AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Through the mirror I noticed movement over my shoulder. As if stepping out of a black abyss, Keelan appeared in the doorway behind me.
“Are you all right?” he asked me.
I opened my mouth to answer just as an alabaster face with coal eyes slid out of that black abyss behind Keelan. Before I could do or say anything, Keelan’s body jerked, arching backward, his eyes going wide.
“No!” I screamed as I spun around. I reached for Keelan to pull him away from Mr. X. Before I could, Mr. X’s hand wrapped around Keelan’s throat, and he pulled him backward into the darkness.
Nothing mattered but the desperate need to save Keelan. Not even my fear. I went to run back into that darkness, but something caught me by my ankle. I fell forward. My hands and knees slammed down on the tile that was now covered in blood. As I tried to get up, I slipped and slid in the blood.
“Shiloh,” the feminine voice called to me again and something tightened around my ankle. I glanced backward, finding Isabelle lying on the ground. She was just as I had found her at Ethan’s birthday. Stabbed, bleeding, and deathly pale. Her teal hair was soaking up the blood spreading around us. Her blue eyes were wide and fixed on me. “Help me,” she begged.
The sound of Keelan screaming out in pain echoed in the darkness, drawing my attention out the bathroom door.
Faced with a decision I wished I didn’t have to make, tears rolled down my cheeks as I glanced back at Isabelle. “I’m sorry.” I tried to yank my ankle free.
Isabelle tightened her grip. “Please don’t leave me.”
A sob barreled out of me. “I’m sorry!” I yanked away again, this time getting free. Pushing to my feet, I dove into the darkness, leaving my friend to die.
* * *
I woke, leaping to sit up. I barely had time to register that I was in the back of Keelan’s Jeep when a hand touched my arm.
“You’re safe.”
Startled, I scooted away until I slammed my shoulder, then my back into one of the doors in the backseat. I looked up front and saw Colt was driving. His arm reached back toward me. He glanced over his shoulder at me for only a second before staring back at the road.
“You’re safe,” he repeated. “It was just a dream.” He put on the car’s blinker and merged to the right.
Reality came back to me and then my nightmare replayed in my head. Instantly, my stomach twisted.
I left her.
“Pull over,” I begged.
“I am,” Colt said.
Before Colt could bring the Jeep to a full stop on the side of the road, I had the door open, and I jumped out. I made it just a few feet before I bent over and vomited. I heaved until I had nothing left in my stomach and then heaved some more.
Hands collected my hair and held it back. “Focus on breathing. In through your nose, out through your mouth,” Colt said as he put his hand on my lower back and began rubbing in small circles.
I did as he instructed and when it seemed like I wasn’t going to heave again, I stepped away from him. He let go of my hair so he wouldn’t pull it as I kept putting more space between us.
“Shiloh,” he said, anger seeping into his voice.
I could feel him following me, so I stopped walking. I rubbed my eyes, hoping to ease the need to cry, before moving my hands up into my hair. “I can’t have you comforting me right now, Colt.”
“Why?” he asked, sounding as if he was right behind me.
I turned to face him. “Because I am barely holding it together.”
He reached out to touch me. Before he could, I caught him by his wrist, stopping him. “It is taking everything I have not to fall into your arms and break,” I said. “But to do that would be selfish. I love you too much to do that to you—to your brothers.”
“You’re not in this alone.”
I let go of his wrist. “I’m well aware of that.”
His expression hardened into a frown. “You almost sound like you wish you were.”
