Even When I'm Gone (Stay With Me series Book 2)

by Nicole Fiorina

  My eyes burned. My hands shook. And finally, I spun around to see Ethan. His eyes were hazy and red—a raging fire burning inside them. He covered my mouth with his hand and pinned me against the wall. “I’m so sorry, Mia,” he whispered, and I no longer recognized the man staring back at me. My eyes strained, darting back and forth to the guy struggling for his life hanging from the ceiling. “It’s not what you think,” Ethan chanted in my ear with his hand pressed firmly against my mouth, muffling my screams as the boy slowly suffocated before me.

  Ethan pressed all his weight against me to keep me pinned.

  The sight was too hard, and I squeezed my eyes closed to shut it all out.

  I was confused. So, confused.

  Anger rolled through me, and I snapped. My arms had a mind of their own as I fought against Ethan. I shoved him, and he pushed me ten times harder. I screamed, he squeezed my cheeks together. I pumped my knee into his groin, and Ethan took me to the ground and wrapped my wrists in one hand, putting his entire weight over my body. “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I never wanted you to see this. You were never part of the plan.”

  Then all I saw was black.

  ollie.

  I paced the road outside Travis’s car, my eyes itching to check the clock every five seconds. My palms sweat, gripping the bouquet of roses in my hand. In forty-eight hours, Mia and I would be in Spain getting married. I have been waiting for this day since I’d first felt her.

  I would say saw her, but that would have been a lie.

  I felt her first.

  Her soul called out to me first, and then I saw her.

  Where are you, love?

  The car was packed up with our clothes, her camera, my journal, our pictures, and the dozen or so roses Zeke and I had made her.

  My Mia Rose.

  The Artist green card had been mailed to my residence yesterday. Travis had brought it with—the first thing I’d asked to see. I had a way back and forth to the states. Mia had dual legal citizenship, with a little help from Lynch.

  I fucking did it, and all I needed was for her to walk through those iron gates so we could get married and go home.

  Where are you, love?

  “Are you sure you said three?” Travis asked. His heavy glare did nothing to ease the ache rising inside my chest. I couldn’t think under all the weight, and I leaned over the hood of his car and tried to breathe. The burn in my chest only intensified with each passing second.

  “She’s coming.” I opened the door and set the bouquet of roses over the passenger side. The clock read ten minutes past three. The air was still cold, but sweat pricked my forehead. “She’ll be here.”

  Epilogue

  “In the wake of death,

  a monster was born.

  His name was Karma,

  and he craved revenge.”

  —Oliver Masters

  Ethan.

  THERE WAS FIVE STAGES OF GRIEF. Psychologists had fucking figured it out in five bloody stages. I had passed denial a long time ago, but never reached bargaining—stuck in a continuous cycle of Anger.

  Anger, my most trusted and loyal friend. I could count on Anger. It was there when I woke up. It was there when I closed my eyes. Anger even took me in my sleep. The rage had become a part of me—a monster—and I fed that bloody beast every godforsaken day.

  Sixteen Months Ago

  It had been a year since I’d walked up the steps of Dolor, but it seemed like just yesterday I saw her face.

  “Don’t you look snazzy in your new uniform,” Livy says. “Are you egg-cited? I’m so proud of you.” Her hand grabs mine as she always did to get my attention, and a small smile washes over her face as she looks up at me with matching blue eyes. Her use of egg-cited started one year on Easter when we were younger, but it had bled into an all year thing between the two of us.

  I know Livy is proud of me, but I’m mad at her at the moment. She was taking off to a reformatory school to get help. She said I wouldn’t understand, but one day I would. And all I see now as she smiles up at me in admiration is the fact she did not trust me enough to confide in me. We were supposed to be family. We were supposed to be in this shit together.

  The least I could have done was thank her, smile, or given her a lick of appreciation or acknowledgement, but I had walked away, holding onto a fucking grudge against her.

  A bloody fucking year.

  If only I’d known what I knew now.

  I waited outside the door for Lynch, when, finally, the door creaked open and he greeted me with an outstretched hand. It took me a second to swallow the beast inside and shake his hand—it took everything. Even while shaking his hand, I wanted to snap his wrist for not doing the one thing he’d promised: Keep Livy safe.

  “Mia is important to me,” he had said over the phone when he had called me for help about a matter. I hadn’t spoken to the chap since Livy’s death, and he had the nerve to call me with a favor. I should’ve told him to go fuck himself. Livy had been important to me, too. She had been in his care, his responsibility. He was supposed to help Livy. She was the only family I had left, and here I fucking am, back at Dolor because he needed me.

  Little did Lynch know, I had other plans in mind.

  My heart warned me with every step I took up the stairs as I followed Lynch. It told me it would leave me too if I continued this path of vengeance, but the monster inside shut that bastard up.

  Side by side, we walked past Livy’s old wing. I turned my eyes away, anything to lessen the blow and shield myself from the memories threatening to resurrect. I’d kept those memories locked up, but now the monster inside pounded against my skull, rattling in its cage, thirsty for redemption.

  Not yet, my dear friend. Your time will come.

  Livy’s death had reminded me there were no second chances. No rewinds. No going back in time to erase the damage. You only have one chance, and I’d missed it by a long shot.

  Late, without so much as a decent excuse.

  The pressure stacked heavier with each long stride down Livy’s old wing. My hands fisted at my sides, and Lynch stopped in front of the nurse’s station. “Her name is Mia. She has no idea I’m her father,” he warned me in a hushed tone. “I prefer to keep it that way.”

  “I understand,” I complied. Livy was my sister, and I preferred for her to be alive today, but we didn’t always get what we wanted.

  The door opened.

  We walked through.

  Mia laid there, withdrawn and dazed, clutching a phone in her hand. A large cut sliced through her eyebrow and she parted her cracked and bruised lip. Caramel-brown eyes studied me, waiting for a reaction. I fought to maintain the fact this was Lynch’s daughter, and I shouldn’t care, but the animal inside quieted at the sight of her. This girl scared him, too. I dropped my eyes to the floor so she couldn’t see what her stare did to me. At least until I’d figured it out for myself.

  Lynch spoke first and introduced me. I stayed quiet at his side.

  She asked about a friend before making demands, then had the audacity to throw in a few jabs at Lynch’s credibility as a dean. I laughed a little inside.

  This girl was a storm.

  I immediately wanted to know everything there was about her, and how she was able to control my anger when I’d spent months trying to pack its shit and move it out.

  After watching the evidence Mia had captured on video, the monster inside me awakened. “Mind if I ask you a few more questions?” I asked as I bagged the phone.

  Mia, despite her situation, was intimidating. When she looked at me, she looked through me. Her eyes violated me, frisked me for weapons, and rendered me defenseless—with just one fucking look. I had to know more. I had to know how she carried the same jaded look in her eyes as my sister had, and still be here when my sister wasn’t. How had Mia gotten this far?r />
  Mia’s ability to tell her story with only a few shed tears was impressive, considering I was the one who had to pause her, close my eyes, and prepare for impact. Every similarity was a punch to the gut. She mentioned her uncle and what he had done to her. She mentioned her mom, and the way she had left her. And the only family she had, shipped her to Dolor.

  Mia and I were one in the same, aside from the fact she was able to obliterate the anger inside just by her presence.

  I’ll be back, Mia.

  We said our goodbyes, and as I walked away, she grabbed my hand.

  By the single touch of her hand, I froze. The monster froze. I’d never been so nervous, and I found the will to turn to face her.

  “I’m sorry about your sister, Ethan. She would be so proud of you,” Mia said, and squeezed my hand. That was all it took for me to know I had to see my plans through.

  For Livy. For Mia. For justice.

  “Why don’t you want her to know?” I asked Lynch back at his office. I leaned back in the chair and rested my elbows over the armrests, bringing my pointer fingers to my mouth. Lynch absentmindedly rolled a pen between his palms in deep thought, wondering which version he wanted to spit my way.

  Try me, Lynch. I may have been a horrible brother, but I was a walking lie detector.

  “She’s smart,” he finally said. Truth. “She will use it against me during her time here. I’ll tell her, but not until her last day. It has to be her choice in whether or not she wants to accept it. It has to be because I’m not the dean of the school she’s attending, but because she honestly wants to be a part in my life.”

  I sat back in the chair and scratched my jaw. “How long have you known?” I asked and held my arms out to the side. “That she is your daughter. How long?” Where were you while her uncle was raping her? Where were you when her mother took her life? Where were you the last nineteen years of her life? What was your fucking excuse? Was it the same as mine?

  “Eight months,” Lynch scoffed. “Bruce, her father, reached out to me about eight months ago. Told me what happened with her mum, laid a shit storm on me, and confessed I had a daughter. He said Mia needed help. I didn’t believe him at first, but then he sent me the original birth certificate. When she first arrived, I had her blood drawn.” He tossed the pen over the desk. “She’s mine, Ethan. That little girl in there?” he pointed up, where Mia laid above us, “She’s my daughter. You’re the only one I trust to protect her. Lord knows Livy had gone through hell and back, and I’m sorry for what happened to Livy. I know I should’ve checked up on you after she died. I should have been there for you. But I failed and I was scared to face my failures. I can’t have the same thing happen to Mia that happened to your sister. If anyone understands, it’s you. You’re the only one who can do this job. I need you to keep an eye on her. Watch her every move.”

  Lynch was desperate, but so was I.

  “I’ll do it.” I would watch over Mia, do what I couldn’t do for Livy. I’ll make sure nothing ever happened to her, but in the meantime, I’d also raise hell in this fucking institution and eliminate the bastards who gang-raped and murdered my little sister.

  The police had said it was suicide by hanging. Deep down, I knew the truth. Livy would’ve never left Tommy behind or take the life of their baby. Livy would have never left me behind.

  But those were all assumptions.

  The cold hard truth? I’d been the first one at the scene. The facts had screamed at me from the door of her dorm. Livy didn’t have the height nor strength to have carried out the suicide. It had taken Livy until the age of eight to learn to tie her shoe. I hardly believed she configured a noose in the form of a bedsheet.

  The cold hard truth? I’d spent months investigating her case, reading the reports, studying her last months, visited Tommy. They didn’t bother testing the skin under her nails for DNA. They didn’t bother interrogating the students. And they never bothered to report the bruises or evidence of foul play that painted over her body.

  They didn’t fucking care.

  Suicide was much easier to jot down. Investigating the truth was harder. Shit, people wanted easy. They wanted a closed case and to go home to their families.

  Crazy how one lie on a death certificate could haunt a soul daily, on top of the last memory I had of her. The memory of saying goodbye to her cold, lifeless body at the morgue. I would never forget the way her forehead felt beneath my kiss.

  That chill ran through me ever since.

  The cold hard truth was, if I wanted something done, I had to do it myself. It was time Livy’s murderers were punished, and thanks to Tommy, one of them had been taken care of. But it was up to me to take out the last four blokes under the same fate they’d given my sister.

  One by fucking one.

  And what if we all stop and listen? I refuse to measure suicide with numbers, statistics, and percentages, because at the end of the day, it only takes one to disrupt the entire world.

  You can erase this stigma by how you respond to this tragic death. For more information, please visit:

  https://save.org

  National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255 (TALK)

  Crises Textline: Text HOME to 741-741

  acknowledgements

  HOLY FUCKING SHIT.

  My second publication.

  I’m still reeling.

  Give me a moment.

  … Exhales …

  Okay, here we go.

  I can’t start off my acknowledgements without thanking the readers first. Whether you found my books through social media, word of mouth, recommendations, or me reaching out to you, the time you’ve taken to read, review, share, and so much more, YOU ARE THE ONES WHO BRING THIS STORY TO LIFE. And with that, I can’t thank you enough.

  Thank you to the ARC ARMY and LOVELIES, you ladies are incredible. I am in awe of all that you do. It’s amazing to a see a community of strong and passionate people from around the world sharing the same love for reading, come together by a single story. Though I’m still trying to figure out the whole social media thing, I see your messages, creations, and words, and it warms my heart of how accepting you are. And not just to me, but to each other. I literally could go on …

  A never ending thanks to Annie Bugeja. You have made book two what it is, between beta reading, proofreading, and being an ear during my emotional meltdowns, I don’t know if I could have done this one without you. Actually, I probably could have, but it would have been a huge pile of lsakjflskjfd. Thank you for loving these characters. Though we met not that long ago, I’d felt like I’ve known you my whole life. Is it possible to owe SWM a solid for meeting you? Would that mean I owe myself one? I’ll take full credit! You are my WE. I love you dickwad. **insert middle finger emoji**

  To K. Dosal McLendon. My Kassy. My life support. It’s crazy, really, how far we’ve come already. Endless thank you for everything. You knew how hard that epilogue was for me to write. You noticed a change in my writing almost immediately. Thank you for letting me cry it out, for reminding me why I started this story, for always being there, and understanding my vision. I love you!

  A huge thank you to Ally Dublin with Wasted Life Books. Damn, woman. You are the mom of PA’s. Thank you for your constant reminders, keeping me on track and in line, and pushing me every single day. I think you’ve realized by now, I’m not like the rest of them. Thank you for accepting me with open arms.

  Thank you to my Michelle (Mishie) Montes, Faith Flores, Lisa Bardonski, and Lym Cruz for your time and effort put into beta reading EWIG.

  Mishie, my girl, your drive and passion for the story fuels me, and I couldn’t have asked anyone better to be on this team.

  Lisa … (I’m laughing as I’m writing this) … thank you for your honest review of the first book. Bet you didn’t think I was going to reach out and ask you to be on my te
am after that, did you? Thank you for catching all the missing words that ran through my head and never made it to into the story. Because of you, no word has been lost.

  Faith, thank you for being there since the beginning. You are so talented and I look up to you so much. Thank you for everything you’ve given me, time, encouragement, advice, etc. Don’t ever leave me.

  An endless thank you to my husband, Michael, my daughter, Grace, and my son, Christian. I hear you. I see you. I feel you. I may not be there one hundred of the time, but just know you three will always be my number one. Your continuous support and patience allows me to follow my dream. I love you!

  Thank you to my sisters, Amanda, Danielle, and Kaylee. Damn, I love you guys.

  Thank you, Amanda, my other half for being there for my every step of the way. For celebrating every single victory, though I know at times can be annoying. Despite how hard life hit this year, you still took the time to beta read. PS: When you read this, you’ll be mad I left a paragraph that you begged me to take out, but seriously … what did you expect? I’m not even sorry about it.

  A huge thanks to Kaylee, the free-spirited one. While writing book two, you texted me one night and said how much I’ve inspired you to follow your dreams. The truth is, you’re my inspiration. Thank you for reminding me how beautiful this world is. I thank God every day for you.

  Danielle, you will probably never read this, but I love you anyway. You support me in your own way and it will always be enough.

  Thank you, Stephanie Anderson, for putting this book perfectly together as always. Every little detail is noticed and appreciated!

  To all the amazing Authors, bloggers, bookstagrammers, readers, and anyone else who I’ve missed because I’m still on a high from no sleep and deadly amounts of caffeine, Thank you!

  Oh-my-God, Mom!

  Thank you, Mom, I love you!

  I promise we will have breakfast … after one more story.