Page 121 of Ghosts Don't Cry

I surge to my feet. “Ronan!”

He doesn’t react to my shout, standing when told, without turning around, and walks out between the guards.

I make it to the bathroom seconds before I throw up. My knees hit tile hard enough to bruise, and I welcome the pain because it distracts me from the way my heart feels like it’s being torn out. Sobs break free in ugly, broken sounds that fill the room.

The door opens at my back, and then Cassidy is there. Her arms wrap around me as I shatter.

“He didn’t look at me.” The words come out between sobs. “He wouldn’t even … How could he …”

She doesn’t speak, holding me while I fall apart, and the world crumbles into dust around me.

“I love him. Ilovedhim. I loved him, and he didn’t even look at me.”

I don’t remember leaving the courthouse, or the drive home. I don’t remember anything except the way he looked in that jumpsuit, and how alone he was, and the way he behaved like I wasn’t there, within reach, ready to support him.

That night, I tell my parents there’s something I need to do. They must see something in my eyes, or hear it in my voice, because they tell me not to take long, and let me go.

I drive to the factory.

The space feels wrong without him. The blankets are still there, folded the way he always left them. He showed more care for them than anyone ever showed for him. Everything is exactly as it was the last time I saw him.

I cross the floor, my flashlight beam catching on broken glass, and stop near where he’d sit propped against the wall, book balanced on his knees. Crouching, my fingers find the loose brick and pull it free. There’s a plastic bag wedged in the gap behind it.

My hands are shaking when I draw it out.

Inside the plastic bag is a small box, and inside that are his treasures. Every note I ever wrote him. The notebook I bought for his birthday filled with his beautiful handwriting—poetry, thoughts, pieces of his soul he never showed anyone else. And the copy of ‘The Grapes of Wrath’I gave him.

I sink to the ground, clutching it to my chest and let the tears come. I cry until my eyes burn and my head throbs, then withgentle hands, I tuck everything back inside the box and carry it to my car.

When I get home, I sit at my desk, the box at my elbow, and write words I know I’ll never send. I pour out everything I couldn’t say to him in that courtroom. Everything I wish he’d let me say.

But the truth is, he’s gone, and I don’t know if he was ever really here to begin with.

Tears fall onto the paper, smearing the ink, and outside my windows the stars shine like they don’t know my world just ended.

The final words I have of him spin in my head.

Some stories don’t get happy endings.

I just never thought ours would be one of them.

Chapter Forty-Nine

RONAN - AGE 18

The airin the courtroom smells like old wood and paper. It’s the kind of room where lives are reduced to reports, and names are spoken like accusations.

My wrists are shackled. The metal bites into skin already rubbed raw from the hospital restraints. Because I was under arrest, they had cuffed me to the bed in case I tried to escape. The fact that anyone looked at me and thought there was even the remotest possibility of that had me questioning their intelligence, but I hadn’t argued with them.

I’d been dying. The doctors confirmed that. If I’d left it any longer, they wouldn’t have been able to save me. Now I’m just a ghost of that wreckage, not completely healed. It’ll take more than a week for that. The pain is still there from Dan’s beating, and the damage he caused. The withdrawal from the painkillers isn’t finished with me either. My skin crawls, muscles twitching constantly, and nausea rolls through my gut in waves.

But when I walk into that courtroom, I don’t give anyone the satisfaction of seeing my discomfort. The whole town has turned out for the show, and I can feel their eyes crawling over me.

I keep my gaze on the floor, and don’t look at anyone. Not when the judge speaks, or the defense attorney the state assigned me sits down. And definitely not the people whispering behind cupped hands, recounting a version of me they crafted long before I set off the alarms at Feldman’s store.

But mostly … not ather.

I knew she’d be here. Even before I stepped inside.