“Then who did?” River screams at me, her cheeks red and eyes filling with tears.

“I don’t fucking know!” I try and explain to her. “Maybe your parents did something!”

She crosses her arms, her jaw flexing. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’m just saying, you said it yourself. Your parents are involved with some shady shit. If they know you're with me—”

“Jesus Christ,” River huffs as if I’m being ridiculous. She points at me, not blinking. “Tell me, tell me what happened again. What happened when you left your dad.” She cries, her teeth grinding against each other. I’ve never seen her so upset, shouldn’t I be the one freaking out, it was my dad. Even if I hate him, I really am alone now.

“We yelled, shoved each other around, he hit me, and I hit him back. Then he cut me, I told you!” I shout. I cannot believe she doesn’t believe me.

“Don’t you lie to me,” she cries breathless. She gasps for air, and I step up to her and wrap my arms around her.

“I swear I didn’t do it,” I whisper in her ear. She inhales a breath, putting her whole body into it, she slowly calms in my arms. “But I’m not sorry it happened.”

“Maybe we should go back and—” She begins to speak and stops.

Giving her space, I back up and plop down on the bed, I sigh. My hands in my hair. Everyone thinks I’m a murderer. “I can’t go back, nobody will believe me I didn’t have anything to do with this,” I mumble. So many people saw the bruises and looked away. How many times did Sheriff Randall come over just to threaten me to get in line.

River sits next to me, hanging her head in dismay. Her cheeks tear-stained and eyes swollen.

“You should go back,” I tell her, trying to save her from what comes next. Cops looking for me.

Her head pops up, her shoulders tense. “No, I’m not going anywhere.” Her voice stronger than before. “I didn’t leave anything back in Georgia.”

“You stay with me, and they might think you’re involved.”

“I don’t care,” she whispers. “We’re a team.”

“Even if I killed my old man?”

Her pretty eyes bat, her throat swallowing as she thinks about it. “Even if you did, I’d still be by your side,” she whispers, looking down at the floor with a haunted look on her face.

“I didn’t kill him,” I tell her matter of fact, but she doesn’t seem to budge from my admission.

Needing control, needing to feel her, I grab her hand and interlock my fingers with hers, and my heart does this thing where I feel like it’s going to thump right out of my chest. I’m relieved she’s staying because I don’t want her to go. I want her by my side all the time, because even when she’s next to me… she’s all I think about.

“I wonder how he died?” she whispers, her finger playing with her lip coyly, and my eyes shift to the window in thought.

My mother died, and I was sad, I was for a long time and was mad at everyone. It was as if someone burnt my house down and took my life away, but yet the house was still in one piece and I was walking through a ghosted life. Trying to piece things back together that I felt weren’t really there to put back together. But knowing my father died… I feel nothing. Like when you go to get a shot and they tell you it’s going to hurt, and you brace yourself knowing it’s going to pinch deep, yet you feel nothing when it’s said and done. It’s rare when it happens, but it does happen.