20. Ronan #2
“Let’s bounce,” I say, clapping Lucian on the shoulder.
He doesn’t argue.
Neither of them do.
We came. We drank. We played nice.
Now it’s time to go.
We take the long way back to the hotel—down through the side streets lined with picket-fenced homes. It’s quieter here, except for the music still pulsing in the distance and the wind threading through the trees. It’s late enough now that the sidewalks are mostly empty.
The silence stretches between us as we walk. My mind’s already turning toward next week’s practice, toward film breakdowns and what the hell we need to tighten before the next game. We can’t afford another loss like tonight. Not if we want to set the tone for the rest of the season.
Lucian kicks a stone down the sidewalk ahead of us while Silas walks on my other side, his hood still up and head down. We are each lost in our thoughts until Silas throws out his arm, stopping me in my tracks.
“What—” I start to ask, but he raises a hand in a motion to shut up, and my words die in my throat.
That’s when I hear it. A sound so soft, so broken, that I can’t initially place it.
It almost sounds like…a whimper.
“What is that?” Lucian questions, glancing around, having evidently heard it too.
“A wounded animal?” I suggest.
Lucian’s nose wrinkles. “Or someone drunk off their ass. Come on, let’s go.”
He’s already stepping forward along the path; however, Silas veers off the sidewalk, moving toward the shadowed side of one of the darkened houses.
“For fuck’s sake,” Lucian groans, the two of us sharing a loaded look before reluctantly following after Silas. Where one of us goes, the rest follow. That’s the way it’s always been, even if that means we have to help some freshman who drank too much and got lost on his way back to his dorm.
The house we approach is sunken in shadow, its windows dark, porch sagging under the weight of too many seasons gone by.
Mail clogs the box. The hedges have grown wild, curling like claws along the broken fence.
A half-toppled garbage can lies sideways in the yard, forgotten.
The house is clearly abandoned, and something about the place gives me the heebie-jeebies.
I can’t quite put my finger on it. There’s just a feeling in the air, like nothing good happens here.
So when I see her, curled in on herself near the side of the house, half-hidden behind a hedge and a slanting gutter, I’m somehow both not surprised and completely floored.
It takes my brain a moment to catch up to what I’m seeing.
She looks like a ghost. A girl in a black dress that’s torn up one side, hiked nearly to her hip, dirt and leaves clinging to the fabric.
One heel lies discarded a few feet away.
The other miraculously still on her foot.
Her knees are scraped raw, blood tracking down her shin.
Her palms are caked with grime that has also lodged under her fingernails.
There’s a cut on her temple. A deep bruise is already blooming across her cheekbone.
My stomach fucking drops.
Beside me, Lucian makes a noise like a cat being drowned. It takes a lot to shake him, but even in the low lighting, I can tell the color has drained from his face. He stares unblinking at the girl, seeming frozen to the spot where he stands, with an expression of horror and disgust on his face.
“Is she—” I croak.
Silas, already at her side, drops to a crouch before gently taking her hand and feeling for a pulse. Lifting his head, he nods, and in relief, air flies out of my lungs.
“Thank God,” I sigh.
“Tell that to her in the morning when she’s going to wish she were dead.”
There’s a flatness to Lucian’s tone that I’ve never heard from him. I’m used to his anger, his rage, but I’ve never heard him sound so dead. So robotic, like he’s here, but he’s not really here.
Clapping him on the shoulder, I wait until he turns his head to face me. “Let’s just worry about right now, yeah? We need to make sure she’s unharmed and get her somewhere safe.”
There’s a hollowness in his eyes that I hate the look of. It’s…terrifying, and Lucian is already volatile on a good day.
“Sure.”
Again, that flat tone that twists my insides tighter. He is not okay, but I don’t have the capacity to help him right now. We need to help her.
Giving his shoulder a final squeeze, I leave him standing there and approach Silas. “Is she conscious?”
He shakes his head, giving me a long, meaningful stare that I can just about make out in the dark.
“Drugged?”
He nods.
Bending down, I give her shoulder a gentle yet firm shake. “Hey. Hey, can you hear me?”
Her eyes flutter but don’t open.
“It’s okay,” I tell her, unsure if she can actually hear me or understand my words. “You’re safe now. I’ve got you. Do we know who she is?” I ask, directing the question to Silas. The two of us search the ground around her for a handbag or purse, but see nothing.
“Who are you?” I murmur, taking in the delicate features of her face. I note the finer details: the cut on her lip, her chipped and cracked nails, the scrape across her collarbone. She looks like she fought her attacker. Like she gave him everything she had…and it still wasn’t enough.
“Do we call someone?” I ask, hating how unsure I am.
I’m always the one with the answers. The one who takes charge.
But in this situation? I haven’t a fucking clue.
I want to pull her into my arms and take her back to our hotel room and keep her safe.
I want to track down whatever piece of shit thought it was okay to assault a vulnerable woman.
I want to scream and rage at how dark and twisted and entirely fucked up this world can be.
At the injustice of a girl going out for a night and ending up raped, beaten, and left for dead up against the side of an abandoned house. “Or take her to the hospital?”
The question is barely past my lips before Lucian storms up with all the energy of a bull in a china shop. On instinct, I lean over her, protecting her from his rage. Lucian is unpredictable at the best of times, and right now he is as far from himself as I have ever witnessed.
“Lucian—”
“No,” he snarls, head whipping up to glare at me in the dark. “Fuck that. We aren’t taking her to some hospital. We take her with us,” he declares, shoulders set in a way that says he’s made the decision and he’s not fucking changing it.
“What if she’s got injuries we can’t see?” I argue. “The hospital can do tests. They’ll call the police.”
He scoffs, leaning forward to lift her eyelid. She groans softly, but that’s the only response we get.
“See that?” he hisses. “Her pupils are blown. Hazy. She was probably roofied, which means she won’t remember shit to tell the police.”
“What about DNA?” I argue. Silas nods his head in agreement with me.
“If there is any DNA,” Lucian argues, making it sound like that’s a big fucking if, “it’ll still be there in the morning, once the drugs have worn off and she can make the decision for herself.
Fuck knows, the last thing she needs right now is more men making decisions for her, without her consent. ”
Well, shit. Can’t exactly argue with that one.
Silas doesn’t seem to have a suitable comeback either.
Either sensing our acquiescence or deciding he doesn’t give a fuck, Lucian shrugs out of his Henley, pulling it over the girl’s still, cold frame, before scooping her into his arms.
“Fine,” I lament. “We’ll take her back to the hotel and get her warm. Get her somewhere private. Then figure out the rest.”
The girl’s head lolls against Lucian’s bare chest as he moves to stand. She doesn’t even stir as he carries her like she weighs nothing. As though whatever fire had been burning inside her has gone quiet now, buried under exhaustion and blood and fear.
Silas drapes his hoodie over her too, tucking it around her arms to ensure she is kept warm, and I grab her discarded heel before following the others back toward the street.
Silas leads the way; meanwhile, I fall into step behind them, checking over our shoulders every few steps as though I expect her attacker to jump out of a bush at any moment.
We make it back to the hotel without further incident, and Lucian eases her onto the bed in the room he has to himself because he refuses to share with anyone else, and the one time Coach forced him to…
well, that rookie quit the team the next morning, so that says it all.
She stirs, barely, as Silas pulls a blanket over her.
Lucian disappears into the bathroom and comes back with a warm washcloth, pressing it to the dried blood on her temple.
We take shifts looking after her that night.
I take the first one, sitting in a chair in the corner of the room that gives me the perfect view of her sleeping face. Her breathing is soft, uneven. Her braid half-unraveled, and her face pale.
But she’s alive.
While I stare at her, I think of my mother’s world. How they dress wounds in rhetoric. How they spin pain into politics and package suffering so it fits a prettier narrative. How they make girls like her disappear into silence, all while smiling for the cameras.
But this girl—
She didn’t disappear.
She clawed her way through the dark, and we were the ones who found her.
I don’t know her name. Don’t know anything about her, except that something in me rose up the second I saw her. Something cold and sharp and ready to burn the whole fucking world if it meant keeping her safe.
Something in me knew.
She doesn’t have anyone looking out for her.
She certainly didn’t tonight. Maybe not ever.
So she has us now.
She has me.