22. Roman
Chapter 22
Roman
S he’s alive.
The words play on a loop in my head like a fucking curse, a cruel joke the universe decided to play now I’m so close to taking down my dad. Every breath since last night has felt like a fucking lie.
I watched her dance—no, perform —like she hadn’t torn the souls out of us all.
Scarlett… no Siren.
Fitting name for a girl who was always too goddamn good at luring people in and leaving them wrecked.
I don’t remember driving home last night. Don’t remember anything past the flicker of the stage lights and the way her eyes locked on ours for the briefest of seconds—wild, wary, and full of pain and panic. I felt that stare like a knife to my chest.
She saw us, and she didn’t stop dancing until the music stopped, and then she fled.
Fled from us.
Now the sun’s up, but it somehow feels like the darkest day of my life. I shove open the door to Crew’s room in our dorm, and the stench of smoke and something else hits me like a wall. My shoes are muffled by the carpet littered with empty bottles and burnt-out joints. The black curtains are drawn tight, but it’s bright enough to see the outline of Crew’s body sprawled across the couch, shirtless, one arm dangling over the side like a forgotten puppet.
“Get the fuck up,” I growl, nudging his hand with my foot. He doesn’t move, and my jaw tightens as I stalk forward. I would be concerned he OD’d if his chest wasn’t moving. “Crew!”
Still nothing. I grab his shoulder and shake him—hard.
His eyes crack open, red-rimmed and hazy like he doesn’t know who’s standing over him. Then he flinches. “Roman?” he croaks.
“Yeah, it’s me. Congratulations, Crew, you’ve officially reached rock bottom.” My voice is pure venom, sharp and cold. “What the fuck is wrong with you? You said you were sober.”
He groans and rolls over, pulling a pillow onto his face. “She’s alive,” he mumbles from beneath it, and I have to resist the urge to press it down until he suffocates.
“And?”
“She was right there,” he says, voice breaking. “On that stage. Dancing like none of it ever happened. Like we didn’t mourn her, Roman. She ran… like we didn’t lose our fucking minds thinking she was dead.”
I yank the pillow off his face and throw it across the room. “You’re high again.”
His jaw clenches. He sits up, barely, resting his elbows on his knees. “Don’t start, Roman.”
“Don’t start?” I scoff, tamping down my anger so I don’t start shouting at him. I pace the room like a caged animal. “You OD’d three months ago, and you’re telling me not to start. You promised you were done, and here you are high as fuck because of that bitch.”
“She was dead!” he shouts. “I thought she was dead! We all did. You might not care, but I’ve been walking around half-alive since we found out, and the drugs were the only way I was going to survive the cavern she left in my chest where my heart should’ve been. So yeah, I’m high because she’s out there acting like none of it ever happened.”
His voice cracks, and I stop moving. There’s silence for a moment—only the sound of his ragged breathing and my pulse pounding in my ears.
“She left,” I say. “That’s it. You need to get over her.”
Crew’s voice becomes so quiet it’s basically a whisper. “She became someone else.”
And I think that’s what guts us all the most.
Scarlett—the girl who used to hum off-key while doing homework at my dining table, the one who cried when we would accidentally step on a snail and wore mismatched socks—is now Siren, who works at a fucking strip club.
A dancer. A siren. A ghost in stilettos.
“You think she’s doing it for the money?” I ask, trying to keep my tone nonchalant as if I don’t care. “Or is she doing it to prove something?”
Crew’s silence is answer enough. I scrub a hand over my face. “Where’s Elijah?”
Crew shrugs. “Didn’t come back.”
I pause. “No.”
He nods.
“No way.”
“He followed her after. Was parked outside the club since three a.m.,” Crew mutters.
“So he’s stalking her?” I sigh, pinching the bridge of my nose to try to get rid of this fucking headache their all causing me. I have enough to worry about than Scarlett fucking Reyes ruining everything I’ve worked so hard for the past two years, and I don’t care if she’s suddenly alive. I won’t let her destroy everything.
“Protecting.”
I laugh, the sound sharp and bitter. “Protecting her? From what? Us?”
Crew doesn’t say anything, just stares at me brokenly. We failed her. That’s what he’s saying without words.
And now she’s back from the dead, and I’m the only one angry. Because she did this. She vanished. Broke them. Left them bleeding and left me to pick up the pieces.
Now Crew’s high off his ass, Elijah’s spiraling, and I—I can’t breathe without wanting to rip something apart. Preferably her. She doesn’t get to come back and pretend like she’s the one who suffered.
She ruined us, and I’m going to make her understand what that cost.
I leave Crew passed out again, slumped on his bed with more regret in his eyes than I can stomach.
The quad is still quiet when I get outside. Everything feels like it’s been turned up since last night. The streets are sharp with color and sound. It’s like it’s been muted since she was gone. I can’t shake the image of her on that stage. Her body moving like the past never touched her, like she hadn’t disappeared and taken pieces of all three of us with her.
I drive to the location on my phone, that lets me know exactly where Elijah is. I don’t even question it anymore. Elijah’s been distant since we were told she was dead, and he’s pulled back more ever since. His new wife hasn’t helped either.
A sick, coiling feeling in my gut has my hands clenching around the steering wheel. Did we push her too far? She understood that we were made to do it, right?
His truck comes into view, parked across the street, engine off, windows down just a crack. From the look of the empty coffee cups and snack wrappers piled on the dash, he’s barely moved all night. His eyes don’t move from the house in front of us, and I knock on the window.
He flinches hard, then opens the door slowly, his eyes bloodshot. Elijah always looks too clean for what we are—too calm. But this? He looks worse than Crew. He doesn’t say anything. He just looks at me… waiting.
“She’s not going to come running into your arms,” I say, leaning against the door frame.
“I know.”
“Have you been here all night?”
“Yeah.”
“Elijah…” I sigh, pinching the bridge of my nose again. The migraine is in full force. “What the fuck, man?”
He stares at the front door like it might open its mouth and spit her out. “I don’t know. I thought maybe…” he shakes his head. “I just needed to see her again. Make sure she was real.”
“She’s real.”
“She’s alive .” He practically chokes the word out.
“Yep.” I try not to sneer the word, but he eyes me, a warning lurking in the depths of his eyes.
“Don’t Roman.” He shakes his head. “She was dead. We thought she was gone. I couldn’t sleep for weeks after. Kept thinking I heard her voice.”
“Well, she was never really gone, was she?” I pull out a cigarette, light it, and take a drag. “She doesn’t care about us, E. You and Crew need to get a grip. We—You can’t lose your head over some girl.”
Elijah looks at me. “Maybe, but you saw how scared she looked last night.”
“So what? We scared her? You two shattered when she vanished. Crew went off the rails. You stopped talking and married someone we’ve never even met. And me? I had to carry it all. So no, I don’t give a shit if she’s scared of us now. She should be.” Elijah doesn’t say anything, so I carry on. “She’s been out here dancing. Do you really think she gives a shit about any of us?”
“She’s broken,” he murmurs.
“She broke us.” I snap.
“I think we broke her first.”
Silence drops between us like a guillotine. I don’t want to have this argument. Not with Elijah, and definitely not now. But the words hang there, poisonous and sharp.
I don’t say it, but we both know what he’s referring to.
The bullying.
I swallow thickly. I don’t want to feel sorry for her. I can’t. If I start feeling anything, I might just remember I loved her once.
I still do, in the worst kind of way, but love can rot, too.
“I’m going to talk to her,” I say.
Elijah’s head jerks. “What?”
“I’m not waiting here for answers, hiding in the shadows like a creep. I’m going to make her look me in the eyes and explain. I want to know why. We deserve to know why.”
“She won’t talk.”
My voice comes out low and cold. “She will, and if she doesn’t, then I’ll make her.”