116 With The Fishes
“You heard me,” Bell replied, crossing her arms over her chest.
“His heart stopped?” Ashleigh asked with concern. “Was he ok? What happened?”
“If you care so much, why did you choose Granger?” Bell asked.
Ashleigh looked away. “I can care about another person without any meaning to it.”
“Not this person,” Bell sighed.
Bell sat down beside Ashleigh, neither looking at the other.
“You can lie to almost anyone, and they won’t see it,” Bell said, turning to Ashleigh with a smile. “Except me.”
“I’ve lied to you before….” Ashleigh replied, looking down at her hand.
“And I saw it.”
Ashleigh took a deep breath and pushed it out.
“Can’t you just tell me what happened to him without making a big deal out of it?” she asked with a sigh.
“His heart stopped. Just like yours, at the same time,” Bell stated flatly. “Galen was with him, did CPR, and forced a shift to help him heal.”
Ashleigh took in a shuddering breath as Bell noticed a tear fall.
“He got sick before, too,” Bell added. “During the first attack, when you were hit with wolfsbane.”
Ashleigh brought her knees up to her chest and hugged them. Then, placing her forehead against her thighs, she cried.
Bell reached a hand to Ashleigh and rubbed her back gently.
“If it were the right choice, it wouldn’t hurt this much.”
Ashleigh sobbed.
“I know,” she cried out.
“Then why do it?”
“I don’t have a choice,” Ashleigh replied sadly.
“You always have a choice,” Bell said.
“Fine, yes, I made a choice. I made the choice that I had to!” Ashleigh shouted angrily.
“Look,” Bell said. “Just because the Goddess decided that–”
“It’s not the Goddess,” Ashleigh interrupted. “She made the right choice.”
Ashleigh turned her head to look at Bell, with eyes red and puffy and tears staining her face. Then, she showed a sad smile.
“Caleb is my true mate.”
“Then… I don’t understand why….”
“Duty before heart,” Ashleigh smiled.
Bell let out a groan.
“You know I hate that saying, right? It’s ridiculous. You can’t always put the pack’s needs ahead of your own. That’s how you drive yourself to an early grave of a life half lived.”
Ashleigh laughed.
“You’re right,” she sighed. “But it has its time and place. This is one of those times.”
“You better explain it to me then,” Bell smiled, offering her friend comfort.
Ashleigh nodded. Then she shared with Bell all she learned with the Priestess and how Granger had been waiting for her.
Bell took a deep breath at the end of the story.
“I hate to say he’s right, but Autumn would go to war for less,” Bell sighed. “And Spring… they are unpredictable.”
Ashleigh nodded.
“It’s too big a risk.”
“I get that,” Bell said, “but why does that mean you have to be with Granger? Why put yourself through that? Why not just remain single, like me?”
Bell smiled and framed her face with her hands.
Ashleigh laughed.
“What do you have against him anyway?” Ashleigh asked, “I know why I don’t feel the same about him anymore, but you used to consider him a good friend.”
“Yea, well, people change,” Bell sighed. “And he’s changed a lot the last few months.”
Ashleigh nodded and looked away. “Guess that’s my fault.”
“No. No, it is not,” Bell stated quite adamantly. “Granger is a grown man that makes his own choices. Turning the psycho part of his brain on full time was his choice, not yours.”
“I guess,” Ashleigh sighed. Then a thought occurred to her. “Wait, if you thought he was bad for months, why didn’t you ever talk to me about it?”
Bell looked at Ashleigh with a raised eyebrow.
“What?” Ashleigh asked.
“I tried,” Bell said. “More than once.”
“When?” Ashleigh asked skeptically.
“Not long after your birthday, when things were getting intense between you, and when he acted weird about you not texting him when you went to sleep.”
“But that was a joke,” Ashleigh said, remembering how Granger had seemed upset and then laughed it off.
“Was it?” Bell asked.
Ashleigh thought about it and other questionable moments. Then, finally, she realized she just didn’t know anymore what was real and what wasn’t.
“Honestly, I tried to let it go. I thought I was just being oversensitive,” Bell said. “But when he got in my face and threatened me–”
“He what?!” Ashleigh shouted, staring at Bell with eyes wide with shock and tinged with anger.
“Yea… so that fight between him and Galen… might have been indirectly related to me,” Bell replied with an awkward chuckle. ρꪖꪕᦔꪖꪕꪫꪣꫀꪶ
“Explain.”
“I kind of walked in on Granger trying to get your mom to pressure you into getting married. I gave my opinion on that, he didn’t like it. After your mom left, I tried to lighten the mood, but he was pissed and made it clear that I shouldn’t mention it to you.”
“Goddess…” sighed Ashleigh, shaking her head. “I wish you would have told me… I get why you didn’t, though.”
“Oh.. no, I was going to tell you,” Bell stated, “yea… any fear I had went out the window when I saw Galen after their fight.”
“Ok… so why didn’t you?”
“Uh, well, I tried… but… you threw me against a wall… so yea.”
Ashleigh closed her eyes and bit her lip. She had forgotten. How could she have forgotten?
“Bell…” Ashleigh started, facing her friend apologetically. “I am so, so, sorry.”
Bell took a deep breath and let it back out.
“It’s ok, I understand.”
“No,” Ashleigh shook her head. “It’s not.”
“Well, it’s done anyway, and I already forgave you. So, there is no need to talk about it anymore,” said Bell. “Let’s return to the previous question. Even if you can’t be with Caleb, why do you have to be with Granger?”
Ashleigh sighed.
“Seriously, Ash, why put yourself through that?”
“We aren’t really going to be together,” Ashleigh said.
“Does he know that?” Bell asked.
“I’ve certainly tried to make it clear,” Ashleigh sighed, “I’m hoping this time away from each other will help him realize that it’s really over….”
“And when that doesn’t work?”
“I don’t know,” Ashleigh sighed, quickly adding, “yet.”
“Did you consider telling Caleb the truth?” Bell asked.
Ashleigh scoffed.
“It’s one thing for Caleb to respect my wishes, my rejection,” Ashleigh said with a pang of guilt.
“But it’s entirely different from telling him we can’t be together because the other Alphas won’t like it. How do you see that playing out?”
Bell thought back to her conversation with Caleb and how he had handled Alpha Tomas even before becoming an Alpha himself.
And then the image of Galen sitting on the table with an arrow stuck through him because Bell got her feelings hurt came to mind.
“Oof… yea, those Summer boys are… passionate,” she said.
They both laughed.
Ashleigh sighed again, “I’ll find a way to be free of Granger.”
“Well, just make sure you do it quickly. Renee is a total ‘Team Granger’ so…” Bell’s words died on her lips.
There was a silence in the air between them. For a few minutes, they had forgotten how sick their friend was. Now the reality was settling back in. Bell was desperate to push it back for even a few more seconds.
“Hey…” Bell whispered, wagging her eyebrows up and down. “Should we kill him?”
Ashleigh laughed out loud.
“What?”
“I’m just saying….” Bell continued using a voice like the old mafia movies Wyatt would occasionally watch. “We could make him sleep with the fishes.”
Ashleigh laughed again; this time, Bell joined her.
“Seriously, I’m sure I have something in my bag of tricks here that would be absolutely untraceable to us.”
Bell pulled her medical bag open, using it as a prop in her joke. But something strange caught her attention.
“Something wrong?” Ashleigh asked.
“Just weird,” Bell said, reaching her hand into the bag.
She pulled out a small hard-cased pouch. It had a zipper close, but it was pulled half-open.
“I never leave this open,” Bell commented, looking at the zipper.
She opened it all the way, exposing the contents. On one side of the case were four empty syringes. In addition, there was a clear plastic pouch at the center that contained six small medicine vials, and on the back wall were four more empty syringes.
“The EpiPen is gone….” Bell said softly.
“Did it fall into the bag?” Ashleigh suggested.
“Maybe…” Bell replied as she searched through her bag unsuccessfully. “It must have fallen out in my office….”
Ashleigh nodded and then proceeded to get off the floor.
“I don’t know about you, but the smell in here is starting to get to me,” she smiled at Bell.
Bell laughed and then got up.
“Let’s get to work.”
They searched the house together.
There was plenty destroyed, but nothing seemed to be missing or new from what they remembered of Renee’s house.
When they searched her bedroom, Ashleigh had checked the closet while Bell checked the bed.
Bell looked at the empty nightstand. Something about it felt off. She got closer and found tiny bits of dried plants in a circular pattern.
‘She must have had a vase here,” Bell thought.
Glancing around the area, she saw bits of shattered glass and assumed it was the debris of the vase in question.
She pulled out a small bag from her kit and opened it. Just as she pushed the dried bits of the plant into the bag, her eyes fell under the bed. Where she saw a large, slightly wilted petal of primarily black with an orange edge. It looked vaguely familiar.