And I know we're not supposed to talk
But I'm getting ahead of myself
I get scared when we're not
'Cause I'm scared you're with somebody else
So I guess that it is gone
And I just keep lying to myself
I can't believe it
I, I miss you, yeah I miss you
I miss you, yeah I miss you, oh I do
I miss you, yeah I miss you
Though I'm tryin' not to right now
— Clean Bandit, Julia Michaels, I Miss You

Autumn POV

It was not easy to find Faith. I tried contacting Jess and Colton, they were on a school trip hence why they had missed the wedding, but no one seemed to know where Faith Gauthier lived. I had tried going to NYU but that campus was huge and full of students. In short, I had failed in finding her. I wished I had talked to her during the wedding but at that moment I was too busy jealous of her and pissed at Tyler.

New York was even bigger than NYU. It was impossible to find Faith, not when I did not have any connection or lead. My hand dug inside my purse and pulled out my phone. I knew this was a fruitless effort since I had been doing it for the last seven days but I did it anyway. I went to my call log and called him. "Frazier, please pick it up. Pick it up."

Since I came back to NYC a week ago, I could not find him anywhere in Columbia, almost as if he was swallowed by the earth. I had seen his friends and ex around the school but I did not exactly know any of them so I did not bother to ask, especially his ex who looked at me with so much hatred. If her gaze could kill, I would have been dead.

Just like the last dozens of trials, he did not pick up and I was sent to the voicemail. "Frazier, I really need your help. I know you're mad but please call me back." I dumped my phone into my purse and walked towards the park bench. I took a seat, resting my back against the bench, and folded my arms across my thin beige shirt. I was about to close my eyes and get a five-minute rest when someone sat beside me.

The guy was wearing a red and white baseball cap and sunglasses yet somehow he felt familiar. I had seen him before but I could not pinpoint where or when. He seemed to notice me staring as he turned and smiled. "Hey, how are you?"

"I'm good." I looked at him carefully and was one hundred percent sure I had seen him before so I decided to ask, "Have we met before?"

Instead of answering with a yes or no answer, he turned the question back at me, "Have we?"

"Well, I don't know." I shrugged. "You look so familiar though."

"That's a first." He smirked then tilted his head to one side. "No one said that before about me," he added, sounding amused.

Before I could ask him if he perhaps happened to go to Columbia, another guy came. Unlike the guy who sat beside me, this guy dressed like a businessman or someone who worked at the office. "Nico, let's go! We should get going or we'd be late."

Nico, the guy who sat beside me on the bench, gave him a firm nod then turned to me and smiled. "Ciao!"

Only then I realized that he was Italian.

"Wait," I put one hand on his arm although I had never been untoward to strangers before. "Do you know Tyler Vincent?"

He stared at me for a moment as if he was trying to decide what to say. "No. I don't know anyone named Tyler." His friend was honking the car horn but he did not seem to care as he waved his hand without looking. "Why did you ask?"

Because you were Italian and you looked damn familiar I thought maybe you had something to do with the Italian mafia Tyler was involved in. "No." I dropped my eyes to the ground as his stare was getting too intense. "He's my ex and since you look so familiar, I thought you might be one of his school friends."

I glanced up and saw him narrowing his eyes, looking every bit cautious when he saw me noticing, he smirked. "I'm a little bit too old for school, don't you think?" There was something in his gaze, the way he eyed me with curiosity and suspicion. Something that scared me.

"Yeah," I faked a smile and dropped my eyes. "Sorry."

Nico did not say anything for a while then I noticed his friend got out of the car and walked towards us, looking angrier with every step he took. "Ma dai, fai sul serio?!" His friend finally yelled, throwing his hand up in the air.

"No worries." Nico gave me a small smile. "Ciao, Bella!"

FRAZIER

My phone rang again a dozen times but this time, the call was surprisingly not from Autumn. It was my mother. I usually tried my best to avoid any conversation involving her since it was pretty clear that she did not want me in her life when she basically dumped me to my father and re-married. But today I did not see anything wrong with having a conversation with her even for once so I grabbed my phone off the table and accepted her call. "Hello?"

"Frazier! I have been trying to reach you for hours!" said my mother, Isobel, frantically.

"Well, news flash, I am busy." I shifted in my seat and rested my head against the back of the couch. My back groaned in protest but I ignored it. After the accident last Friday, I felt that my body grow tired faster than usual. "So what's up? Why are you calling?"

"I have received your medical reports, dear."

My mom, even when she was a distant mother, required me to do a monthly medical check-up. I was not a part of her royal family so I did not think this was necessary but she and her grandmother seemed to think otherwise. Both of them would nag me until I did it so I usually got them done during the first week of each month to avoid their nagging. "And? Are you surprised that I only have 20% of your DNA? Maybe I am not your son after all." I sniggered. It was always a pleasure to throw a jab at my mother, especially after what she had done to me.

"Can you please be serious for a moment?" asked Isobel frustratedly followed by a sigh.

I rolled my eyes. Sometimes I really could not understand my mother. She was goddamn good at being a distant, uncaring mother so why would she change now? "I don't see why you even care to call me over a medical report since I don't think you even read them unless it's a life or death matter."

"Well, dear, this, I'm afraid, is a life or death matter."

My mother sounded frantic and serious at the same time which got my full attention. "What do you mean?"

* * *

After the phone call with my mother, I did not feel good at all. Almost as if knowing there was something foreign inside, my body felt sick and my skin tingled. I threw the phone on the table and rested my head against the back of the couch. The thought of dying and possibly not having more days to live scared the fuck out of me. My mom urged me to take the plane and go to the U.K. so that they could get the Royal doctor to diagnose further but I did not plan to go anywhere. Not without mending whatever happened between Autumn and me. If I did not have more days to live, at least I wanted her to know that I meant those words, and that I really loved her despite everything that happened. I wanted to tell her that I had been avoiding her because I was dumb and hurt.

I heard a knock on the front door and groaned. My mother had probably told my father and the entire family by now. I was never close to them. Since my father remarried and had Corbin, it was almost as if I had never existed. They had their own perfect family while I was an outsider. Although very lame and I would never admit it, the reason I had moved to the guest house was to get his attention. I had been hoping that he would miss me when he did not see me around the house but never once he called upon me or invited me to their Sunday family outings. When it was clear I meant nothing to him, I simply gave up.

Corbin always looked up to me and I considered him as my real brother but he and I were too different. He was into that Sciencey stuff and spent most of his time between the Science lab and library while I was into economics, business, and sports. Apart from all that, we also had four years age difference between us. But being the genius that he was, Corbin had enrolled in Columbia early this year even when he was barely sixteen.

The Thursday brotherly boxing match was the one thing that connected us, the one day in a week when we spent the time to bond. He had challenged me, saying that he would be able to take me down in a boxing match and I had told him that no one could, especially not a dork like him. Since then we tried to beat one another, keeping up the score and trying to beat one another.

I got to the door and my hand reached the doorknob. I was hesitant in meeting anyone now, not when I just received the bad news and I hated when people took pity on me. The last thing I needed was for my parents and stepmother, people who did not give a fuck about me the last decade to pretend as if they cared just so they would not feel guilty for abandoning me all these years after I died. Nonetheless, I put on my annoyed look (I should get an award for this) and swung the door open only to be surprised. I blinked to make sure this was not an illusion. "Autumn."

I choked on my breath, then cleared my throat, hoping she would not catch that. "What are you doing here?"

"You've been a very skilled ninja lately," she tilted her head to one and said, "It's impossible for me to find you at the campus so I have no other choice but to come here."

Taking a step forward, I threw my arms around her and pulled her into a hug. I blamed the bad news for causing me so much distress that all I needed was her hug to make me feel better. This sucked. I was not supposed to forgive her, I was supposed to give her the time as I had promised earlier in that wedding last week yet I had no time left and if by swallowing my pride, I could spend my days with her, I would.

"Fray?" Autumn put one on my back, rubbing up and down as if she was trying to comfort me. "What's wrong?"

Should I tell her? What would happen if I told her? In the end, I decided not to. It would probably make her feel uncomfortable, especially after what had happened between us.

"Nothing." I backed away and put my hands on her shoulders so I could look at her. "I miss you," I said truthfully. The last few days had been sucked. Without her, they were very dull.

She smiled slowly. "I miss you too, buddy."

Ouch. Friendzoned.

"So, what's up?" I moved to the right, holding the door so she could get in. At this point, I wondered if God actually heard me out and sent her here because she looked a tad confused and distraught.

Autumn walked into the small living room where I had spent the last few hours sitting on the floor and playing Overwatch and took a seat. "I'm sorry for what I said at the wedding. But you have to know that I am being honest. I really need to figure things out and I don't want to hurt you."

I ducked my head, brows furrowed as I tried to think of what I should say in return, and in the end, I looked up and met her gaze. "You already did. You hurt me."

"I'm really sorry," she murmured.

The frown in the middle of my forehead deepened and I closed my eyes for a brief second before opening them and giving her a small smile as I added, "And that's okay, Autumn."

With two long steps, I moved to her side and sat on the small but strong wooden table. "It was never your fault." I held her gaze, needing her to understand. "It was never your fault that I had a stupid crush on you for over two years." Her eyes brimmed with tears and I knew she was blaming herself so I reiterated, "It was not your fault that I fall for you. I know you used me and it hurts but I let you." I swallowed hard. It was never easy to face the hard cold fact yet it was what it was. "And right now, I don't give a fuck if you are using me to be your rebound guy or if you are using me so you're not alone. All I care about," my hand reached for hers and gave it a little squeeze, "all I want is to be with you."

A tear slipped out of one corner of her eyes and I did not know if it was out of guilt or pity.

* * *

"So all you need to do to figure out what your ex has been hiding from you is to find this Faith girl?" I summed up what she had said for the last half an hour. It nearly took everything to get her to talk about what had been bothering her mind and made her look like a walking zombie.

Autumn nodded. "I think she knows about everything."

"Okay." My hand stroked my chin. "She goes to NYU so it should not be hard to get my hands on her address." Autumn's eyes widened at the mention of hacking and breaking the law. I smirked. "I mean, I got yours alright, didn't I?"

She rolled her eyes at my comment. "I don't know whether to compliment you for being good at hacking or to complain about the school's breachable IT system."

"Definitely compliment me, obviously!" I pretended to sound offended. "I don't get that often from you." Walking towards my bedroom, I looked at her over one shoulder and lifted one hand. "Wait here, let me get my laptop."

From the doorway, I could see my laptop laying on the bed. I had used it last night to do some finance papers that were due tomorrow then got tired before I grew tired and fell asleep. As I grabbed it off the mattress, my phone inside my back pocket vibrated. I shifted the laptop to my left hand and reached for the phone. It was my mother again. She sure was persistent as hell. I did not even bother picking up the call as I pressed the red call button and shoved my phone back into my back pocket.

Isobel Windsor aka my mother was actually a mystery that could never be solved. At the age of sixteen — barely legal I dared say, she had married my father who was twenty years old at that time, making him the happiest man on earth although, in the process, she had made my grandparents really unhappy. My mother was part of the royal family as her father — William's and my grandfather —was a duke, she was supposed to marry someone with either royal status or from other British rich families, not someone from a middle-class family like Darragh Ronan, my father. She had been pregnant so my grandparents had no choice but to give them their consent if they did not want to lose their only daughter. 

Until this very day, I dared say that my grandfather still regretted the decision of sending her to study in Dublin which was where she had met my father. My dad knew about it and he turned that into motivation as he moved to NYC and made it big on Wall Street.

Being the mysterious woman that she was, my mother filed a divorce four years later. I was barely four years old when that happened and had to spend one month in Ireland with my dad and the next month in London with my mother as they had shared custody. My dad had been devastated but soon he met Clíodhna, my primary school English teacher, and married her. A year later, Corbin was born. In the same year, my mother decided to listen to my grandmother and married Charles — a man that her parents had chosen for her — so everyone acted as if I did not exist. I was in an all-boys boarding school for years, only spending my holiday with my grandparents in London or William's family in D.C. 

Maybe she started to care now that I had been diagnosed with a killer disease because it was in her nature to be spontaneous and unexplainable. 

"Frazier? Is everything alright?" I heard Autumn's worried voice and snapped out of my head. 

"Yeah." I returned to the living room and sat next to her. It did not take me long to figure out that Tyler's ex's full name was Faith Antoinette Gauthier, her parents were French-Canadian and got divorced a few years ago, and she was currently living with her father, stepmother, and step-sister in NYC. I had a list of the courses she took at NYU but I did not think those were important so I basically skipped them. Autumn had been very quiet sitting beside me, sometimes she leaned over my shoulder to get a better read at stuff then leaned back against the couch when the stuff bored her out. 

I managed to skim through Faith's recent Twitter and Facebook updates when I found something that might help us find her. I put the laptop on the table and stood. 

Autumn who was scrolling what looked like some celeb's Instagram account glanced up. "What is it?" I moved to grab my coat and hers then snatched the keys off the hook where I had hung them. "Where are you going?"

"The right question is where are 'we' going? Come on. I know where to find Faith."

She moved towards me and I helped her put on her clothes. "Where?"

"She's at Sonic, 944 8th Avenue." We walked out of the guest house and I closed the door behind me, then led her to the front of the house through the yard. "She's going to finish her class soon so we should hurry up before she leaves." 

Autumn had a small frown on her forehead, her face looked at me both confused and in awe. "How did you know?"

"Well, she just posted: 'Fifteen more minutes before this torture finally ends. I'm spent and sore. Who thinks yoga is relaxing?' and added a location tag on her Facebook post." I opened the door for her and then went to my side. Looking at her over the roof of the car, I smirked. "Isn't it about time for another compliment?"

Holding the car door, she rolled her eyes. "Not yet. You'll get one if we do meet her."

I shook my head. "It's a tough job trying to impress you." 

She answered me with a laugh as she got into the car. I followed suit a second later with a huge grin on my face.

All Rights Reserved © Rosen

a/n: if you notice the weird update of Ch 29, it's because turned out when republishing all chapters, I missed one. Anyway, what do you think? Lemme know in comments! To be honest, your comments always motivate me to write more daily so THANK YOU!! Also, vote for this chapter if you enjoy it. Loads of pizza, Agi x