They Promised Every Birthday, They Kept None Chapter 08

They Promised Every Birthday, They Kept None Chapter 08

By the fourth day, I could barely see the road.

My vision kept going dark at the edges, and the pain in my stomach was a steady, grinding ache.

I pulled over and rested my forehead on the steering wheel, waiting for it to pass.

In the rearview mirror, gray clouds stacked along the horizon.

Almost there.

I fumbled for my pill bottle and tipped it out.

Only two pills were left.

I was about to swallow them when a car screeched to a halt behind me.

Before I could react, my door was wrenched open.

Cold air rushed in.

Ethan stood there.

His voice was raw, shaking in a way I’d never heard before.

“Mia!”

Liam pushed past him, his eyes bloodshot.

“Mia, are you insane? Do you have any idea what you’re doing to yourself?”

Derek stood behind them, pale as bone.

His voice was barely a rasp.

“Mia. Come back with us. The doctor said if you start treatment now, there’s still a chance.”

I looked at them calmly.

“Go back where? To that apartment? Or to Ashley’s house?”

All three of them stiffened.

Ethan’s eyes filled with tears.

“No, Mia. It’s your home too. It always has been.”

I shook my head.

“No. It stopped being home the day you told me to leave.”

Liam opened his mouth, his voice cracking.

“We didn’t know how bad it was.”

“Didn’t know?”

I laughed, and it hurt.

“You saw my wig fall off. You saw me cough up blood. You heard me say I couldn’t afford my medication. You just didn’t want to believe me.”

Liam’s face drained of color.

Derek stepped closer.

“Mia. I’m sorry. Ashley lied to us-she deleted your messages and hid the hospital calls. If I’d known you were sick, that you were alone, I swear I would’ve come.”

I smiled and wiped a tear off my chin.

“Derek, do you know what I used to be most afraid of?”

“The nights. When the pain kept me awake, I used to think-if Derek just showed up, just once-I’d be okay. I waited and waited. Dawn came. You never came.”

I looked up at him.

“But I’m not afraid of the dark anymore.”

Ethan was crying openly now.

“Mia, I was wrong. Come home. I’ll get you the best doctors. If Ashley won’t donate, we’ll find

another way. Just don’t leave us. Please.”

I gently pushed his hand away.

“Ethan, it’s too late. The Mia you’re looking for – she died a long time ago, in that rented room.”

Liam dropped to his knees.

“Don’t say that. Please. Come back with us.”

I didn’t look at him.

I looked past them, toward the darkening sky.

“I’m almost at Lake Serenity. It’s the only place I wanted to be on my twentieth birthday. The place you promised me.”

“I wanted to bring the old Ethan, the old Liam, the old Derek. Not you. Not who you’ve become.”

I paused.

My voice dropped to barely a whisper.

“Don’t follow me. I don’t want you to see this. And I don’t want the people you are now to ruin the last good thing I have left.”

I closed the door.

Ethan reached for the handle, but something in my expression made him stop.

I started the engine and pulled back onto the road.

Behind me, Derek shouted, “Mia! Turn around! Look at me!”

I held the wheel steady and didn’t look in the rearview mirror.

Their figures shrank in the side mirror until the darkness swallowed them whole.

I reached Lake Serenity just before dawn.

I parked the car and leaned against the door for a long time before I could walk toward the water.

The path wasn’t far, but every step cost me.

Pain clawed at my insides.

Blood kept rising in my throat-I swallowed it back over and over.

But I was happy.

I was finally here.

Twenty years old.

No cake.

No candles.

No one to wish me a happy birthday.

But I had Lake Serenity.

The place we’d promised to see together so many years ago.

I sat down by the shore and pulled out the letter paper I’d prepared.

The wind was strong.

The pages fluttered wildly.

I used a pill bottle to weigh down one corner and began to write.

The first letter was for Ethan.

[Ethan, I still remember the night I was ten and couldn’t sleep because of the pain. You stayed up all

night wiping my forehead, saying, “Don’t be scared, Mia. Your brother’s here.” I held onto those words for years.

Thank you to the old Ethan, for wanting so badly to keep me alive.]

The second was for Liam.

[Liam, I remember you crying in the stairwell and pretending it was allergies. You were so scared,

but you still made silly faces to cheer me up.