Romane von Elias vale

Helena's pov The phone buzzed again in my hand before I could even breathe.I didn’t answer. I set it face-down on the tray table next to Maren’s photo. Jarett’s eyes tracked it. “Don’t,” he said in a voice so raw, it sounded like he’d been screaming. “I’m not,” I said. “I’m sitting here.”The ICU room was too bright and too white. The machines counting his heart like it might change its mind and stop. The black vein under his jaw hadn’t spread in the last hour.There was a scarf still tied around his hand. The fabric was soaked through in one spot, brown where his blood had dried. It wasn’t enough to hold him together, nothing was, except maybe me sitting here.The door opened and Dell came in first without any cuffs. The cop from the bridge stayed in the hallway, arms crossed.“You can’t be in here,” I said, standing up. “I can,” Dell said. “We're practically family.” He said it like a joke. Jarett’s grip tightened on mine. “Get out.”Dell looked at him, then at me. His sui

HELENA'S POVThe sirens got louder. Then they were right there, red and blue cutting through the gray morning, but they weren’t for us. Not yet. Two cops stepped out of the cruiser and behind them, in the passenger seat, cuffed, was Dell. His wrists were bound. His knuckles were raw and split. And the first place his eyes went wasn’t to the cops, or to me. It was to Jarett. He looked at him the way you look at a scoreboard while checking and counting. “What the hell did you do?” The words tore out of me before I realized I was standing. The rain hit me sideways and soaked straight through the hoodie. Dell didn’t answer. He just tilted his head, studying the black lines under Jarett’s skin like he was reading something I couldn’t see. One of the cops put a hand on my arm. “Ma’am, step back.” “Don’t touch me.” I jerked away and dropped to my knees again in the puddle. Jarett was heavier now. His breathing was shallow, wet, like he was drowning on dry land. “Jarett. Stay

HELENA'S POVI woke up that morning earlier than usual because the bed was too cold. That was the first thing I noticed. Jarett’s side was empty and it wasn’t warm. It wasn’t like he’d just gone to the bathroom. It was cold, like he hadn’t been there for hours. The time was 9:03 AM. The apartment was too quiet. The shower wasn't running and there was no sound of him in the kitchen trying to burn toast again. My stomach dropped before my brain could catch up. “Jarett?” My voice sounded too loud in the empty room. I pushed myself up and his pillow was flat. His hoodie was gone off the chair. His keys weren’t on the counter. And his phone was face down next to the sink. He never left his phone. Not even to take out the trash. I picked it up. No messages. No calls. The last thing in his search history was “old bridge river road”. The old bridge. 20 minutes out of town. The place the cops didn’t go. The black started creeping at the edges of my vision. Not from the injury. From f

Jarett's pov The arena was never supposed to be this quiet. I’d spent every night of the last four years in this building with the sound of sticks hitting boards and guys yelling and Helena’s voice cutting through it all. Now there was nothing. Just the low hum of the freezers under the ice and the sound of my boots on the concrete. The key in my pocket burned. It didn’t make sense. It was an old iron, so It should’ve been cold. But ever since Maren put it in my hand on the bridge, it hadn’t stopped feeling like I was holding a piece of coal. Debt was due. I told myself I wasn’t afraid as I pushed through the side door. The door clicked shut behind me and the sound was too loud in the empty hallway. It followed me down the corridor toward the locker rooms. Locker 17. That was us. That was where Dell left his tape everywhere and Mason had that stupid quote about heart taped inside his door. That was where Helena stood on the bench before every game and looked at all of us li

JARETT'S POVThe text was gone, deleted like if I made it disappear, the midnight deadline would too but It didn’t. My phone felt heavier in my bag and it felt like I was counting down. "I need you to come at midnight to the old bridge. Come alone, your debt is due from Maren."I looked up and Helena was still laughing with Dell. Her hair was damp from the celebration spray. The bruise was gone. The cut was gone. She looked like herself. Because of me. Because of what I owed now.“Jarett?” The coach threw a Gatorade bottle at me. I caught it on instinct. “Stop lurking and celebrate, kid. We just beat the number 2 team in the conference.”“Yeah,” I said. My voice sounded normal. “Yeah, we did.”The locker room smelled like sweat and victory and cheap champagne someone snuck in. Guys were yelling, music was too loud, Mason was trying to put Helena on his shoulders. She swatted him down, but she was smiling. Really smiling. The kind of smile I hadn’t seen in four days. This was why

JARETT'S POV For a second nothing happened. The black vial was empty in her hand. Helena’s throat worked as she swallowed the last of it. The air in the hospital room got heavier, like before a storm. The IV pump kept beeping, steadily and stupid and normal.Then she gasped. Her back arched. The glow from the potion went down her throat and spread under her skin. It moved like liquid light, down her neck, into her chest, into her arms. The bruise on her cheek that I’d been staring at for four days faded right in front of me. The cut on her lip closed and the color came back to her face.The monitor next to her beeped faster then it steadied. Her heart rate dropped back to normal. She stood up without the IV and without wobbling. She rolled her shoulders like she was testing them. She flexed her fingers, took a deep breath and didn’t cough. “Whoa,” she breathed. Relief hit me so hard my knees almost gave out. I had to grab the bed rail to stay up. She was okay....she was rea