Said hope was quickly obliterated, though, when I saw the little ball roll free from his hand as he bent down to seemingly tie his boots. Nothing about his demeanor changed, harsh lines of his face firmly in place, and much like yesterday afternoon, I stopped breathing all over again, a bone-rattling shiver working its way down my spine.
A shiver I’m still feeling the effects of right now as my stare remains glued on that tiny balled-up note. I’m both eager and anxious to go retrieve it, but there’s no way I can just get up and rush over there. It’ll be way too suspicious. I have to play it smart now more than—
“Birdy, it’s your turn,” Quinn states, pulling me out from the one-way tunnel vision holding me captive.
A shake of my head, and I’m literally having to force myself to turn back in my seat as the note continues taunting me from my cell. It’s searing a damn hole through the side of my head. “Right, my bad,” I reply, mindlessly laying down another tile.
We go around two more times before the uncertainty of it all becomes too unbearable for me to focus. I’m winning this round, and I honestly couldn’t care less. All I wanna know is what’s in that note, what’s wrong with him, why he’s left it? I mean, I know the phone was confiscated, leaving us no way to communicate, but still… There has to be a reason.
Dragging my gaze around the room as nonchalantly as possible, I note Andrés is far enough away at this point—nearing the other side of the block—that it shouldn’t raise any red flags if I were to get up and saunter into my cell.
So I do, excusing myself from the table with a simple, “I’ll be right back.”
My brain screams for me to run, desperation starting to leak through rationality, but I keep my stride steady, breathing through the anxious wave wearing on my nerves. Once I’m in my cell, though, I snatch up the note quickly and dive into my bunk as I go about unballing it with shaky hands. The first thing I notice is that it’s not long, nothing but a single sentence.
The second? How I regret my decision to have read it in the first place.
We can’t do this anymore.
I read it again and again and again, positive my mind is playing tricks on me after not sleeping shit last night, but nothing changes. My world was already spinning out of control, all of it unfolding in a span of days, and now it’s crashing down completely.
I knew something was wrong...
Was it something I did, something I didn’t do? Was it yesterday’s sweep and the fact they found the phone? Does he think I’m going to rat him out?
Did he really not believe me when I gave him my word?
These are just some of the questions floating through my mind as white-hot tears begin to stream down my face. I couldn’t stop them if I tried, much less hold them back. They’re falling of their own accord, the dam of pure, harrowing grief busting wide open, drowning me in its treacherous depths. Between Ma’s diagnosis, the Ryker ordeal, Koko and Franca banding together, Lena being thrown in the hole, and the huge possibility that Counselor Judge has already ripped apart my early release papers, I can’t handle any more.
I just can’t.
I can’t handle this.
I’d been afraid it would happen all along, and now, here we are in real-time. It’s happening, regardless of the fact I can’t understand how or why, when everything was perfectly fine just yesterday, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. I can’t go out there and make a scene, can’t demand answers from him. I can’t do anything except sit here and lick my wounds, both new and old. The one I can’t reach?
My heart.
Feels like there’s a giant gaping hole in my chest, all those years of trying to repress what I felt over Ángel’s betrayal flooding back to the forefront and melding with this fresh, new wave of agony left in Andrés’ wake. Our time together wasn’t long, but that doesn’t make it any less excruciating. It’s so excruciatingly painful that I’m folding in on myself, a hand sealed over my mouth to muffle the sobs I’m just barely subduing.
Why? Why is he doing this?
You’d think it couldn’t get worse, right? Wrong, so fucking wrong. That obnoxious-ass buzzer resounds through the block, and I hear it, I do, but I’m so lost in the throes of this never-ending shitshow that it doesn’t really register until I hear a throat clearing.
Watery eyes snapping open in tandem with my head popping upright, I find Lena standing at the threshold of our cell. She looks nothing short of exhausted, yet her expression is alarmingly blank. The fire blazing in her eyes, though? I can’t bear it, tossing the note aside and rushing to embrace her.
But she wants no part of it, holding a hand out before I can wrap my arms around her.
I skid to a stop just a few feet away, all the air whooshing from my lungs like she’s just kicked me in the gut. “Lena, please, listen to me,” I start, but there’s that hand again keeping me at arm’s length as she turns her head away from me.
“Don’t fucking Lena me,” she grits venomously. “I just spent almost an entire day in Seg for your ass, and you know what else I got?”
She’s still not looking at me, but I shake my head, my heart imploding and shattering for the second
