AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Nic starts to answer at the exact moment her phone rings, making both of us jump. Nolan leans forward to glance at the screen, his brows pressed together. “It’s your mom,” he tells her, sliding it across the table to her. “She sensed you talking about her.”
Snorting in disagreement, Nic shakes her head and picks up her phone, just as mine starts to buzz in my pocket. Confusion shoots through me as I fish it out, surprised that my dad is calling when it’s not like I have any kind of curfew and even if I did, it’s not that late.
“Dad?” I greet, turning away from the table as if to give Nic some semblance of privacy. “Is everything—”
“I need you to come home,”he says, his voice firm. “Are you still at the park with Nic and Nolan?”
“Yeah?” Now I’m more confused than anything, my brows knit together. “Dad, what’s wrong—”
“Just come home. Now.”
I don’t reply for a moment. I don’t know what to say, so I sigh out a breath and nod, even though he can’t see the motion. “Okay, Dad. Sure. Sorry.” Is he mad at me? His voice is tight with tension or anxiety or both, but I can’t figure out what it is I might’ve done to warrant an angry ‘get your ass home’ phone call.
“Do you need a ride? Maybe I should come pick you up.”
“I’m not alone. I don’t need a ride,” I tell him firmly. “We’ll all walk home together. As much as we can, anyway. I’ll be home in a few minutes, okay? Just don’t freak out.” I hold my breath, listening to him think it over, before he lets out a long, hard sigh.
“Fine. Just come home, Bailey. You aren’t in trouble, and we’ll explain everything when you get here.” My heart is pounding when he hangs up, and when I glance up at Nic to explain, to apologize, whatever, I see that she looks just as concerned.
“What did your mom want?” I ask, nodding towards her phone as I stand up.
“Probably the same thing your dad did,” she replies, both of them getting up as well. “For me to come home. They…they’ve found another body, Bailey. Outside of town.”
“Another accident?” I ask, and she hesitates.
“I don’t know. Mom told me not to say anything. She said you’d find out eventually and I’m not the right person to tell you.”
“Tell mewhat?” Tension rises in my throat, my heart pounding there as my chest constricts. “Nic—”
“That they found Jack Fairfield dead a few minutes ago, down by the pond where Daisy died.”
The words ring through my ears, and for a moment, for one sweet and peaceful moment, I swear I’ve heard her wrong. Ihaveto have heard her wrong, even as memories of the pond where I’d—Daisy stay with me, Dai…sy—whereithad happened.
My hands are so cold that they feel as if I’ve plunged them into the icy water that took my friend. I take a step back, head still spinning, and half wish that I’d taken Dad up on his offer of a ride.
“I have to tell him,” I say, though I swear I meant to sayI need to go home.My head swings to the side, to where Rory and Phoenix still sit on the bench below us. “I need to. He should know.”
“What? No. No, you need to gohome,” Nic says. “All of us do. They’re enacting a curfew for tonight and maybe the week. Or until they have more answers. You need to—”
“Go on and go,” I tell them both. “You know I’ll be fine.” I don’t wait for an answer. I don’t tell them that I need to do this because I need to see Phoenix’s reaction.
I need to see his face when I tell him.
It can’t have been him, right? Not with him being here for a while. I’ll have to ask Nic and Nolan when exactly they got there, or when he did. But surely, if Jack died not that long ago, then Phoenix can’t have done it.
Surely my suspicions are wrong.
My feet take me to the bench, to where the two of them are whispering, and it’s only seconds before Rory looks up at me, his eyes somehow colder than they had been, as if to mimic the falling temperatures around us.
“You want to join in, Bailey?” he asks, voice caressing my name. “Do you want to snuggle? Phoenix is warm as hell, and—”
“Do you know?” I ask, eyes jerking upward until I catch Phoenix’s dark gaze. “Do you?”
He stares back at me, his mouth pressed flat and his hands unmoving on his lap and Rory’s shoulder. “Know what?”
“Do you know that Jack Fairfield isdead?”
I don’t know what I’m expecting.
