Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 120230 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120230 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
“You don’t know him. You don’t know us.”
“Aaron told me about Ash and your sister, and I saw the truth on his face when he found that doll. He still loves her. He was the one tormenting you with it, you know. You really think he’s going to stay with you now that she’s come back from the dead? And how about that? I thought you told everyone she was dead!”
“Grace,” I snapped, intending to tell her to knock it off.
But Darcie said, “Ash would never do that to me,” at the same time.
“I saw him with the doll the morning of the hike! I figured he was just being a dick and it wasn’t my business to interfere in your fake picture-perfect marriage.”
“I don’t beli—” Darcie’s words cut off as she began to cough, harsh and raw.
“You need water?”
But she shook her head. After half a minute, the cough cleared away in short spurts.
In the silence, I listened for Bea’s breaths . . . and heard them. Deep and steady, her sleep drugged and dreamless.
She was alive.
Bea was alive.
And I couldn’t think about that if I wanted to stay sane this night and get help for Kaea and Ash, Aaron and Vansi, all four of them trapped in that house stained by violent deaths past and present. The question of Bea would swallow me up if I permitted myself to fall into it.
“Your husband hates you,” Grace said from the back, her tone more spiteful than I’d have imagined Aaron’s adorable fiancée could ever sound. “Surely you know that. The way he looks at you when you can’t see him, it’s not like a loving husband. He looks at you as if you’re someone he’s never seen before. As if you’re a monster hidden under the skin of his wife.”
I should’ve spoken up, should’ve defended my friend, but I needed to hear Darcie’s reaction.
“Ash doesn’t hate me,” Darcie said, but her voice was tremulous, lacking in conviction. “I’ve never done anything but love him. Why would he hate me?”
“Yes, why?”
Grace’s quiet question raised the hairs on the back of my neck, had me throwing Darcie a measuring glance before I returned my attention to the road. “He has been a bit edgy,” I said, thinking back to that conversation at the top of the stairs that hadn’t quite settled right in my gut. “You two have a fight?”
“I thought he was happy about the pregnancy, but . . .” Her voice faded off into a piteous whisper.
And suddenly, I felt like the most raging bitch on the planet. I’d forgotten that she was pregnant. Pregnant and wounded and in apparent shock over Bea, and now Grace was forcing her to confront relationship issues that didn’t need to be confronted. Not here. Not now.
“Enough, Grace,” I said when she inhaled as if in preparation for further verbal blows. “Both of you stay as still as you can, don’t do anything that might increase your blood flow. I don’t know how long it’ll take me to get past the slip and return to you with help.”
Silence from the back seat, but Darcie said, “Do you think Ash hates me, too, Luna? Do you think he’s still in love with Bea?”
I couldn’t do this to her, couldn’t hurt a friend who’d been in my life for over a decade and a half. “He actually asked me to keep an extra-special eye on you because you were pregnant,” I said, avoiding the question without seeming to avoid it. “He said for me not to spill the beans, but he wanted someone else to know.”
“Oh.” A smile in the word itself. “Thank you for telling me that.”
The rain thundered hard against the windscreen in a sudden surge, as if we’d passed right under a huge thundercloud. A lightning flash followed, illuminating a large section of the road ahead of me. No blockages up ahead. Just a winding curve I knew had to lead to the slip. Even with my speed, we’d gone too far for it to be otherwise.
With that knowledge in mind, I took extreme care as I rounded the corner, ready to stop at any moment . . . but the road carried on uninterrupted, only a few scraggly broken branches scattered across the tarmac.
49
Itried to straighten my back from its hunched-over position. I’d miscalculated badly. And though I just wanted to stop, have someone else take control, make things better, I carried on through the increasingly slushy and slippery snow.
“I think I’m bleeding again. It pulses.” Grace’s voice was ragged. “Seriously, please undo my hands so I can press them to the towel. You can even tape them up in front rather than at the back.”
My fingers clenching on the steering wheel, I hesitated.
And Darcie whispered, “Don’t fall for it, Luna.” Her voice kind of . . . bubbled, as if she had blood in her throat. I hoped to hell that wasn’t the case.