Chapter 2 Adela
The call doesn’t go through. It doesn’t even ring once.
Maeve shrugs. “Maybe he doesn’t have reception.”
I pace my bedroom, noting that my drapes along the far wall need to be adjusted. I still need to find my camera in my closet.
I tap my phone, and Maeve stands. “Babe, don’t call him again.”
I huff, sitting on my bed. “You’re right. I just thought he was acting so weird. Don’t you think?”
She raises a perfect brow and nods. “He doesn’t ask you to stay the night.” And then she pauses. “Did you tell him you’re transferring?”
“No.”
“Okay, good.”
Maeve stays the night at my house. It’s my birthday tradition.
She plays with my hair, asking me if I noticed that Julian and Penelope are getting closer.
I play with the hem of our matching pink satin pajamas and nod because I have noticed.
Maeve thinks they’re sleeping together, and I don’t deny that they have chemistry.
It’s near midnight when my phone finally rings.
Maeve smiles. “Told you he would call.”
I answer the phone. “Hey, babe. I was wondering when––”
“Adela,” a woman says, so I sit up. My heart is pounding. It sounds like she’s crying.
“Hello?” I say, pressing the speaker button. Maeve grabs my wrist, eyes widening when we hear her sniffle.
“Is this Adela?”
“Yes,” I say, horrified. “Who’s this?”
“I–– I’m not sure how to say this.”
Every muscle in my body goes still. Maeve’s grip on my wrist tightens.
“Where’s Cody?”
There’s rustling on the other end and voices in the background.
“Cody is in the hospital,” she says. The words tumble out in a rush. “I don’t–– I don’t know what happened. I just–– just come quick.”
My breath stops. “Serena?”
She inhales sharply.
“What hospital?” I can hear her start to panic. “Serena, what hospital?”
“UW Montlake.”
The call ends.
For a moment, the world goes muted around me. My vision narrows to a warm, sharp pinpoint. My lungs forget how to work. I should’ve stayed the night with him. I shouldn’t have been upset that he left without singing Happy Birthday to me.
Maeve releases my wrist and jumps up.
I swallow, but nothing goes down. “I–– I have to go.” The words scrape out of me, brittle and wrong.
“I’m driving you. Let’s go.”
My heart is a pounding ache inside my ribs as Maeve pulls me through my dark house.
My parents are asleep, but they won’t notice I’ve gone until the morning.
The drizzle outside hits my skin. I clutch onto my pink pendant like it’s the only thing tethering me to this earth.
Cody is in the hospital, and I don’t know what happened.
Maeve unlocks her Lexus and practically throws me into the passenger seat. My hands are shaking as I put my seatbelt on.
I’m scared. Terrified.
“What the hell happened?” I breathe, staring at my phone screen. Cody’s smiling face is my phone’s wallpaper. “Maeve,” I mutter, letting the first tear fall.
She grabs my face, wiping the tears that fall. “He’s going to be okay.”
“We were just there,” I whisper.
Maeve drives. Fast. The world streaks past the windows, the rain falls harder with each passing mile, and I keep touching the pink Swarovski pendant at my throat, praying that Cody is okay.
It takes more than half an hour before she’s pulling up to the UW Montlake emergency room. Maeve doesn’t bother parking straight.
“Go,” she says, voice full of fear she’s trying to hide for my sake. “I’m right behind you. Go, Adela.”
I shove the door open, shut it behind me, and run.
The sliding door’s part, spilling bright light across the clean tiles. The front desk lady ignores me completely as I walk towards her.
“I–– I need to see Cody Ravenshaw. He was brought in–– I don’t know how long ago, maybe thirty minutes? Maybe longer? Someone called me from his phone and––”
The woman behind the counter looks at me with no expression. “Are you family?”
“I’m––” My voice catches. “I’m his girlfriend.”
Her expression doesn’t change. “Only family members are allowed in the room at this time.”
The floor tilts beneath me. “Please. I need to see him. I was just with him tonight. He was fine, and now –– now I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know what’s happened. You don’t understand. I need to––”
“I’m sorry, Miss. I can’t––”
I inhale sharply, pulling myself together the way my mom trained me to. I lift my chest in an easy inhale, straighten my spine, set my shoulders, and lift my chin. I’m not going to beg. I’m not going to plead.
“My father is Charles Kalkaska,” I say, the words leaving my mouth with pure steel. “Mayor Kalkaska. This ER is technically UW, to which he has made numerous generous donations. So, unless you want my parents demanding to speak with your supervisor, you’re going to take me to his room.”
The nurse blinks, thrown off just enough.
Another nurse walking behind her stops and looks between us. She steps forward. “Come with me,” she says. “Right this way.”
I’m moving before the woman behind the desk can protest. She doesn’t look bothered one bit as I walk away.
Maeve catches up to me halfway down the hall, slipping her hand into mine, squeezing once, grounding me in the chaos of my panic.
The nurse leads us past curtained bays, past beeping monitors, past a man groaning softly as a nurse adjusts something near his leg. Every sound feels amplified –– the shuffling feet, the low murmur of voices, the clatter of metal on metal.
“We stabilized him,” the nurse says, not slowing her pace. “He’s in Room 14.”
I don’t realize I’ve stopped breathing until she opens the door.
And then breath becomes impossible.
Cody lies on the bed. He’s so still, he could be carved from marble. But marble doesn’t bruise. Marble doesn’t swell. Marble doesn’t look like this.
His face is mottled with dark, violent bruising, one cheekbone angry and swollen.
There’s a cut near his hairline. His neck has marks — purple blooms beneath the skin, like hands or impact or something worse.
His arms, visible beneath the thin hospital sheet, show more bruises, sharp-edged and chaotic.
He looks nothing like the boy who kissed me hours ago. Nothing like the boy smiling in my phone wallpaper. Nothing like the boy who whispered I love you with his forehead against my shoulder.
I clutch at Maeve, who’s at my side, feeling like I’m going to tumble over. “Maeve,” I whisper in complete shock. I’m no longer in my body; my voice sounds distant as I try to puzzle together what happened to Cody between the time that we left and now.
She doesn’t say anything.
His phone sits on the bedside table, screen dark.
There is no sign of Serena or any of the guys from the team. That’s who he was with tonight, so what could have possibly happened?
Every instinct in me screams.
I cross the room before I know I’m moving. My fingers barely graze his arm. I’m afraid I’ll hurt him, and I’m too scared that I might wake him.
“What happened?” The whisper rips out of me, shredded. My voice is shaking, muffled. I feel pain in my chest like I’m crumbling from the inside out.
The nurse who brought us in here steps beside me, flipping through his chart. “You’re his girlfriend?”
I nod, throat tight.
She glances at me with that careful expression medical staff wear when they’re about to say something they know will land like a blow. “He was brought in by a good Samaritan. We don’t know the details. He was found near the edge of campus, unconscious.” Her eyes drift over his body, jaw tightening.
I think about Serena. Did she call me on the way to the hospital? Did she call me after? I glance at his phone, questions of what happened swirling in my head.
“Was it an accident?” I look at Cody. He doesn’t look like he was in an accident. This looks intentional, too many injuries across his body. They’re all too random.
“We’re not sure yet.” Her tone softens. “We’ve been trying to reach his father. We need consent to run scans. There’s concern about internal bleeding.”
Internal bleeding.
The words slam into my chest, knocking air out of me.
Maeve presses closer, her shoulder touching mine.
“His dad’s a judge,” she tells the nurse. “It’s a weekday. He’s definitely awake before the sun and will be here in no time. I’ll call the office.”
I force my voice to work as Maeve grips her phone, taking a few steps back. “Is he going to be okay?”
The nurse lifts her eyes, and something in them makes my stomach bottom out. “We’re doing everything we can.”
Everything we can.
Not he’ll be fine.
“When will he wake up?” I ask, swallowing the lump in my throat.
My eyes meet hers just then. She hesitates, reminding me that she’s just human too. Suddenly, I feel like that question is unanswerable.
“The doctor will talk to his father when he comes in.”
I watch her walk out of the room, and my skin crawls as it dawns on me.
My eyes dart to Cody’s still body.
He might not wake up.
Thirty minutes pass in a haze.
The sun starts to rise in the sky, and I damn the world for continuing to spin and move on while I’m watching my boyfriend lie still. He hasn’t woken up or made a single movement.
I’m not sure if he’ll ever be okay.
When Judge Ravenshaw finally arrives, he looks ten years older than he did at my birthday dinner last night.
His eyes meet mine when he enters the waiting room.
“Adela, talk to me.”
“They took him to surgery,” I say, stepping into the hall with him. “He has internal bleeding. I don’t know exactly because they weren’t allowed to give me details as I’m not family.”
His face contorts, devastation carving deep lines around his eyes. “You were with him last night,” he states like it’s a fact.
I nod. “I went to his teammate’s house after my birthday dinner. The six of us went there, and then things got…awkward, so we left.”
He blinks. “What do you mean you left?”
I swallow. “At around ten, we drove back home. Maeve stayed the night at my house.” I want to mention that Cody was on edge, but I know it’ll only drive his dad’s suspicion further.
He’s going to accuse me of leaving his son when I knew something felt off.
I already feel the guilt swimming in my gut, stabbing at me, but unfortunately, I let my spite get the best of me.
Cody didn’t stay to sing Happy Birthday, so I didn’t stay to sleep with him again.
I continue, “He was found unconscious on the edge of campus. The nurse said a good Samaritan brought him in.” I swallow hard. The image of his injuries flashes in my head.
Judge Ravenshaw nods once sharply. “I’ll speak to the doctors.”
He disappears down the hall, leaving me standing in the middle of the hall.
I attempt to take a step back in the direction of Maeve, but I can’t move.
And then the tears hit me. They’re not silent tears this time.
These are raw, shaking, unstoppable. My chest feels like someone is standing on it.
I press a hand against the wall as my vision blurs with water.
Too much water. I huff, letting the waterfall run its course.
But that’s not the worst of it. I wail, regretting that I didn’t sleep over at Cody’s last night.
If I did, none of this would’ve happened.
Maeve gently touches my shoulder, and I fall into her arms. She holds me up as she holds me close.
“I know, Ad. I’ve got you.”
“I don’t understand,” I cry, shaking my head again and again. “We were just with him. He was fine. You saw him, he was fine.” I grab onto her, tears and snot releasing on her hoodie. “Maeve, what happened to him?”
She holds me close, rubbing my back. “We’re going to figure it out. First, we should call your parents, so they know where you are and what’s going on.”
My parents. The thought of them makes me straighten. The disappointment in their faces if they saw me fall apart like this pulls me out of Maeve’s arms. I shake it off because I have to. It’s not like he’s dead.
I nod at Maeve, who’s still talking, even though I don’t know what she’s saying. She’s trying to comfort me, but the coldness starts to freeze over. I can’t crumble, not now when Cody needs me.
“We’ll get through this,” Maeve says, reaching for my hand. She gives me a light squeeze, grounding me in this moment.
That’s all I needed to hear.
I nod, looking down at our matching pajamas. The bell sleeves flare, the patterns are identical, and the sight eases something in my chest.
I inhale and exhale. She’s right.
“My phone is dead,” I say.
“I’ll grab my charger from my car.” She dries a tear sliding down my cheek. “Are you okay if I go for a minute?”
I nod.
She pulls me to the waiting room. I take a seat, and then she’s rushing out the front doors.
I wipe at my cheeks, trying to breathe past the tight ache that feels like it’s crushing my ribs. The hospital continues around me. More people file in as time passes. Maeve plugs my phone in, and we sit for hours waiting to hear how the surgery went.
Maeve leaves to use the bathroom, and a tall, broad man who looks familiar walks out of the hallway. His face is…bruised, and he’s wearing a sling. Wait, that’s…
His gaze drags over me slowly, not curious. Not sympathetic. Assessing. Dread consumes me whole. His dark eyes are unforgiving as they flick in the other direction, snubbing me.
He walks towards another hallway, his black boots clicking on the ground, the leather jacket slung over his good shoulder, and black skinny jeans that make his shoulders look broad.
He looks familiar, but I can’t place him.
I watch as he walks away, trying to put together where the hell I know him from.What was he doing behind those closed doors?
My gut sinks.
I watch as it clicks closed, my body shivering at the sound.