I didn’t bring much with me when I decided to hide out here, so it won’t take long to pack my stuff, but I’m not in a hurry.
I don’t really want to leave, but I can’t stay here as Masen Laurent anymore—a name I picked out of thin air a month ago when I asked my cousin to help me get my fake driver’s license and forge some school records. I just kept my same initials.
Once people—two people, in particular—find out I’m Misha Lare, the jig is up.
And I can’t lie to her anymore. Things were never supposed to get this far.
I don’t have any friends. Hearing her words and seeing her eyes tonight, that moment when she broke, I hated myself. What is she going to think tomorrow when she finds out her best friend stabbed her in the back and looked her in the eye doing it?
Dane and I climb down the field house stairs, and I head over to the opposite wall, throwing some switches. Lights spark to life, illuminating the long hallways as we make our way straight, to the room I’ve been using.
“I don’t know how you slept down here,” he mumbles. “It’s like a horror movie.”
I give a weak laugh. It’s definitely creepy, but… “I wasn’t really thinking a lot back then.”
I figured because it’s close to Falcon’s Well, I probably wouldn’t be discovered—or so I thought—and I have good memories of coming to this place with Annie when I was a kid.
I swing into the room, Dane following behind, and I walk the short distance to the bed table and switch on the light.
“Whoa,” Dane says.
“What?” I look up and follow his gaze, but I quickly notice what he’s referring to, and I stop breathing for a moment.
Wha—
“What the hell have you been doing in here?”
I turn in a circle, seeing the flood of papers scattered over nearly every inch of the room. Posters are ripped off the walls, my clothes are strewn about, and a table with some candles is tipped over, all of my personals laying on the floor.
I suddenly feel the pulse in my neck throb like the vein is trying to punch through the skin.
“I didn’t do this.”
I lean down and grab a fistful of the papers off the floor, seeing my name at the bottom of every letter, a couple of them a year or two old, and one from grade school. I can tell, because I signed my name Mish during an asinine spell to sound less girly.
These were all letters that were sent to Ryen. She’s had them. How did—
Something tightens around my stomach, and I wince, knowing there’s no other way these letters got here.
“What’s that say?”
I sway off balance, but I look up, following where he points. On the wall, written with a can of black spray paint are huge letters glaring down at us.
You trick me? Watch your back, wait, and see.
“Oh, shit.” I can barely fucking move. It’s a lyric from one of my old songs Ryen helped me write.
I dive down to the shelf on my bedside table, seeing that the few items that were stashed in there are pulled out. I grab the pocket folder where I kept some of her letters—my favorite ones that I reread—but as soon as I pick it up, I already feel the weightlessness of it.
“No, no, no, no…” I flip open the top and look inside.
“What is it?”
“Fuck!” I growl. Every single one of them gone. I fling the folder away from me. “Shit!”
“What? Who?”
Jesus Christ. I shoot up and run my hands up and down my face. She knows who I am, she found her letters, and she took them back.
I spin around and run out the door.
“Misha!” Dane yells.
But I don’t stop. I race for the stairs, run up to the main floor, and dash outside, speeding through the park.
She’ll listen to me. She’ll understand. All this wasn’t meant to happen.
I dig in my jeans for my keys and climb in my truck, charging out of the park and onto the highway.
The letters. Goddammit! Knowing Ryen’s temper, they’re probably shredded at the bottom of a garbage disposal right now. Fuck!
I grip the steering wheel, rubbing my eyes with my other hand. The road is blurry, and I try to calm my breathing.
Those letters are everything. They’re her and me, kids just trying to figure themselves out and going through all our growing pains. They’re where I first started to fall for her and need her. They’re my fucking songs and a part of me.
Our history is in those letters. Every beautiful thing she ever said to me to tilt my world on its side.