“What the hell does he want?” Cam asks.
“He’s a stalker,” Grace says. “Who knows? The guy isn’t exactly stable.” She glances at me. “No offense.”
“I’m not with him anymore. Feel free to insult him whenever you want. I’m going to see why the hell he keeps calling.”
I listen to the first message.
“Peyton. You obviously know it’s me, because you keep hanging up. I feel bad about beating the shit out of your new boyfriend. Actually, I don’t. But I feel bad about making you feel bad. I mean, I just won the championship, and I can’t enjoy it because you’re not here. If you’d give me a chance to explain, we could work this out. Call me back, or pick up when I call. This whole thing is a big misunderstanding. We can work this out. I love you.”
A misunderstanding?
I hang up and lean back against the seat.
“What did he say?” Grace asks. “Is he threatening you?”
“No. He wants to talk so we can get back together.” I’m tired of Reed and his manipulative crap.
Grace looks over at me. “You’re kidding, right?”
I shake my head and shrug. “No. He had a whole pitch.”
“Let me have the phone,” Cam says.
“It’s an unknown number. You can’t call back.”
“I want to listen to the messages.” Cam motions for me to give him the phone.
I hand it over. “Delete them when you’re done.”
Christian slides toward the middle of the seat, and Cam angles the phone so they can both listen.
Grace pouts. “I want to hear, too.”
“We could put it on speaker,” Cam suggests.
“No!” Grace and I shout at the same time.
The Twins huddle in the back seat, cussing and whispering to each other.
“Peyton? How many of these did you listen to?” Cam asks after a few minutes.
“Just the first one. Why?”
“We’re on number three. Wait.” Cam looks at his brother. “Is he crying?”
Christian nods. “Oh, yeah. He’s definitely crying. Or he’s faking it. It’s hard to tell. I mean, I don’t cry, so I’m not an expert. What do you think, Cam?”
“Why are you asking me? I don’t cry, either. But it sounds like that’s what he’s doing.”
I lean my head against the window. It’s too much.
By the fourth voice mail, Christian and Cameron are perched on the edge of the seat with the phone angled so Grace can hear at least some of the message. If Owen hadn’t just lost the championship … if he didn’t have a heart condition and if I weren’t staring at my RoboCop brace … this might be funny.
“Okay, number six is the best. The best meaning the worst,” Christian tells me. “He’s playing a song.”
“I don’t want to know.”
“You don’t,” Grace assures me. “Oh my gosh, you guys. Get that away from my ear. I can’t take it.”
“I bet he’s gonna start singing it himself in number seven,” Cam says.
Christian scratches his head. “He might switch it up and play a new one.”
“Bet you fifty bucks he sings it himself, whatever it is.”
Christian nods. “You’re on.”
I have no idea what was on message seven—if Reed did or didn’t sing, or pledge his undying love—because that’s when I break down.
CHAPTER 39
A Different Kind of Heartbreak
OWEN DOESN’T SHOW up at school the next day. Not that I expected him to after the beating he took last night.
It’s Friday and everyone is pumped for the football game tonight. The players are wearing their jerseys and the cheerleaders are dressed in their uniforms. Half the student body is sporting bright blue greasepaint on their faces.
I sit in my classes like a zombie.
My teachers must notice because they leave me alone. The Weasel lets the whole class period go by without calling on me.
After lunch, I get a text from Owen.
Can we talk? Meet me in the library after school.
I watch the clock for the rest of the day.
When the last bell finally rings, I take the back stairwell up to the library. I stand in the hall outside the door for ten minutes before I’m brave enough to face Owen.
He lied to me, but now he knows that I lied to him, too.
But my lie cost him his dream.
What are you supposed to do when the one thing that gave you hope is gone?
The librarian is busy checking in books, and she smiles when I pass her desk.
Owen is waiting in the stacks where we’ve eaten lunch together so many times. He’s sitting on the blue carpet with his back against the wall. His face is cut and bruised and it hurts to look at him.
“Hi.” He sees me and the expression on his face breaks my heart into a hundred pieces.
“Hi.” My voice is hoarse from yelling at the fight last night. Or maybe it’s from crying.
I sit on the floor in front of him—close enough so that nobody will overhear us talking, but far enough away to stop myself from throwing my arms around him.
Owen’s knuckles are wrapped in gauze and he pulls the frayed ends. “I’m sorry for what I said after the fight.”
“That you weren’t the only person hiding something?” My eyes flicker to his face. “Don’t be sorry. It’s the truth.”
“I saw the look on your face when I said it. I hurt you.” He frowns and a deep crease cuts between his brows. “You’ve already been hurt too much.”
I inch closer to him, leaving space between us. “I shouldn’t have lied to you, but I didn’t want anyone to know. After it happened, I felt so helpless. I didn’t want to feel that way when I came here.”
“That’s part of the reason why I didn’t tell anyone about my heart. If that makes any sense.” He hesitates. “Will you tell me what happened? I need to know.”
I close my eyes and nod.
When I open them again, Owen moves over to sit closer to me.
“There isn’t much to tell. Reed started doping behind my back and I didn’t realize it for months. We were at a party and I found his stash in his car. I confronted him outside. There was no one around. Thinking back on it now that probably wasn’t the smartest idea.”
Owen takes my hand. “A girl shouldn’t have to worry about getting into an argument with a guy if they’re alone. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Thanks.” It’s nice to be reminded. I lean my head against his arm.
“What happened after you confronted him?”
“At first, he said the drugs weren’t his. Then he realized that I wasn’t buying it and admitted it. He wasn’t going to stop, so I broke up with him. That’s when he got angry. It was like watching Bruce Banner turn into the Incredible Hulk. Or maybe the Hulk had been there all along and I just didn’t see it. He started yelling at me and pushing me.”
Owen puts his arm around me and pulls me close.
“There were steps behind me and he knew it.” My voice cracks. “He pushed me again and I fell back.”
Owen moves in front of me and I wrap my arms around his neck.
“I was so scared.” It’s the first time I’ve said those words and the moment I say them tears roll down my face.
“Nobody will ever hurt you that way again.” Owen hugs me tighter. “I’m so sorry. I wish I had been there. I’d never let anyone hurt you.”
When I finally stop crying, Owen dries my face with the bottom of his T-shirt. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.”
Owen’s expression … there’s something wrong.
“What is it?” I touch his face and he tries to turn away. His eyes are glassy, like he’s about to cry. “Owen? Look at me. Are you okay?”
He shakes his head. “He hurt you and I let him get away with it.”
“That’s not true.”
Owen wipes his face on his sleeve. “He was talking so much shit about you in
the cage. About how you were so in love with him and you couldn’t handle it when he broke up with you.”
“When he broke up with me? He said that?”
Owen takes a deep breath. “I knew he was lying, but I kept thinking about how scared you looked when you saw him, and that crack he made about you telling people that he pushed you. I should’ve beaten the shit out of him.”
He coughs and suddenly all I can think about is the way he looked in the locker room when he couldn’t breathe. I cling to him until his breathing evens out again.
I lay my palm on the middle of his chest. “What’s wrong with your heart, Owen?”
He puts his hand on top of mine. “I have a genetic defect that causes arrhythmias—abnormal heart rhythms. It’s called Brugada syndrome.”
“I’ve never heard of it.” Not that I’m up to speed on cardiology.
“It’s rare. Before the doctors diagnosed me I had no clue what it was, either. They almost didn’t figure it out at all.”
“What do you mean?”
“I passed out during wrestling practice. My coach thought I was dehydrated or something. But it happened on school grounds so they sent me to the hospital. The doctors checked me out and ran a bunch of tests. They even did an EKG and it was normal. The cardiologist asked my mom all these questions about our family history. One of them was if anyone in our family had died young, under strange circumstances. We didn’t know it then, but that’s a red flag for Brugada syndrome.
“My mom told him about my older cousin, who died a few years earlier, at eighteen. He was a swimmer, headed for the Olympics. But he drowned in his pool. They did an autopsy and there was no sign of a head injury, so he didn’t hit his head and there were no signs of an aneurysm or a stroke. After my cardiologist heard about my cousin, he did another EKG. I guess they have to look at a specific spot where the lungs and the ventricle meet to know if a person has Brugada syndrome. And I have it.”
I’m terrified to ask the next question. “So you could have a heart attack?”
He squeezes my hand. “Worse. I won’t go into cardiac arrest at all. My heart will literally stop beating. Unless someone like a doctor or a paramedic happens to be around with a defibrillator and they get my heart restarted—I’ll die.”
It physically hurts to hear him say it.
Then there’s the part he isn’t saying.
I’ve watched enough medical dramas on TV to know that a defibrillator isn’t a sure thing. In those scenes, a doctor is usually performing chest compressions on a heart attack victim when the nurses show up with a crash cart. When the machine is charged, the doctor shocks the patient with the paddles. Then she waits.
Sometimes the patient pulls through and their heartbeat zigzags across the monitor. Other times, the patient continues to flatline.
“Are there warning signs? So you can get to a hospital in time?”
“Not always.” Owen takes my hand off his chest and traces shapes on my palm—a circle, a star, and finally a heart. “And the symptoms are common stuff like shortness of breath and fatigue, so it’s easy to miss them.”
A tear escapes and runs down my cheek.
Owen reaches out and brushes it away with his thumb. “This is the reason I didn’t tell you—or anyone else. My heart could stop five minutes from now or five years from now. There’s no way to predict it.”
I hear what he’s saying, but it doesn’t make sense. Owen is young and healthy. And his heart is just going to stop one day, with no warning?
“But the doctors can fix it, right?” I hear my dad’s voice in the back of my head, and I repeat the words he’d said so many times: “Everything can be fixed.”
Owen stares at the floor. “Except me.”
“What about surgery?”
“There’s only one. A surgeon attaches this thing they call a shock box to my heart. It’s sort of like a pacemaker, but it works differently. If my heart stops, the box shocks it so it will start beating again.”
Thank god there’s a solution. “When can you get one?”
“I don’t want one.”
Is he serious? “Why not?”
“I’d never be able to compete again, or play contact sports, run long distances—”
“So what? You get to live.”
“I’m not sure I want to live that way. That’s why I’m not having the surgery.”
Reality hits me and I finally hear him.
Owen, the guy I’m crazy about—who is only six months older than me—is going to die. And not when he’s eighty or ninety or a hundred.
And I’ll never see him again.
Like Dad.
I take his face in my hands.
When we slept together, I shared myself with him in ways I never had with anyone else. But I didn’t share my heart with him that night.
He already had it.
He had it the moment we became friends—and our friendship is more important to me than anything.
“You can’t die, because your mom needs you. Tucker and Cutter and Lazarus need you.” I tilt his face toward mine. “I need you.”
“I need you, too. But I didn’t think about how selfish it was to let you get attached to me.”
I cock my head to the side and smile. “Who says I’m attached to you? Maybe I’m just using you for your body.”
He pulls me in for a hug. “I’m okay with that.”
Owen holds me tighter, as if I’m the life preserver that’s keeping him from drowning. He doesn’t realize I can’t save him—because I’m full of holes and I’m drowning, too.
The bell rings and we head out to the parking lot.
Christian and Cam see us and they rush to catch up, but they hang back and give us some privacy. They’ve been following me around all day like bodyguards.
“You’re gonna be late for practice,” I call out to them.
“You let us worry about practice,” Christian says.
Owen hitches his thumbs in his pockets. “Are they following you because of me? They don’t think I’d ever—because I wouldn’t. Never.”
Clearly I’m not the only one who thinks my cousins look like bodyguards. The last thing I want is for Owen to think it’s because of him.
“It has nothing to do with you. They don’t think that, and I don’t think that. They’re worried I’m going to have some kind of breakdown. They were following me around the kitchen this morning, too.”
Owen nods. “Good. I mean, not about following you, but I’m glad they know I’d never hurt you. You know that, too, right?”
“I do.”
“I wish I’d known you when it happened, so I could’ve done something. Because I sure as hell didn’t do anything in the cage.”
“That’s not true. Reed messed with your head. You’re a better fighter than he is.”
“It doesn’t matter now. He won. I lost. It’s over.”
“It’s my fault.”
“Don’t say that.” Owen touches my arm. “Please. Come on. None of this is your fault. I understand why you didn’t tell me.”
I stop next to Cam’s truck.
“I can drive you to the Y,” Owen offers. “I have my car.”
“It’s okay. I’m not sure I feel like going today. Not because of you. It’s just been a rough couple of days.” Without you.
All of a sudden, I get a strange feeling someone’s watching me. The tiny hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I felt the same way the night outside the mill.
Christian and Cameron pick up their paces and catch up with us.
“What the hell is that piece of shit doing here?” Cam asks.
My gut tells me he’s talking about Reed before I see him. He’s standing on the sidewalk in front of the parking lot—technically not on school grounds. TJ and Billy are with him, pushing and shoving each other like idiots. Reed isn’t the only one who has put on a lot of muscle quickly.
“I don’t know what he’s doing here, but I’m going to find out,” Owe
n says.
I grab the sleeve of Owen’s jacket. “Let’s just leave.”
Grace squeezes between Christian and Cameron, but there’s no way the two of us can keep my cousins and Owen under control.
“Peyton’s right,” Grace says. “Let’s go. She doesn’t have anything to say to him, and neither do we.”
“I’ve got plenty to say to his friend,” Cam says, zeroing in on TJ. “And I’m gonna tell him while I’m pounding him into the ground.”
“Please don’t do this,” I beg. “Reed is just trying to get a rise out of you guys. I have no idea what he’s up to, but I promise you it isn’t good.”
The three guys keep walking. Reed narrows his eyes when he sees me with Owen. It’s subtle, but I know that look. He’s angry, even if he doesn’t want anyone to know it.
I slip past Owen and rush ahead of him. “I have nothing to say to you, Reed. I want you to leave and stop following me around.”
Reed makes a fist and holds it over his heart. “That hurts, Peyton. But I’m not here to see you.”
“Then what the fuck do you want?” Owen cuts in front of me and squares off in front of Reed.
Christian and Cam fan out and flank Owen, Cam in front of TJ and Christian in front of Billy.
“What should we do?” Grace whispers.
I throw up my hands. “I don’t know. But this is going to get out of control real fast.”
“I’m glad to see you up and around,” Reed says to Owen. “When you hit the mat, I wasn’t sure you were gonna get back up.”
To Owen’s credit, he doesn’t react. Today he’s in control. “I would’ve gotten up if the ref hadn’t called it.”
“What do you think, Billy?” Reed asks.
“He was laid out. I’m not sure he would’ve gotten up,” Billy says.
“I wouldn’t put money on it, either,” TJ adds.
“You two are such assholes,” I say to Reed’s friends. “Thank god I don’t have to hang out with either of you anymore.”
Reed’s eyes dart back and forth between TJ and Billy. He’s waiting to see if one of them is stupid enough to say something disrespectful to me, but they know better.
Reed seems satisfied and picks up where he left off. “That’s actually what I came to talk to you about, Owen. When I beat a guy in the cage, I want to make sure he knows he’s been beaten. And all this bullshit about the ref calling it early screwed that up for me.”