AllFreeNovel
Share Us
A rustle sounds from down the line, snapping me back to the present, just before a new voice fills my ear, loud and clear.
“Mason?”
Ray, I think numbly.
He mutters a curse, then says, “We don’t know anything yet. We’re looking for her.”
Frowning, I stare ahead. “She’s…alive?”
He sucks in a breath.
“Yes. Yes,” he says fiercely. “She’s gonna turn up. She might’ve went to the beach. Fell asleep. Or…”
He keeps talking, but a buzzing in my ear rises up, drowning him out.
I thought…
I thought…
“We’ll find her. This is all a big misunderstanding.”
I feel myself nod.
On the floor, Waylon rolls onto his back, stretches his arms behind him, and cracks a hazel eye up at me. “The fuck, dude? Go back to bed.”
“Everything will be okay,” Ray tells me.
My lip ticks up, my vision blurring. “Yeah…”
In my mind, images flash.
A small hand splayed against a rain-speckled window.
Red headlights disappearing into a gray oblivion.
Hazel eyes surrounded in bruises.
And, lastly, it’s an image of Jeremy, bent over in boxer briefs….
And I want to fucking throw up.
Hope has me clinging to Ray’s assurances before he hangs up.
Denial has me getting out of bed and walking past a confused, fully-awake-now Waylon, and into the hall.
Realization has me slamming the bathroom door behind me, and crashing to my knees.
I stare at the tiled floor…
And I barter with every deity or demon who might be listening, that Ray’s words of assurance aren’t a lie.
Yet somehow already knowing…
Nothing will ever be the same.
II
In the face of pain there are no heroes.
