✓ 𝒎𝒂𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒎𝒊𝒏𝒅 , ethan landry

ELEVEN

— NEW YORK CITY

STELLA'S POV

   Being in the hospital started draining me. The last I heard from Ethan was two days ago when I had awaken from the night before. Only I had told him to leave so that he could catch up with our Economics class. Although I was in pain—obviously missing a lecture lowered our grade.

Both Sam and Mindy were out in the front begging the doctors to dismiss me. They had put me on walking exercises going up and down the hallways to get used to walking. Which, actually really helped—the pain medication had helped for the most part of it though sometimes I'd get a few pain kicks here and there.

Theo walked into the room—placing his jacket by the chair. "Ready to go?".

"I'm leaving?" I asked, sitting up straight from the bed.

"Technically Sam is winning this argument" Theo laughs, he turns back and faces her seeing as she was still arguing. "You probably will leave by tonight".

"I see that smile" I notice, smiling at him.

"It's nothing".

"You still like Sam" I say.

"No no no no. I wasn't...No I don't" he spluttered, as he tried to hide the embarrassment. "Besides, Sam is taken by their neighbor".

In fact was true. However, Sam didn't trust him at the moment—fearing that he'd turn on her like Richie. Which was completely understandable. A fear like that was building up inside of me—Tara as well. The other day we had talked about Chad and Ethan hiding their own secrets. For the most part Chad was trusted—Ethan, was trusted by me, not Tara.

"When do we get to see Natalia?" I asked him.

Theo immediately looked up and shrugged. "That's what I was wondering myself".

"What do you mean?".

"When I talked to Detective Bailey the other day he told me they'd take care of the bodies, and would let us know when we could do a proper funeral" Theo explains.

It was odd. As we weren't allowed to see them and just remembering the horrific sight of Natalia getting stabbed multiple times—didn't make sense. We knew she was dead and not coming back.

"Theo.." I began to grow worried. "That's not...you need to go tell him you want to see her. What if they're doing something to them?".

"He told me they'd be fine and he has it under control, Stells".

"— what's going on?" Sam interrupts, as she walks in with crutches.

I look up at her—horrified. "We never got to see Natalia's body".

"No we did" Sam reassured. "We were there? It happened?".

Natalia was gone from what I had witnessed. Though, the only two bodies I had seen were Anika and Quinn's.

   "Are you okay?" Sam asked, "Here Theo, help me stand her up". The two walked over to me and handed me the crutches. His hand was on my back, carefully pulling me up to reach the crutches. I gripped on to the handles and moved my body to help me walk. It was actually easier than I thought it was.

•○•○

    Back at the apartment, Chad was playing music to keep me company. He had his Stella's favorite songs playlist , playing from back when we were together. For the most part, he had been with Tara all night. Whatever the two were doing was none of my business and I had just let them be.