AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“All day,” she confirms.
Before we leave, Cam asks if she’s okay and she nods. Then he kisses her forehead and heads out the door with me. I don’t know what happened between them last night, but maybe I should take some notes. She’s holding herself together a lot better than Laiken, and Monty washerboyfriend.
As we walk out the door, Cam asks if we’re taking his Jeep or my truck. But instead of answering, I hold up one finger and rush over to the bushes, emptying the entire contents of my stomach into them. The adrenaline is wearing off, and not needing to be strong for Laiken for right now, my body gives in to the stress of the last twelve hours.
Might not be so hard to get Coach to let me leave after all.
THE NEXT COUPLE NIGHTSgo the same way as the first, spent with my mind running wild while I can’t sleep. Even the sound of the rain doesn’t help, especially after we were all hauled into the police station yesterday morning for questioning. Since then, Laiken has made it a habit of Googling Monty’s name. I stop her each time I catch it, but I can only do so much.
When I finally manage to doze off, letting sleep deprivation pull me under, it doesn’t last long. A nightmare immediately haunts my mind, picturing myself being charged for murder and pulled away from Laiken as she sobs in Cam’s arms.
Monty’s face appears in front of me. “I knew you’d fuck up eventually.”
I jolt awake, trying to catch my breath and tell myself it was just a dream, but then I notice that Laiken is no longer in bed next to me. Panic immediately sets in, and I look toward the bathroom, but she’s not there either.
Climbing out of bed, I go downstairs to find her sitting on the couch. My lungs feel like they can finally take in air again. I don’t know when Cam and Mali got here, but all three of them are laser focused on the TV—more specifically on a picture of Monty.
Authorities are searching for Montgomery Rollins, the son of Senator Jeremiah Rollins, after his parents filed a missing person’s report early yesterday morning. He was last seen Friday night while at the boat docks with a few friends. According to reports, the friends left after he became intoxicated and got into an argument with his girlfriend. If you have any information on his whereabouts, please contact the Calder Bay Police Department.
They move onto another topic like his disappearance is just another headline. Like it’s not the tragic event that has my life hanging in the balance. Cam switches off the TV, and the whole room stays completely silent.
None of us really know what to say anymore.
There’sa haze that lingers in the aftermath of tragedy. A subtle but constant reminder that nothing is ever going to be the same again. You can’t rewind. Can’t go back. You just have to make sense of the pieces that remain.
I lost a friend. Someone I trusted. Someone I cherished. He wasn’t perfect and he made his mistakes, but he made up for them by being there when I needed him the most. What he did to keep Cam out of prison was more than enough to deserve my forgiveness. And that’s what he got.
The feeling of my hands being soaked in his blood is something I’ll never get out of my head. It’s burned into my mind like a horrid memory that will forever leave me traumatized. But as much as I want to scream and cry and rip my hair out, I can’t.
I can’tfeelanything except fear.
I’m scared for all of us. For myself. For my brother. For my best friend. For myhusband.The image of him lying there, with blood pooling from his stomach—it’s directly linked with the dread of what comes next. And the worst part is I can’t even make sense of it all. I don’t understand what happened. All I know is that everything was fine, we were having a great night, and then Monty was dead.
I wasn’t lying when I told police I don’t have any idea what happened to him. Honest. I don’t. Other than the fact that my husband can addtaken a lifeto his list of sins, but that’s not something I was about to tell them. Hell, it’s barely something I can tell myself. It was an accident. I know that.
But there’s this little voice in the back of my mind, repeating all the horrible things Hayes has said about Monty.
THERE’S A FINE LINEbetween calm and chaos when it feels like your entire life is on shaky ground. Just a breeze from the wrong direction could send it all crashing down around us. All we can do is hold on for dear life and hope we make it out alive, and I’m trying to. But that doesn’t mean I’m not breaking inside—worried about what could go wrong next.
“Laiken, you have to stop!” Hayes yells at me, his patience hanging on by a thread and ready to snap.
I roll my eyes, holding the remote away from him. “I don’thaveto do anything! We were cleared by the cops, so what fucking harm does it do? It’s not like I’m making you watch it.”
“Because it’s not healthy,” he says as he kneels in front of me. “You can’t keep obsessing over this. It was anaccident.”
“Then why did we just leave him there? Why not try to get him help if you did nothing wrong?”
His fingers run through his hair as he sighs. “And then what? You think his family would just be okay with it? Sayshit happensand move on?”
I scoff. “Can you imagine what we’re putting his mother through? It must be torture, not knowing where her son is or what happened to him! This iswrong, Hayes, and you know it.”
The guilt is eating me alive. It’s ripping me apart from the inside out. I can barely even look at myself in the mirror anymore. And yet, he’s fine. He’s the one that shot him, and he’s managing to hold it all together. Could he really have hated himthatmuch, to the point of not caring that someone died at his hands?
Hayes goes to grab the remote again, just as a picture appears on the screen and my stomach sinks. “Wait, look.”
It’s Monty’s boat, shipwrecked into the rocks. Chunks of it are missing and almost half of it sits under water, with the part that’s not only being held up by the rocks it’s resting on. I turn the volume up to hear what they’re saying.
“We have new information in the case of missing twenty-year-old Montgomery Rollins. His boat was found wrecked almost one hundred miles up the coast from where he was last seen. Police had this to say in a press conference.”
