“For Christ’s sake, Mol! How can you be tired? You’ve slept for days, done nothing for days! I understand you’ve had surgery, but the doctors said you should be feeling a lot better by now. You’re wallowing, Shakespeare. You need to snap the hell out of it! I’ve tried, been trying to be patient, but enough is enough! I’ve lost a baby too, not just you, but you shut me out and act like I’m a damn stranger to you. I was the daddy, for f**k’s sake! I can’t do it alone. I have too much to think about—you being like this, leading the team to the championship, the hopes of an entire state on my head. I need you to help me, Mol, not to drown in your own f**kin’ misery. Who’s supporting me? I’m grieving too!”

Her lifeless eyes regarded me, unseeing, and pure desperation took hold as I pounded to the bed, all gentleness gone. I pressed my lips to hers, aggressive, rough, and how we usually liked it. But her lips didn’t move. It was like kissing a f**king corpse.

I was scared.

When I saw her on the floor, covered in blood at my folks’ place, I’d been scared. When I knew I had to tell her our baby had died, I was scared, but the fear of the girl I loved, the girl who saved me, being lost for good had me almost insane with panic.

“For f**k’s sake! Please. Please. You’re scaring the shit outta me! You need to start dealing with it, dealing with everything that’s happened.” I pleaded. But she turned away, not wanting to listen… and it felt like I was dying a slow and painful death.

“You can’t even bear to look at me, can you?”

Her back stiffened, she whipped to face me, pure anger distorting her features, and she screamed, “There! I’m looking at you! Tell me, Rome, what would like me to deal with exactly? The fact that your mother killed my f**king baby?”

And there it was… My baby. She no longer saw us together… We were no longer in this together.

“Our baby, and don’t you ever forget that. I was with you all the way until the end… still am! I’m still f**king here, trying to pull you out of hell!”

But there was nothing, not even a flicker of understanding in her eyes. She’d given up on us, and in that moment, I didn’t care either. I was over this whole friggin’ year.

“You know what? Fuck this! I’m out!”

I attended the dinner as requested and hours later found myself tearing through the hospital, my girl gone and nowhere to be found. Sitting in her empty room, one thing was abundantly clear: Molly had given up.

She’d left me. She’d run.

29

Present Day…

“My God, Rome,” Ally whispered, wiping at her eyes. “I never knew… never realized you both went through so much. How much you meant to each other. Saved each other.”

“Yeah,” I croaked out. “Now you do.” I turned to Ally, who was looking around the room, biting her lip in worry. “We need to find her, Al. What if she does something stupid? She’s not thinking straight. Hasn’t been for days.”

Her hand suddenly slapped on my arm and she pointed to the wall. “Rome, look at the date on Molly’s calendar.”

“Flight to Heathrow. Oxford presentation,” I read out loud.

Shit. She’d gone back to England for the presentation she’d been working on. Of course. Professor Ross would have been the person in the car at the hospital. But the flight was long gone. She was long gone.

I immediately jumped from the bed, planning my next step.

“Where are you going?” Ally asked frantically.

“To Oxford. I need to get her back.”

Ally’s hand gripped my arm. “You can’t, Rome! What about the National Championship? You’d jeopardize the draft! You can’t just leave. It’s your whole future we’re talking about here!”

I let out a guttural scream and swiped the top of Mol’s drawers with my arm, watching all her shit fall to the floor, then turned to face Ally once more. “No, that’s where you’re wrong! Molly’s my f**kin’ life, my f**kin’ future! And right now she’s on a 747 to Heathrow Airport, friggin’ dying inside because of me, because of my psycho mother! Fuck the championship!”

For the first time in our lives, I could see I’d scared Ally. I could see it in her ashen face, her usual olive skin bleached white with shock.

Raking my hands through my hair, I dropped my ass to the edge of the nightstand. “Shit, Al. Sorry. I’m so sorry… I’m just going outta my mind. I don’t know what the hell to do.” It was no good; the tears I was fighting began pouring out of me. My shoulders shook and I buried my face in my hands.