Page 68 of Waysider
“Eventually,” Cass ground out, answering him at last.
“Why?”
“It was… he came to…” Cass’s response was halting. Her heartbeat was unsteady. Why was this part so hard, after everything she’d already told him? Her gaze dropped, and she found herself staring at Patrick’s hands. They were clasped between his knees. Cass wondered how many lives those hands had taken. She swallowed again and said, “He came to make a confession. To… tell me the truth.”
“The truth about what, Miss Ryan?” Patrick prodded. There was the slightest edge to his voice—impatience. Cass forced herself to look up, and she tried to ignore the sense of violation tearing through her. The awful feeling that he was taking something from her. Something Cass hadn’t even known was precious.
“About us,” she said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Hands wrapped around Cass’s throat.
Her eyes shot open, and she snapped back to consciousness in a burst of confusion and terror. A man’s outline filled Cass’s vision, his back to the faint light that streamed through the cracked door. But why was the door so small?
Cass barely had a chance to realize that she wasn’t in her bedroom before those merciless fingers tightened. She gurgled and slapped at her assailant’s wrists, violently wrenching her body in a futile attempt to get him off. But it was as if he were made of iron. Within a minute, Cass felt that telltale sensation of time slowing down.
Devastation tore through her. No! She didn’t want to die. She wanted to live, damn it. It wasn’t fair! A sob caught in her chest, and a moment later, the world began to darken. Cass felt herself slipping away. The pain and the fear floated away, too.
“You made me do this,” she heard the man whisper.
Then Cass flew upright in her bed, letting out a wild gasp.
The bedsheets were damp with sweat as she searched every shadowed corner of her room at House Wayside, her heart working overtime. The door was back to its normal size. The hands around her throat were gone. Cass reached up, trembling, and she found her skin hot to the touch. It hurt as if there were bruises forming.
The nightmare hadn’t completely faded when Cass saw a male silhouette sitting at her desk.
A terrified jolt vibrated through her body—she knew it wasn’t Cal. But then the intruder shifted. Moonlight fell across Michael’s face, and the scream rising in Cass’s throat abruptly faded.
“Your dreams have gotten worse,” he murmured. His eyes were on her throat. “Does that happen every time?”
“No.” Cass didn’t know what else to say. How did he know the nightmares were escalating? In the next breath, she answered her own question. Michael had probably seen her have a nightmare during her time at the hospital. They’d been really bad after she lost Cal.
Speaking of her brother, where was he? Cass looked around again, confirming that Cal was nowhere in sight. If Michael was here, it could only mean that her brother wasn’t in the house. Had he been leaving all this time, and Cass just never noticed because he waited until she was asleep?
Realizing that her shirt was drenched in sweat, too, Cass pulled it away from her chest. She glanced at Michael before she looked back down again and muttered, “Haven’t seen you in a while. You’ve been avoiding me.”
“Isn’t that what you wanted?” His voice was soft.
“It’s what I should want,” Cass said without thinking.
Michael hadn’t moved, but in that moment, Cass swore he went still. “You don’t?”
It felt like they’d ventured into dangerous territory. Cass’s heart did something strange, and she reached up to muss her bangs, clearing her throat. She tried to think of something else they could talk about. She hadn’t seen him since the Haunting, so—wait. The Haunting!
“Oh my god, I’ve been meaning to thank you,” Cass blurted. “I probably wouldn’t be alive right now if you hadn’t shown up the other night.”
Michael gave her a small, polite smile. “You’re welcome.”
Cass was cooling off now. The nightmare felt distant, like a bad memory. Cass sighed and released her T-shirt, then let her hands fall to her lap. “Why were you there?” she asked.
But Michael had noticed the damp marks on her shirt now. He began to stand. “Would you like me to open the window?”
“No, don’t worry about it.” Cass waved him off. “I’m getting used to the dreams.”
She tried to sound nonchalant, but something in her voice gave her away. Michael didn’t call her out. He resettled on the chair and fell silent, probably giving her a chance to talk about it, if she wanted to. Cass thought about those final moments of the death she’d just experienced. Karen Watkins had fought back. She had wanted to live. But someone took that from her, just like Cass’s life had been taken, too. And Cal’s.
Feeling Michael’s eyes on her, Cass shook herself. She looked across the room at him and wondered how long he’d been sitting there. This led to all the other questions she had about him. There was no point in asking, since Michael knew as much as she did. Less, since she still hadn’t told him what she’d learned from Professor Harkens.
