Holding On To Heaven (Allendale Four 2)

It was dark when he pulled up to Stetson Hall. The wind had picked up and I spotted jagged lightning in the distance. My phone had a dozen messages from Noah trying to find me since I bailed on our study date. I ignored them all and before he could think of walking me in, I rested my hand over Oliver’s on the gear shift. “I’m sorry about all of this. I think I just need some time to get my head on straight.”

“Let me walk you up.” Those were the first words he’d spoken since we left the botanical garden.

“Not tonight,” I said. “I just need a little space, okay?”

He frowned. I’d asked these boys for many things but distance wasn’t one of them.

“I’ll call you.”

“Any time. Day or night.”

“I will.”

“Be safe, Heaven.”

I slammed the door and ran to the building.

25

Oliver

I watched her get out of the car, knowing I should go after her. She’d looked so sad. So rejected when she’d been on my lap but dammit, I knew the timing was off. Her shadow vanished, entering the building, and rain started to fall. I slammed my fist into the steering wheel.

“Fuck!” I shouted, less about the pain to my knuckles than her walking away like that. “Fucking fuck!”

I reached for my phone and called her but hung up just as fast. She wanted space and that was okay. Right? People needed space. They needed time.

I didn’t like it. Not at all.

I texted the others.

Meet me at Hayden’s. 911

Four thumbs ups followed.

We’d come up with a code months ago, after the first time I caught Heaven trying to cut herself. That night scared the hell out of me but I knew I had to be strong. Even so, we made a code—911 meant Heaven was struggling and we needed to figure out what to do. Hayden’s house was in the middle of campus, by the time I found a parking spot and ran through the rain to the porch, the others were there.

Hayden stood in the door.

“What’s going on?” Anderson said. He was breathing heavy, having run the farthest from his dorm. He shook his head, spraying rain on the rest of us. “Where is she?”

“At her dorm. She’s…she hurt herself again. I saw the cuts.”

“Fuck,” Hayden growled, slamming his fist into the door. “I apologized, guys, and she just turned me away.” He ran his hands through his hair. “I knew something was wrong even though she denied it.”

“She keeps avoiding my calls. Super short in her text replies,” Jackson said, quietly. All signs of his normally light-hearted demeanor were gone. He looked terrified. “I thought she was just busy—I had no fucking clue things were so bad.”

Anderson’s sharp jaw and angular cheekbones looked deadly in the shadowy light of the porch. “This has something to do with that Noah kid. No doubt about it.”

“Dude, we don’t know that,” I said.

“Between him and her dad, they were getting in her head. I have no doubt.”

“Who would know? Amber?” Hayden asked. “Have you talked to her?”

“She’s got a new girlfriend—I haven’t seen her for more than a minute in a few weeks.”

“Shit.” He replied. We all knew that was just one more support person that failed Heaven when she needed us.