Page 13 of Wicked Heat

All I want is to erase it. I want to turn on some magical tap and wash it away, leaving everything clean and shiny and safe.

But bad shit doesn’t go away on its own. That’s another one of those lessons I learned the hard way.

“Bree?” She slides off the couch and crouches right in front of me, her hands on my knees. “Come on, girl. You’re starting to freak me out.”

I choke back a sob that’s part laugh. Freak out? Understatement of the century. Then I shift on the sofa, pulling away from her to scrunch into the corner with my knees pulled up and my feet on the biggest lump of this lumpy wreck of a couch.

I check my phone. Twelve minutes. That’s all the reprieve I have before the horror starts all over again.

“Br—”

“Whiskey,” I say, and her brows immediately rise. I hardly ever drink at home, and when I do, it’s usually wine. “Please.”

She studies my face, and her wide, full lips curve into a frown. I think she’s going to argue, but she crosses the very short distance to our tiny kitchen. I can see her over the pass-through bar. Pulling down a glass. Adding ice. Disappearing for a moment as she squats to grab the whiskey from the lower cabinets where we keep the hard liquor.

When she returns, she’s carrying two glasses. “I don’t know what’s up,” she says, passing me mine, “but I have a feeling I’m going to need this, too.”

She takes a sip, then sits on the coffee table in front of me. I don’t sip. I gulp. Then I cough because my throat’s on fire. “I don’t know where to start,” I say when I can talk again.

“The signing⁠—”

“Was awesome.”

Aria tilts her head in a silent seriously?

“It was. Everyone at the store was great, and I didn’t freeze up during the Q&A, and the readers were so into it I felt like a celebrity, especially once I started signing books. But after…”

I close my eyes as I trail off, because I really, really, really don’t want to talk about it. Not even to Aria, who knows me inside and out, just like I know her. We’ve been friends since birth—like literally. Our moms were besties, and Fate must have been feeling mischievous because not only were they pregnant together, but they gave birth on the same day. To me at 12:01am and Aria at 12:59 pm. Freaky, but we figured if the universe wants us to be friends, why fight it?

Now, there’s no one in the world I’m closer to. We’ve been through parent drama, boyfriend drama, high school jealousy, fashion nightmares, college terror, work angst, and everything else on the Girl Grows Up checklist. I know all her secrets. She thinks she knows all of mine.

She used to. She doesn’t anymore. Nobody does. And I really, really, really don’t want that to change.

But it’s going to. And that one simple, horrible certainty absolutely terrifies me.

Aria’s brow furrows as she studies my face. “You’re scaring me. Just spit it out. The truth can’t be worse than what I’m imagining.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I think it can.”

“Bree—”

“I know.” The words come out sharper than I intended. “Sorry.” I hold up a finger to keep her quiet as I draw a deep breath. I don’t want to tell her. It’s not that I don’t trust her to keep quiet. It’s that I don’t want anyone to know, not even me. I want the whole nightmare to be locked in the past, hidden inside the thick, steel vault of my mind. And never, ever, ever coming out.

But since that’s not possible, I also selfishly want my friend. So I take another deep breath and start talking, telling her first about finding the QR code in the goody basket. “And when I scanned it…” I trail off with a shudder but force myself to go on. Tears stream down my face, but I ignore them as I tell her what the written message said. Then what I heard on the recording. “Strip.” And, “Strip or I’ll strip the little girl.”

For a moment, she’s totally silent, her face going pale under her makeup in a way I’d thought was just a figure of speech. She looks like a ghost, and I reach for her hand and squeeze it.

Two big tears trail down her cheeks as she squeezes back, so tight I may have to pry her free. “Strip,” she whispers, repeating the word my kidnapper had said.

I nod, then release her hands as I draw my knees in closer, then hug my legs tight enough to cut off circulation.

“But you told me nothing happened to you. You said they kept you and Anne in a room. Drugged so that you wouldn’t remember anything.”

I nod. That’s what I’d said, all right.

“Then—” She cuts herself off with a shake of her head. “Okay. I probably wouldn’t have said anything to me, either. But you shouldn’t be ashamed. Come on, Bree. You know that whatever happened in that room, none of it’s your fault.”

Logically I do know that. But I was the one with Anne when she was taken, and me along with her. I was the one who inadvertently led the prick of a kidnapper to her. So, yeah, knowing’s one thing. Believing’s something completely different.