// forty – three //
Nerves danced beneath the surface of Ella's heated skin. Her hands were clamped tightly together in her lap as she waited, fingers twisting one another almost painfully. She was so anxious, the waiting room's air seemed to suffocate her.
It wasn't just the fact that Ella would be seeing Ryan in a few minutes. The very idea of being inside a prison was setting Ella's teeth on edge. The officer behind the glass window kept a close watch on her with beady eyes, and the other two visitors against the rightmost wall both looked like they should have been on the other side of the glass. On top of all this, the entire waiting room smelled faintly of vomit.
Ella had scarcely slept last night. She had laid in bed for hours, turning hundreds of words over and over in her mind, thinking of what she would say to Ryan. Then Ella had abandoned all hope of sleep and had torn through her closet, searching for something to wear – which she would never admit to anyone. So many terrible things had happened, and she was worried over what to wear. It was embarrassing.
At least the sling was gone. Dr. Haverford had examined Ella last week and decided her arm no longer needed it, though her shoulder still ached with pain whenever she lifted her right arm. The pinky and ring finger were still limp and devoid of feeling, but Ella was so used to this by now that she scarcely noticed.
So there she was, seated in the visiting center's waiting room, wearing a navy blue dress and thin black tights. Ella rarely wore dresses, but this visit was incredibly important to her – and besides, the long sleeves of the dress covered the healing wound on her shoulder. She didn't want any more stares than the sidelong glances she was already receiving.
When the officer behind the glass finally called her name, Ella was on the verge of breaking her own fingers from how anxiously she'd been twisting her hands. She stood quickly from the scratched, plastic chair, and followed the woman's gesture toward the door on the left. The officer pressed a button behind her glass window, and the door unlocked with a loud metallic buzz.
Beyond the door, Ella was asked to give her purse to a second officer and remove all metal from her person. Her fingers trembled slightly from nerves as she took out her silver earrings and ring, slipping them into the purse before handing it to the older man. Ella passed through the metal detector, but the officer kept her purse, putting it into a plastic bin and tucking it away onto a shelf beside others. Finally, Ella was allowed through a second metal door into the visiting room.
It was a stretch of table along the entire length of the room, separating each half by a thick glass wall built into the middle of the table. Along the table were five wooden dividers, a chair and telephone in each section on Ella's side. Four of the seats were occupied by other visitors, but there was no visitor in the fifth section to block Ella's view of what lay beyond the glass.
Ryan Hunter was seated on the other side of the divider.
He stood at the same moment Ella stepped into the room, his eyes fixated on hers as the metal door shut again with a resounding buzz. Ella felt frozen as he stared, arms ram-rod straight as his fists pressed down onto the table. Even from across the room and through the glass, Ella could see the vein that jumped in his left cheek from how tightly his jaw was clenched.
The officer beside the door gestured for Ella to sit in the open section, and this made Ella's legs finally jerk back into motion. She crossed the room in only a few steps, halting behind the wooden chair and freezing for the second time. Ryan stared right back at her, and didn't blink once.
He had a black eye. The skin surrounding his right eye was dark purple, tracing a half-moon bruise down along his under-eye. He was dressed in an orange jumpsuit that gathered at the waist, and black numbers were stamped across the right side of his chest. Around both wrists, handcuffs glinted with silver against the paleness of his skin.
The lump in Ella's throat was too large to bear. She felt as though she was choking as she stood stock-still, wanting nothing more than to reach out and touch him.
But an inch of bulletproof glass separated her from him.
Ryan said something, yet only his lips moved and Ella heard nothing. But the motion of his lips revealed exactly what he was trying to say, with each syllable. El-la.
Her legs began to fail her, then, and Ella stumbled to sit in the wooden chair before her knees could buckle beneath her. Ryan followed her movement with his eyes, never once looking away as he sat opposite her. His complexion was marred slightly by Ella's own reflection against the glass between them.
Ryan reached for the phone built into the divider awkwardly, the handcuffs dragging his left hand along with his right from the movement. Ella jumped to do the same, and her trembling fingers slipped against the black plastic, oily from the hundreds of hands which had touched it in the past.
Ella heard the sound of his breath before he spoke. The sound quality of the telephone line was poor, and static crackled in her ear as she clutched the phone tightly with her left hand. Ryan swallowed hard on the other end, and Ella was mesmerized as she watched his lips press together and Adam's apple shift upwards.
She drank in every detail of him, like she had forgotten the exact image of his face.
"It's – fuck." He swore under his breath, voice low and thick with emotion. "It's so good to see your face, Ella. It's so good to see you."
His eyes swam with something Ella couldn't read. Were those tears swelling at the corners of his eyes?
"Ryan," Ella choked out, and her voice cracked. "I – "
"I'm sorry," he interrupted. "I'm sorry you have to see me like this. Jesus. They took away privileges again, so – so that's why I have these." Ryan gestured with his other hand, the metal band of the handcuffs glinting against the fluorescent lighting.
"Don't be sorry," she half-whispered. Ryan looked so distraught and upset it seemed he was in pain, with his red-rimmed eyes and locked jaw. "What – what happened to your eye?"
Ryan had shaken his head so quickly, Ella worried she'd said something wrong. She watched as he removed the phone from his ear for a moment, holding it loosely in one hand as he rubbed both eyes with the other. Her own eyes burned furiously when she blinked, because she was powerless to reach out to him. It was killing her.
"Sorry," Ryan said finally, inhaling shakily as he held the phone against his ear. "It's just – don't worry about me. I don't want you to worry. I never wanted that."
Ella's voice was hushed when she spoke. "Did you get into another fight?"
Ryan's gaze dropped to the table, for the first time since Ella had entered the room. "I – yeah. I did. But it's the last time it'll happen, I swear. Don't...don't tell my mom."
It was such a moment of normalcy that Ella choked out a broken laugh. The corner of Ryan's lips only curved upwards into a grin after Ella had laughed, and even then, it was more of a grimace. She wondered if it was the first time in weeks he had attempted the expression, and her smile immediately faltered at the thought.
Ella thought of him in this place, twenty-four seven, and her heart broke. Hesitantly, quietly, she asked, "How bad is it? In here, I mean."
A dullness clouded his gaze. Ryan didn't need to say it. Ella knew it was much worse being in there than Ryan could ever explain to her.
"I don't want to talk about all that," Ryan told her. "I – I need to talk about you. Please. Tell me how you're doing."
Ella was suddenly very grateful she no longer wore the sling; it probably would have sent Ryan into a guilt-ridden panic. She forced a smile instead, an expression that didn't match the pain inside her chest. "I'm fine. Really, I am. My arm's doing great, see?"
He watched as she lifted her right arm above the table, and she hoped he didn't notice the tiniest wince that resulted from the movement. Ella was also sure to keep all five fingers limp, so Ryan wouldn't be able to see that the two rightmost fingers were deadweight.
"Was – was there any damage?" The question was warped, and Ryan swallowed before he tried again. "I mean, like, what they couldn't fix. Did they fix everything? Is your arm back to normal?"
There was a time when Ella would never have even considered lying to Ryan. But now, seeing him on the opposite side of this inch-thick glass, broken and black-eyed, there was no way Ella could tell him there'd been nerve damage.
"Yeah," she told him, the forced smile still pulling up the corners of her lips. "Don't worry. It's all back to normal."
"Thank God," Ryan breathed, so softly that the receiver scarcely caught the sound. "Fucking hell. Thank God."
Someone was crying on Ella's side of the room, hidden from her view behind the divider. She was reminded that she and Ryan were not alone, and that this entire conversation was far from private. In fact, she was sure the audio from their phones would be recorded and listened to later on. Ella still couldn't explain to Ryan what had happened that night, when she had gone to Jackson's apartment to kill him.
Besides, she was sure he had guessed it after their last phone conversation.
And Ella knew Ryan had figured out what happened that night, anyway, when he lowered his voice and asked her something more.
"How are you...how are you doing? After – you know. After what happened."
Ella's grip around the phone tightened considerably without her permission. She remembered waking from a nightmare just a week ago, in a cold sweat and frantic state, Jackson's dead gaze staring into her mind's eye. Nothing had been nearly as bad since then, but there were still nightmares.
"I'm fine." The fake smile physically pained her. But she couldn't allow Ryan to feel any more guilt than he already did; besides, it had been Ella's choice to kill Jackson. No one had told her to. She had brought this on herself, not Ryan. "Really. Don't worry about me."
Ryan shook his head for the second time, and now his eyes were fixed upon the metal table before him. It was as though he was incapable of meeting Ella's gaze, and she watched as he pulled his bottom lip between his teeth, like he was suddenly nervous and needed a distraction. What could he possibly be nervous about?
"Are you...are you okay?" Ella asked slowly. "You look nervous."
When Ryan looked back up at her, there was a kind of sadness in his eyes that made Ella's chest ache. He tightened his grip on the phone until his knuckles paled, letting out a trembling breath as his gaze stubbornly returned to the tabletop.
"I have to tell you something," Ryan began. His voice shook when he spoke, so he swallowed hard before trying again. "And I don't really know how to say it, so I'm just going to get it all out. I'm going to tell you, but you have to swear you'll let me finish. You can't interrupt me."
Ella's heart was suddenly pounding in the base of her throat, and she didn't know why. Softly, she told him, "I swear." But she was scared.
"Shit," he breathed. "Shit. Okay. Before I say anything else, you have to know that I care about you. I care about you so, so much. I want you to know that you've been – you've been everything to me for these past months. You have to know that...that it was real. All of it."
He broke off and pressed the back of his fist into his lips, knuckles white around the back of the phone. The air thinned within Ella's lungs, and the rims of her eyes burned more fiercely than before. Ryan pressed the phone back against his ear and exhaled thickly.
"I'm being moved. They're putting me in a different facility. I – I won't be in this state anymore, Ella. They're sending me halfway across the country."
Silence consumed the phone line between them. The sounds of other visitors beyond the dividers were now nothing but muffled white noise, sounding as though they were speaking underwater. Ella's lips parted, and a stunned protest spilled out before she even could fully process his words.
"What? How could they do that?"
"Please. Please don't talk," Ryan begged. There was something breaking inside him with every word he spoke, and Ella felt each fracture within herself at the same instant. And it hurt. It hurt like hell.
"I'm telling you this because you have to do something for me. You have to promise to do this for me, Ella Jane. Promise to forget about me."
A startled scoff was all Ella could muster, but it was only a knee-jerk reaction. It had to have been a joke, so the only thing to do would be to laugh.
But Ryan wasn't smiling, and the dull darkness in his eyes said it all. He meant it.
There was a ringing in Ella's ears, low and quiet at first but gradually building in volume. The blood pounded in her veins, and she thought she might be sick. Ella teetered on the verge of a panic.
"I want you to forget about me after today. You need to go to college, get out of that town and – and meet someone new. I want you to get a boyfriend who won't do anything but keep you safe. You need to have a normal life, Ella, and I can't give you that. Especially not now."
"No," Ella whispered. "No."
But Ryan kept talking as though he hadn't heard her, as though he had gained momentum and nothing Ella said could possibly cause him to hesitate. "You - you've got to live, Ella Jane. I'll kill myself before I ever stop you from having a life. I know you, Ella. I know you won't move on unless I make you. But I'm begging you. Forget about me."
"How can you ask me that?" Ella bit out, her vision beginning to blur. "How dare you ask me to –?"
"I can't –" he began, voice low and thick with emotion, "I can't ask you to give up six years of your life. You'd spend those six years driving hours just to visit me for twenty minutes. You'd spend them worrying about me. I can't let you do that."
"How could – you know what, fuck you," she spat. Suddenly, she couldn't bear to hear him speak. "Fuck you for asking me to do that."
Anger swelled against the surface of panic, but she didn't mean any of it. She was only terrified.
Terrified of what he was telling her, and terrified of losing him.
"Ella," Ryan said. His voice was low, his tone dark and kept devoid of emotion. But there was pain in his eyes, the kind that flashed briefly before simmering to nothing but blackness. Ella might have believed she'd imagined it. "Please. Do it for me, if you won't do it for yourself. Forget about me, and move on."
She looked him dead in the eye. "Where are they moving you to?"
When he didn't answer, she demanded more vehemently, "What facility? Where will you be? Where?"
And then there wasn't even a chance to get another word in. Ryan finally spoke, but it was the last thing Ella had ever, ever wanted to hear from him.
"Goodbye, Ella Jane."
She cried out to him, but the sound of her voice was surely cut off as he slammed the phone back onto its hook. Ryan stood and turned away from Ella, and even as she yelled to him and slapped her palm against the glass, he continued to walk away. The black letters which spelled INMATE were emblazoned against the orange across his shoulder blades, taunting Ella as he walked away from her.
Even when the officer stepped toward her and gently took her arm, Ryan didn't look back. Even when she cried and screamed and begged him to turn around, he didn't. Each word she yelled to him was swallowed whole by the inch of glass between them, but Ryan still stood before the officer on the other side and waited for the metal door to be opened. Even when Ella pounded her left hand against the window, again and again, he didn't look back.
Even when she spoke the three words she had always kept hidden, unspoken and locked away within the deepest part of herself. Even when she broke and cried to him, But I love you.
Even then, Ryan stepped through the doorway. Ella could do nothing but watch from beyond the bulletproof glass, the world caving in around her until she was suffocating.
He couldn't leave her like this. He couldn't ask her to forget.
But the metal door slammed shut behind him, and with it, the image of Ryan Hunter vanished.
x x x x
This has been the last chapter of Robbers. There WILL be an epilogue which is very very important, but I can't say for sure when it will be posted. Definitely within two weeks but if I get my shit together then it'll be by this weekend!
thank you so much for reading this. please don't delete this story until you've read the epilogue (after I post it. lol.) cheers xx