POV Ajax
One week. One fucking week of nothing.
I slammed my fist into the rehearsal room mirror, watching the crack spider-web across our reflections.
Mrs. Meyer had given up asking where Bella was. The other couples danced around me like I was radioactive.
"She's sick," I'd told them the first day. "Family emergency," the second. By the third, I'd stopped making excuses.
Blood beaded across my knuckles and I grabbed a roll of athletic tape from the stereo cart, wrapping my hand without looking up.
“I’ll pay for the mirror,” I said to no one specifically, voice flat, and shouldered past the line of couples practicing their pretty turns without us.
The hallway outside hummed with the rubbery squeak of soles. I took the stairs two at a time, chasing air. Outside, early spring slapped my face with a cold that wasn’t cold enough.
I cut across the quad. I needed height, a place where the noise couldn’t catch me.
Thornton Hall was closest. I slipped in through a side door, ignored the elevator, and climbed—five flights, then the narrow service ladder. At the top, the metal door fought me; I shoved it open with my shoulder and stepped into the wind and sky.
The roof was empty except for the mechanical hum of the vents and the smear of the city beyond the trees.
I lit a cigarette. Then another. By the third, my hand had stopped shaking enough to hold the lighter steady.
The door banged again and so Jake found me.
"The bet's still on, right?" He dropped beside me, stealing the pack. "A month and a half left to break the princess."
"Shut up, Jake."
"That's not a ‘no’." He lit one, exhaling smoke into the gray sky. "Though from what I hear, she's doing a magnificent job of ghosting you. Can't seduce someone who literally runs when she sees you."
Well, yeah. That’s perhaps the shitiest partS Yesterday, she spotted me across the quad and bolted. Actually ran in heels, Camila chasing after her.
"Maybe she's playing hard to get," Jake continued. "Or maybe she realized what a colossal mistake that kiss was—"
My hand shot out, gripping his throat. "Don't."
"Jesus, Ajax." He shoved me off, coughing. "You're actually fucked up over her."
"I'm done talking about this."
"Whatever, man. But if you can't close the deal, you owe me five grand."
The number didn’t matter; she did.
Bella had skipped rehearsal and gone silent, and every second I spent listening to Jake was another she could slip out of reach. I cut across the roof, hitting the places she retreats to when the world presses in.
The library was her last refuge. I'd already checked everywhere else—the coffee shop, the arts building, even the fucking chapel.
She had to be here.
I found her in the some marketing shit section, surrounded by journals and textbooks. She sensed me before I spoke, and I could see how her entire body gone rigid.
"Don't even think about running."
Bella spun, books clutched to her chest like armor. Her eyes darted to the exits—I'd already blocked the main path.
"Ajax, please—"
"No." I advanced, watching her retreat until her back hit the shelves. "No more running. No more lies. What the hell is wrong with you?"
"Nothing's wrong. I've just been busy—"
"Busy." The word tasted like poison. "So busy you missed five rehearsals? So busy you literally sprint when you see me?"
"I'm not avoiding you."
"Don't fucking lie to me!" The words exploded out, echoing through the stacks. "After that kiss, everything finally seemed normal between us. Real."
She flinched, books trembling in her grip.
"You felt it too." I moved closer, caging her against the shelves. "The way you kissed me back, the way you looked at me—like I was everything."
"Stop…”
"Is this because of Zane?" My voice dropped, turning vulnerable despite myself. "Because that's stupid, Bella. You're not a child, and neither am I."
"It's not about Zane." Her voice shook, eyes glistening.
"Then what?" I slammed my palm against the shelf beside her head. Books tumbled to the floor. "What could possibly—"
"I'm dying!"
The words detonated between us. Time stopped. The fluorescent lights hummed. Someone laughed in the distance.
"What?" The word came out strangled.
Tears streamed down her face, all pretense shattered. "I'm dying, Ajax, okay? Actually freaking dying. Week by week, day by day."
"That's not… You can't be—"
"Rare genetic heart condition." She laughed, bitter and broken. "The pills you've seen? Not anxiety medication. They're keeping my heart from giving out completely."
My legs threatened to buckle. "The disappearances..."
"Hospital stays. Tests. Failed treatments." She wiped her cheeks roughly. "Zane almost told you that night. My overprotective little brother who's watched me collapse more times than anyone should."
"There has to be something— Surgery, medication—"
"I need a transplant." Her voice went clinical, detached. "But my markers are so rare that finding a match is basically impossible. Five months if I'm lucky. Maybe less."
The math crashed over me. Five months. The graduation gala was in a month and a half.
“So whatever this is between us, whatever game you’re playing with me… it has to stop. I won’t let you watch me die, and I won’t fall in love with someone who’ll just leave me anyway.”
The words hung in the air between us like a death sentence. I stared at her, my mind reeling, unable to process what she’d just said.
Fall in love.
She’d said fall in love, and the way she looked at me—like I was already breaking her heart—made something crack wide open in my chest.
The girl I was falling for might not survive long enough for me to figure out what she meant to me.
Might not live to see next Christmas. Or her twenty-second birthday. Or any of the thousand moments I suddenly, desperately wanted to share with her.