My phone rang again while I followed Sawyer through the cars in the parking lot. I tore my eyes away from his back, fumbling with my bag and all the junk in it that didn't let me reach the ringing device. The bag slid from my shoulder and I failed to catch it. Everything clattered to the asphalt but at that moment I didn't care. All I cared was that my phone had stopped ringing. As I picked it up I hoped that it had been a call from Toni. That she was ringing to say that she was fine, that it had just been a really tasteless prank from her friend.

The phone slid a couple of times from my hands, whether by the nerves that rendered them trembly stumps, or by the nerves that coated them in sweat. A second try finally had me unlocking the phone to see that the call had come from the same number as before. Adam. Had something worse happened?

He picked up at the second tone. "Rory?" He didn't even wait for me to say yes when he continued, "I'm taking her to the ER. Do you know what could be wrong? Do you have any of her information-"

"I don't know!"

That called Sawyer's attention. He crouched in front of me and grabbed my phone. "Hello?" I blinked as he listened to the other guy on the line. "This is a family friend, I'm with Rory right now. What's going on?"

I shook my head slightly. A family friend my left butt cheek, but he was all the immediate assistance I had right now. I grabbed my shaky hands together and squeezed, hoping the pain would restore proper blood flow to them.

"Probably," Sawyer said to something as I pulled all my things back inside my tote bag. "Yeah, the one close to campus. See you there."

He hung up and gave me back my phone, which I stuffed in my bag.

"Thanks," I murmured, ignoring the hand I'd drawn earlier as he stuck it out to help me stand up. He sighed, but turned around and off we went. His motorbike loomed closer and I swallowed. I'd never got on one. This was crazy.

"I should grab an Uber," I said suddenly as my feet rooted to the ground.

He tossed me a look over his shoulder. "And wait until it's here?"

I pursed my lips. He was right, darn it.

I steeled my spine and asked, "What do I have to do?"

Confused, I watched as he dropped his backpack on the floor and unzipped his hoodie. He was wearing a black wife beater underneath that I noticed even past my addled mind.

"Here," he said, as he offered the hoodie to me. I blinked a few times at it and him. "Put it on."

"It's not cold, though."

Sawyer rolled his gun metal eyes and pushed the piece of fabric into my hands. "Just put it on, you'll thank me later."

I doubted it, but if it helped us get a moving I would just suck it up. I dropped my bag to put it on and zip it as he pulled out his sunglasses and keys. Then darkness descended upon me as he put his helmet on my head. I protested as a reflex, but he grabbed the helmet and pulled me closer to him.

"This is non-negotiable," he said, tapping the top of my head once for good measure. He swept a leg over the bike and sat with the same comfort a regular person had with sitting in a chair. He put his backpack backwards, against his chest, and patted the little seat behind him. "Hop on."

This was insane.

He was insane.

I was insane.

I held firmly onto my bag and approached. I doubted I could hop on. The bike suddenly seemed so tall and I was small and frozen by the worry that was gripping my lungs, preventing me from drawing enough oxygen to see things clearly. Surely this wasn't a big deal. People got on bikes every day and didn't die or maim themselves. I wasn't going to become a statistic, and I had more important things to focus on. Toni. The bean sized baby. Her stupid baby daddy.

My chest hurt as I sucked in a deep breath and hopped. The position of the seat forced my body to pitch forward and I yelped as my nose slammed into Sawyer's back. I felt his hands pull at mine and wrap them around his waist, between him and his backpack.

"Hold on tight, princess."

I felt him jerk his leg just before the machine roared to life and overpowered every one of my senses. It was loud. It was hot. The vibration was making my teeth rattle, so I clenched them. In doing so, my arms tightened around his waist and I yelped as suddenly we were in motion. Sawyer didn't have a care that this was my first time riding, that maybe I'd be scared by the speed. Or maybe he was trying to get us to our destination faster. But I felt like he'd peeled off the parking lot as if this were Fast and Furious. I took a glance around me and vertigo surged through me as the asphalt, the streets and the sky blurred together. I decided to spend the duration of the trip with my face buried in his back and didn't care if he had anything to say about it.

When he stopped, an eternity later, it felt like all my joints had locked into a cocoon around him.

"Here we are," he said once he'd turned off the monster under us. He twisted around in my arms when I didn't respond. "You okay, princess?"

I wasn't sure I was. He'd been right about the sweatshirt. I was thankful for it blocking some of the smog, the wind and bugs. But it had wrapped me in a cocoon of his scent, and I was sure I was never going to be able to erase it from my memory.

He cleared his throat. "Uh, aren't we in a hurry?"

I jumped away from him, or tried to. I felt the void behind me and screamed, but his hand wrapped around one of my flailing arms and pulled me back against him. This time he kicked out the bike's stand and got off first. I planted my hands on the seat so I wouldn't fall and this time I did accept his help. I tried to remove the helmet with as much dignity as possible and handed it back to him.

"Go," he said as he took it. "I'll catch up."

I hesitated for a quick second, nodded and took off for the entrance of the hospital. I pulled out my phone and dialed Adam back. He said they'd taken Toni, but they'd told him to stay at a waiting area because he wasn't family.

Darn right, I said to myself. Then I blanched. Mama and papa probably didn't know about what was going on—whatever the heck it was. I called them as I navigated the labyrinth that was the ground floor, trying to find somebody who could tell me where my sister was. Papa didn't pick up his phone, I assumed because he was busy at work. I called mama next but just as she greeted me, I grabbed a hold of a nurse.

"Hold on," I told mama and put the phone against my chest, looking up at the tall man with kindly eyes. "Antonia Martinez please, she was brought here by a friend. I'm her sister."

The man nodded and looked at his computer. I put the phone back in my ear, "Mama, please come to the hospital close to UCF. The one in Oviedo."

She sucked in a sharp breath. "Aurora, qué está pasando?"

The nurse looked up, all peace and calm as though this were a buddhist temple and not a place where people came bleeding or vomiting or missing limbs of freaking dying. He just said, "Your sister's being seen by a doctor right now. In the meantime we'll need you to fill in some forms."

He placed a clipboard on the counter. I counted one, two... six pages of information that I didn't even know if I could answer about myself.

"Mama, please," I said, and the shaking had now spread to my entire body. "It's Toni. I don't know what to do. Just come."

For the first time in my life being a know-it-all was not going to save me. My head was too inundated with what ifs to grasp at coherent thoughts. What if something bad had happened to Toni? What if the bean was not okay? What if I had to forever live with the shame of how horrible I'd been to my sister for the past few weeks, in action, inaction and thought? And just how were mama and papa going to take this?

Just as I'd started hyperventilating, a hand fell on my shoulder. I thought it was going to be Adam, but when I turned I was faced with blond locks, mussed by the wind, and deep eyes like a thunderstorm.

He steered me to the waiting area and next thing I knew we were joined by Adam.

"Oh, thank God you're here. Did they tell you what's happening?" he asked. His hair was also a bird's nest, but the reason why was that he couldn't stop running his hands through it.

I swallowed and plopped on a chair. Both of them joined me on either side and I clutched the binder against my chest. My eyes felt prickly and I blinked the feeling away.

"I don't know," I said, my voice fading away at the last syllable. We stayed in silence for what felt like an eternity, but neither of them made a move to leave and even in my haze I knew this was a good thing. At some point I got a text from mama that said they were on their way, and I was both glad and terrified that it meant papa was also coming. I knew they could handle whatever this was, that at least they'd be able to fill in the papers.

I forgot to account for one detail.

Papa and Sawyer were on good terms. Mama and Sawyer... not so much.

Her expression drew tight as she saw the boy next to me, to the point that she didn't realize there was another one on the other side.

"What are you doing here?" she asked him, as though that was the most important thing here.

I found enough nerve to derail her by asking, "Where's papa?"

"Asking at the desk," she said, glancing at Sawyer once more before deciding to dismiss him after all. "Aurora, you need to tell me what's happening."

Adam stood up then, clearing his throat and presenting his hand to shake because it seemed like he knew the rules of engagement with latino parents already. Always be polite, even at the ER.

"You must be Mrs. Martinez, I'm Adam Brighton," he said, still waiting for mama to shake. I'd give him props. "I'm a friend of Toni's from college. We were studying for a test together and she passed out. I brought her here, because I didn't know what else to do. I'm not a doctor yet."

Mama put two and two together before my eyes. She cast me a quick look to confirm, and I nodded. She reached the same conclusion I had upon meeting him, which was not to like him. He seemed like a nice guy, and if the circumstances were different I'd have happily nudged Toni into dating this guy. But things were what they were and he had ruined my sister. Possibly worse.

Finally he gave up and lowered his hand, changing tack by saying, "Would you like to sit with us?"

I looked around then. There weren't that many people in this waiting area because we weren't smack in the middle of the ER. Mama could sit anywhere she wanted. And she did. She sat across from me and ignored Adam's offer. He sat back down next to me, looking very confused about the hostility.

"Mama, can you help me with this?" I passed her the clipboard, where I'd filled in only the very basic information. "I don't know any of this stuff."

She pressed her lips in a sad grimace but nodded. That was when papa found us.

"Sawyer?" he asked, as if he couldn't believe the sight. He glanced from the boy to me, and back to him. "What are you doing here?"

"I brought Rory over," was his response.

Mama leaned forward, dark eyes narrowed to slits. "You what? You did not drive my daughter on that death trap of yours."

"We were in a hurry," Sawyer said with a shrug and his bare arm rubbed against mine. I gasped, realizing I was still wearing his hoodie and I scrambled to return it. I looked down to avoid the stares.

"Um, thank you," papa said. "We got it from here."

He was dismissing Sawyer too. And it was true, Toni and I were in no better care, but I struggled with the impulsive desire of telling him to stay. There was no reason to. Sawyer was not a family friend or mine. But he'd made sure I didn't completely lose the plot and I didn't know if my parents could handle it if I did.

"And who are you?" papa asked Adam.

I looked up. This was it. Nothing good was going to come out of this.

"Antonia Martinez?" a new voice asked, botching up her name with a thick, Southern accent that clearly couldn't roll Spanish words. We all stood up and it caught the attention of a female doctor. As she headed our way in a hurried clip, she started speaking. "Are y'all Antonia's family?"

She caught the loud yes from my parents and I, and completely missed the no from the boys. So she made the mistake of saying, "Parents, I assume? Good. You'll be happy to know that your daughter and her baby are fine. She's just slightly dehydrated and I don't think her nutrition's ideal. We're going to keep an eye on her for a bit but she'll be discharged shortly."

"Gracias a Dios," mama said as she melted into papa's arms. I could feel myself swaying a bit.

And then someone asked, "Baby?"

The question came from Adam. We all looked at him. His pretty eyes were wide as saucers and his jaw hung like the hinge had broken.

"Shit," I said under my breath. Both of my parents glanced at me and I knew I was going to pay for the slip up, but it was going to wait until after mama exploded. Any second now she was going to go off. I could see her jaw ticking, the veins in her neck protruding and her face growing redder.

She pointed at Adam's face and without giving a care that we were in a hospital, she screamed, "It's your fault you stupid gringo boy!"

As the echoes of her words rang in our ears, they registered in papa.

He grew pale.

By its own accord, my hands tried to push Adam away. But papa had already launched himself, and just as I was sure he'd been about to tackle one gringo boy, the other one got in the way and put papa in a headlock. Sawyer struggled with the older man but in the end, his height gave him the definite advantage. He grunted as papa flailed, trying to free himself with a roar.

"Was it you?" he asked Adam. "Was it you el pendejo qui embarazó a mi hija?"

"Go," I told Adam. When the boy didn't move—and I couldn't blame him—I shoved him. Hard. "Do you want to die? Just go!"

"But," he stuttered.

Through gritted teeth I said, "Later." The finality in the word, and maybe the fact that while mama had collapsed onto a chair crying, but papa was starting to make Sawyer break into a sweat, finally set Adam in motion. The other boy kept papa in the headlock for a few more minutes, ensuring that he wouldn't be able to follow Adam before letting him go. When he did, papa lost all the fight and just put his face in his hands. He remained immobile that way, in between the rows of chairs.

My heart was beating against my ears so hard that it must be the reason why I lost my balance. I fell onto a chair as if I'd fainted, but my eyes were open and fixed on Sawyer, who appeared to me like the only sane person in the room.

Thank you, I mouthed to him. He nodded and I thought he'd turn around and leave. But he sat back down next to me, and that was the second I knew I was in trouble.