Page 138 of Keep Me Never
It’s been two days since I sat across from Grant Randolph the fucking Fifth and had my lies shoved down my throat.
Because that’s what this is.
The raw reality behind all the other bullshit is the one thing that I didn’t do and should have: told her.
I should have opened up about my problems, leaned on her instead of trying to shield or protect her. I didn’t, and now here I am.
I haven’t slept more than an hour, and I’m pretty sure that sixty-dollar steak was the last thing I’ve eaten. And I threw that shit up the second I stepped out of that restaurant.
There’s a gnawing feeling that’s taking over my stomach, but it has nothing to do with hunger. I can’t keep my thoughts straight, and when I try, forcing myself to attempt and understand what the fuck I’m actually dealing with here, fear overtakes my mind and shuts it down.
Paige.
My Paige.
My hands tighten on the steering wheel, and I wish I could squeeze my eyes shut.
He’s out of his fucking mind.
Today was the first day I could break away. If it weren’t for finals or having to come up with an excuse as to why I needed to borrow my best friend’s SUV, I would have driven down herethat very next morning. Maybe even that night. But as it was, I had to track down my professors, beg to change my exam times, jumping in early and taking them with an entirely different class altogether. But it’s done.
Why did you even bother with finals? You can’t do shit without that last semester.
I clench my jaw, whipping into a parking lot, and slam my palm down on the wheel.
Fuck.
I take a deep breath, closing my eyes, and then I jump out of the SUV. My feet move faster and faster the closer I get, my heart pounding in my chest.
Please let it be bullshit. Please don’t let it be true. Please just…
I jerk to a stop, my heart falling to my fucking feet, and look at the building, gaze automatically drawn to the windows—or where the windows should be. My stomach sinks. Boards. That’s what she has protecting this little place that means so much. There’s graffiti all across them and paint peeling off, several shades, like she covered it up too many times to count.
Has she? How did I miss this?
My feet carry me forward, and I pry one of the boards away, feeling the splinters of the wood under my fingers but ignoring it. I climb through, and the smell hits me immediately. I tug my T-shirt up, covering my nose as the stale, wet stench of rot overpowers my senses. I stumble inside, bracing myself against the cold air that cuts through the building, and unlock the door from the inside, propping it open with a random bucket full of I don’t even know what, old putty maybe?
It’s midafternoon, and people are milling around outside, so when I spot the mini pink tool bag sitting on the floor close to the small step ladder, I dig inside. I find a hammer and a couple new nails and rehang the board so no one walking by calls the police or anything.
As I hammer the nails through the two thin pieces of plywood,ruining the infrastructure behind it and causing even more damage that will need to be repaired later even if it’s just small patchwork, I can’t help but wonder if she did this herself too. That’s got to be her little tool bag, right?
My stomach rolls, nausea taking over, because I quickly make my way back inside.
I pause there, finally really taking in the space—water damage, rot, mold creeping up the walls, if you can still call them that, some of the drywall caving in, revealing the insulation underneath, which is also ruined.
My shoes slap against the floor; the beautiful hardwood is lifting and cracked. The mirrors are gone, pieces of shattered glass swept into random corners, and when I get to the bathroom, it only gets worse. The toilets are growing moss, the bolts rusted out and the toilets themselves having shifted, showing the pipes underneath. The whole thing will have to be gutted. I step back into the small hall, trying the other door, but I can’t even bring myself to go in and freeze there, gripping my head as everything around me closes in.
This is so fucked.
I tell her what he said, what he’s offering and what he wants in return, and she’ll lose everything.
Everything but you, man. She’d choose you over anything else. You know this. You want that and?—
My eyes snap up, and that’s when I see it, like its own little halo and shining light, giving me the answer that I don’t want but the one that’s the most crystal-clear in the shape of a small single item in the middle of the rotting walls, standing out against the mess around it in a shiny frame that has to be new. Walking over to it, my fingers tremble slightly as I pull the frame free.
It’s a picture of Paige and her dad, side by side, smiling like they just won the lottery. Bright smiles, full of life—life that’s no longer here, in a moment she’ll never get back. And it’s not hanging in her dorm room, where she could see it every day.
It’s here, in the middle of this broken-down studio that she bought in his memory, with the money he left her, living the life that she promised him she’d learn to live in his absence, before he took his last breath.
