Carry Me Home

Thirty-Nine

Rowan

I lay on my bed with my head facing the ceiling. My eyes focusing on all the pictures that I had put up around me. My gaze got caught on the photo of Evelyn and I on our first date. My little Angel. Seeing her stand up to me today made me realise that she'd be okay without me and that made everything a little bit easier to bear.

"You're doing that thing again, Row." Hayden said, leaning against the doorjamb.

"What thing?"

"Looking at the ceiling and daydreaming." He took a seat beside me and mimicked exactly what I'm doing. We don't say anything to each other for a while and all we do is stare at the white ceiling above us. "The world is such a cruel place to live in."

"The world isn't cruel, Hayden, human beings are the cruel ones." Hayden abruptly shot up from his position and looked at my face with the most horrified expression ever.

"You're not cruel, Rowan. You did that to save her from hurting but what you did afterwards was uncalled for."

"So you're the one who told her?" I got up as well and crossed my legs.

"She's still in love with you so she had every right to know."

"You did the exact thing I didn't want you to do and you ended up hurting her even more."

"Rowan Hastings, if you didn't want to hurt her then you didn't need to break up with her."

"Hayden Carter, you know exactly why I had to do that so don't you dare put that against me.

"Don't remind me about that again and again, Rowan." Hayden's voice cracked and he looked away from me. Being friends with someone for more than sixteen years was a relationship to be proud of and for that to then break due to unusual and abrupt circumstances was heartbreaking for even the most apathetic person.

"Seriously though, Hayden, take care of her for me," I pleaded, sounding like the most desperate man on earth.

"You love her more than you loved Avery, don't you?" I nodded without having a shadow of a doubt in my mind. I fell in love with Evelyn the second I saw her at that party on the first night at Ashby. "Tell her that, Row. Don't go without telling her."

"If I tell her then she'll hold onto me and I don't want that to happen. "

"What about me? How am I going to live without you? How am I going to find another person who can fill the void, the emptiness that'll be left in my heart after you leave? Did you think about that, Rowan? You're a friend worth dying for and instead you're doing that for me."

"That's because you're worth dying for too. If I die knowing that I lived my life with a friend like you by my side then I can die happily because I've made the best choices in my life."

"You're not going to die, Rowan! There's a chance that you'll survive this."

"It's a twenty-six percent survival rate and you forget that I'm quite an unlucky person. Grace died of this too, Hayden - it runs in the family." I sighed and looked out of the window.

"What's the full name again?" Hayden asked.

"Acute myelogenous leukaemia. The 'acute' means it kills you faster." I explained. My medical degree was coming in handy when analysing what was wrong with me.

"IT'S NOT FAIR!" Hayden, out of the blue, jumped off the bed and threw all the books on my bedside table onto the floor. "Why you? Why is it you out of all people? Why does everything happen to you?"