Page 75 of How We Loved

Knowing there is only one thing to do, I pick up the phone and dial his number.

He answers on the first ring. “Maya?” his voice laced with concern.

“Ben, help me,” I plead as I break out in tears.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Ben

Dalton, Natalie, and Eli are all chillin’ at my house. It should be just like any other Saturday night, but without Maya here, it’s not the same. I want to accept her relationship with Trevor, but knowing for a fact now that he’s trying to keep her away from me is just too much for me to handle.

I want to support her, I want to protect her, but how can I do that if the guy she’s with doesn’t want me around?

“Stop being such a mope,” Dalton says as he kicks my legs off the coffee table in front of me.

“Fuck off,” I volley back.

He knows exactly why I’m not in the mood to talk to anyone. I think he likes gloating in that fact actually. For years, he’s said there was something more to Maya’s and my relationship. I always blew him off, but now … now, these feelings I can’t hold back are too strong, and I’m at a fucking loss as to what to do.

I was good with keeping my feelings for her at the friends level though. As long as I could protect her, that was fine with me. Now that I can’t protect her, all this tension is boiling up inside me, and I don’t know how to handle it.

Of course, I know exactly where she is, so that doesn’t help at all.

One, she’s not with us, so what are the other options? But, two, when I had her phone at school the other day, I shared her location with me. If she is going to try to pull away from me, then I will let her go, but that doesn’t mean I won’t still try to protect her any way I can.

At least I have that tiny bit of peace, knowing where she is. I can only pray that prick isn’t who I think he is and he’s being good to her.

Natalie, who I’m coming to like more than Dalton lately because she doesn’t give me shit, sits next to me with a compassionate grin on her face. She knows exactly why I’m acting like such a sourpuss, and I like that she allows me to wallow in my sorrows, feeling bad for me.

I guess my feelings were overwhelmingly obvious to everyone but me.

“Have you talked to her?” Natalie asks.

I take a drink of my water. “Nope. Not since she left my house on Thanksgiving Day.”

My phone, sitting on the arm of the couch, lights up with Maya’s beautiful face. I look at it in question, then raise my eyes to Natalie, seeing that she’s having the same reaction to Maya calling me right now that I am.

The only reason Maya would be calling me right now is if something was wrong.

I grab it, swipe it on, and sit up. “Maya?”

“Ben, help me,” she cries into the phone.

I sit up so fast that the items on the coffee table go spilling to the floor.

Racing toward the barn door, I reply, “I’m on my way.”

“What’s going on?” Natalie yells after me, but I don’t reply.

Right now, Maya needs me, and the tunnel vision I have is more extreme than anything I’ve ever experienced. I see nothing but red, but am completely in control as I run out of the barn and to my truck.

I hear the commotion behind me, but it’s all a blur as I hear Maya cry into the phone, “I don’t know where I am.”

I climb into my truck, and as I crank the engine, Eli opens the passenger side in typical Eli fashion, not saying a word as he sits down and buckles his seat belt.

The phone connects to my truck, so I throw it down on the center console as I drive down my driveway.

“Don’t worry. I know exactly where you are. I’m already on my way. Are you okay?”

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