick to the plan.”
Crew looks up at me, eyes wild, and for a moment, I wonder if I’ve pushed him too far. “I can’t,” he says, “I won’t. I’m a monster who tortured her daily, and I liked it. I enjoyed watching how her face crumpled when we threw those words at her, and I liked how she flinched when we covered her in juice and blood. We did this, all of this. She’s gone because of us.”
The guilt in his eyes is suffocating. Unable to take it anymore, I turn back to Elijah, desperate for them to help me. “Elijah.” I can’t stop now. I can’t let this be the end of it, not after everything we’ve done to get here. “We finish what we started,” I say, meeting their eyes, already hating myself for what I’m about to say next.
“For her.”