Free The Secret 02 The Forever of Ella and Micha by Jessica Sorensen Page A

the bathroom to do… something. When I pass the mirror, though, I pause in front of it. My eyes are big and bloodshot and my skin is pallid. My thoughts drift back to when Micha made me look in the mirror at myself and he told me he loved me. I gently sketch the infinity tattoo on my back as a cloudy haze lifts from my mind.
    There are people in this world who love me.
    I wonder if my mom thought about this before she took her life.
    I grab my phone, slip on my shoes, and run out of the house. It’s midafternoon and the sun is shining as I sprint across the parking lot toward the school’s main entrance. I haven’t showered in days and still have on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt I’ve been sleeping in. My hair is tangled in a ball behind my head and I have no makeup on, but it doesn’t matter.
    I burst into the therapist’s office and luckily she’s eating a sandwich instead of talking to a patient.
    She springs up from her chair. “Ella, what’s wrong?”
    Breathing profusely, I lower myself into the chair in front of her. “I think I need help.”

Chapter 6
Micha
    It’s been over a couple of weeks since Ella sliced open my heart. My life’s turned into a shithole, full of booze and meaningless woman, although I can never get anywhere with any of them. Just when things are about to go somewhere, Ella’s sad eyes flash through my mind and I bail out. It’s like I’m back in high school again, searching for something to fill the void in my heart. Only the hole is twice as wide and the person who made it bigger is the only person who can fix it.
    I’m sitting in the small apartment the band is renting for a month, writing some really messed-up lyrics that are too painfully insightful for an audience. I’m getting more riled up the further into the song I get when there’s a knock at the door.
    I toss the pen onto the bed and drag my butt over to the door to open it.
    “Dude, you look like crap.” Ethan pushes past me and makes a circle around the room. It’s a studio apartment with a bed in the corner and a set of old-school sofas in the center that face a television. “So this is where you’ve been staying?”
    There are clothes all over the floor and I kick some out of the way as I trudge back to the bed. “It’s not any worse than where we grew up.”
    He points over his shoulder at the door. “I beg to differ on that one. Do you know some guy just tried to sell me a hooker on my way up here?”
    “That would be Danny,” I say, picking up the pen. “He’s always trying to sell something.”
    Ethan turns to me with this wary look on his face. “So I’m on the road totally enjoying being by myself when I get this call from the lovely Miss Lila saying that you and Ella broke up.”
    I rub the back of my neck tensely. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
    Ethan sits down on the couch and crosses his arms. “What happened?”
    “Do you really want to talk about our feelings again?” I toss the notebook and pen aside. “Or do you want to go out and do something fun? How long are you here for? I don’t have to play tonight so we can go out. There’s this really awesome club I’ve been wanting to check out and Dylan assures me there’s a lot of slutty woman there.”
    “As much as I love slutty women, I didn’t come here to party.” Shaking his head disappointedly, he continues. “I came to tell you something Lila told me. I would have just called you, but I was down in Virginia and I thought, what the hell, I’d come tell you myself.”
    I pull on a T-shirt and shove my wallet into my back pocket, ready to leave him and go out by myself. “Make it quick.”
    He rests his arms on the top of the sofa and his boots on the coffee table in front of it. “She didn’t cheat on you.”
    I’m in the middle of reaching for my keys when I freeze. “What are you talking about?”
    “That’s why Lila called me,” he explains. “She said that as much as she hates to stab her best friend