Chapter Twelve
I woke up with the kind of emptiness that clung to me, heavy and slow.
And for the first time in a long while, my back agreed with me.
I’d been doing better for weeks with good news after good news from my doctor.
Shorter pain flares, lighter mornings. But today, it was like my body had rewound time and brought me right back to the day I woke in the hospital, barely able to move without feeling like something inside of me was tearing apart.
I lay there for a few minutes, staring at the ceiling, waiting for the ache to dull. It didn’t. It throbbed, slow and deep, pulsing in time with my heartbeat.
My medication was downstairs. I’d forgotten to bring it up again, like I always promised I would.
Getting up hurt more than it should have. Every motion felt like I was dragging my body through water. I moved slowly down the stairs. The house was still and quiet.
The kitchen light was too bright when I flipped it on. I squinted against it, tugging open a cabinet and finding my medication. I shook out two Gabapentin capsules before grabbing a glass of water from the sink and swallowing them.
I cursed myself for being so dumb in putting my heating pad in a lower cabinet. I went over to the couch, plugged it in, and pressed the growing warmth against my lower back, breathing out slowly as it seeped through the ache.
When the pain finally dulled to something manageable, I made a simple breakfast, keeping it to toast and fruit. Something easy to eat. The food didn’t taste like anything.
The drive to school was grey and drizzly and made me feel even sleepier.
Parking was quiet, no one was hanging around outside. I went inside and found the guys at the lockers. Bryan was leaning against the lockers, cleaning his glasses. Justin scrolled on his phone. Toby was saying something fast and animated with another student.
Bryan noticed me first. “Morning.”
I managed a smile that felt like paper. “Morning.”
Toby grinned. “Candy. You good today?”
“Yeah,” I said.
Justin studied me quietly, his head tilting as he took in all the signs I was clearly broadcasting. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to. He could probably see it all—the tightness in my smile, the way I was hunched like that’d release the stiff pain in my back.
“You sure you’re okay?” Bryan asked finally.
“My back’s acting up,” I said, adjusting my bag. “I took something. I’ll be fine.”
Bryan didn’t look convinced. “Let me know if it gets bad.”
“I will,” I lied and he knew it too.
Somehow I managed to make it to first period, even though I was already exhausted.
The classes passed in slow motion.
Every tick of the clock was a drag, every note on the board blurred before my eyes. I copied words without processing them, underlining sentences I didn’t understand, and simply nodded when teachers called my name.
The pain in my back did dull into just a faint echo, but it was still there. Whenever I shifted in my chair, a twinge reminded me that even when everything seemed quiet, something still hurt.
By third period, I stopped trying to keep up. I was just existing, counting the hours until I could leave.
When the lunch bell finally rang, the familiar pull toward the usual table with the guys hit me before I could stop it.
I looked across the cafeteria, and there they were.
Toby and Justin looked like they were arguing over the tray of fries, Bryan half paying attention.
Paxon was there too and while there seemed to be tension there, he was smiling.
I could already see it. I’d approach and his smile would disappear. If I was lucky, he spent lunch with us, but quiet. If I wasn’t, he’d leave again. I couldn’t face that kind of rejection again even as I spotted the seat they’d clearly left for me.
My stomach twisted. I hesitated, watching for too long.
Then I spotted Micah waving from a few tables over, Hazel sitting across from him with her ever-present sketchbook. Her short brown hair was pulled into a messy half-knot. She saw me, her expression warm. She gestured for me to join them.
It wasn’t even a choice, really. My legs just carried me there.
“Hey, stranger,” Hazel said as I dropped into the seat beside her. “Something going on? You usually sit with your guys.” She smirked. “I would too if I were dating them all.”
“Yeah,” I said, picking at the corner of my tray. “Just felt like a change today.”
Micah raised a brow. “Change, huh? That’s code for something’s wrong but don’t ask about it, right?”
I managed a tiny smile. “Looks like Hazel has been training you well.” I glanced at the table. I only really knew Micah and Hazel. “Where’s Lillian?”
Hazel laughed. “In trouble with a teacher about some class assignment she didn’t do. She thought it was a stupid assignment and decided to challenge the teacher instead. I imagine tonight I’ll be helping her write a ten-page apology paper or something.”
Micah chuckled and slid over his little bag of apple slices. “Here. Brain fuel to get you through the afternoon.”
“That bad, huh?” I asked.
“You look like you haven’t eaten since last week,” he said.
I took a slice. “Thanks.”
Hazel tilted her head, watching me draw lazy shapes on my napkin. “You’ve been quiet lately.”
“Yeah,” I said again, because I didn’t have anything else to say.
She didn’t press, thankfully. Hazel had that rare gift of knowing when to speak and when to just sit beside you.
She flipped open her sketchbook again and showed me what she was working on.
It was a page filled with tiny doodles. A cat tangled in yarn.
Two chibi people holding a camera. A faint pencil outline that looked suspiciously like me at a piano.
“You’ve been my muse this week,” she said lightly. “Sorry, you’re just easy to draw. Good posture, kind of sad. Lots of hair.”
“Lots of hair?” I echoed, surprised into a small laugh.
Hazel grinned. “It’s a compliment.”
Micah smiled at that. “She’s right, you know. You’re good inspiration material.”
Their words were simple, teasing, but it was enough to make me breathe a little easier for a few minutes.
“So which asshole do I need to beat up?” Lillian asked, joining us halfway through lunch.
“What makes you think that?” Micah said.
“Because Cadence doesn’t sit with us. The guys claimed her, and yet, here she is.”
I gave her a bitter smile. “I just wanted a change for a day.”
“More like room to breathe,” Lillian challenged. She shoved half her sandwich in her mouth.
“If you choke, I’m not helping you,” Hazel said.
Lillian shrugged and washed the food down with water. “So?” She raised an eyebrow. “Which one messed up?” The question sounded like she was half-joking and half ready to murder.
Micah leaned forward, conspiratorial. “I say we start with the tall one.”
“Bryan?” I coughed and shook my head.
“Oh, so not him. Well, we eliminated one of them,” Micah said.
“And we know it isn’t that hunky chocolate of a man,” Lillian said.
“Hey!” I glowered at her.
She rolled her eyes. “You know you’ve been tempted to bite him. We always want to bite the people we like.”
“Can confirm,” Micah said, eyeing Hazel who simply smirked as she grabbed one of the apple slices.
“So not Bryan or Seth,” Lillian said.
“And Toby is too bubbly. He’s way too happy so either he doesn’t know he’s in trouble or he doesn’t care,” Hazel said. “But I also know he cares a lot. So it isn’t him.”
“Paxon,” Lillian said.
I froze from taking a drink. All three focused on me.
“Oh shit, really? The family man. He’s like a golden retriever.”
“What the fuck did he do?” Micah asked, looking like he was about to get up. He only stopped because Hazel grabbed his arm.
“How about we do the reasonable thing,” Hazel said. “And get her to eat more than one apple. Feelings and an empty stomach never go together.”
Lillian rolled her eyes. “Fine. Food now, revenge later.”
Another small laugh slipped out of me. We sat there, trading small talk and jokes.
There was comfort in their ordinary nonsense.
Hazel gave us commentary on other students’ yearbook poses, and Lillian suddenly wondered which teacher would survive the zombie apocalypse.
Nothing about the conversation was solving anything.
It wasn’t a fix to last night. But it tethered me somewhere human for a little while instead of in the endless void that I felt like I’d been floating in all morning.
When the bell rang, I tucked my tray away and stood. Hazel grabbed my sleeve. “Hey, don’t disappear, okay? Text me if you need me.” Her eyes were soft, no trace of teasing now.
“Okay,” I said and actually felt like the word was the truth for once.
I rounded the corner toward my locker and froze. Paxon was there, leaning against the row of lockers like he’d been glued to it. He looked like someone hunting for courage and coming up empty. When our eyes met, his mouth opened and closed once, like he was trying to fish out a sentence.
Something inside of me tightened, an old instinct to stop everything and wait for the right moment, to forgive as a reflex. But the memory of last night, of trying to get the fight to end, letting him leave, it all hovered in my chest like a warning.
I couldn’t do it. Not today.
I stepped around him without looking back.
Once he realized I was walking by him instead of stopping, his shoulders sagged like something was taken from him. I kept walking until the hallway thinned and the rain-washed parking lot swallowed me up.
In the car, I sat for a minute with my hands tight on the steering wheel, listening to the sound of the drizzle hitting the glass. Then I started the engine and drove home with the radio off, not caring that I was skipping the rest of my classes for the afternoon. Fuck physics.
I was too numb. Too sad. Too scared. And I wouldn’t survive an afternoon of being in the same classes with Paxon.