Page 112 of Half Truths (Secret Society 1)
“Did you not hear me?”
“Yeah, but is it over?” It wasn’t like this hadn’t happened before. What was hockey without a little blood anyway? I’d already replaced five of my teeth and I hadn’t even started playing pro yet. None of this was surprising.
“Yeah, it’s over. I don’t think they wanted to feel your wrath after that last one.”
“Is he okay?” I frowned.
“Yeah, they called. Concussion, broken nose, split lip.” He shrugged. “He’s fine.”
That was a new record for me. I’d never sent someone to the hospital with all of the above at the same time. My thoughts drifted back to Amelia. She would’ve probably been horrified at whatever I did out there. I found that unlike insistences in the past, this one had left me feeling empty, not any better than I did when I walked out there today. It was the worst kind of feeling, the emptiness.
Rage, I could handle.
Sadness, I could handle.
Emptiness was something I didn’t do well with.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Amelia
It felt like someone was squeezing my head together. The pressure was immeasurable. It wasn’t a migraine, not quite, because I felt it everywhere, in my skull, in my temple. Opening my eyes made it worse, but something had made me open them. I’d run out of oxygen soon. I could feel it in the way my breathing had turned shallow and my pulse was slowing. I’d die here in these woods, in this dark box. I’d gotten accustomed to being surrounded by people and I was going to die alone. It served me right for being a brat, for not appreciating what I had when I did. I heard something above me. A person?
“Hailey?” I tried to call out, but couldn’t.
I no longer had a voice. That had been the first thing to go. I was about to close my eyes again, but then I heard it again. A loud sound. I tried to move, but my body was sore, aching all over from kicking and screaming, from trying to fight the wood above me. I’d used the pipe to push with and it had done nothing but fill me with dirt. More dirt fell now, tiny granules, almost like sand seeping between fingertips. I tried to move again. Tried to scream, to no avail. The sounds got louder. Voices? There were voices. My heart seemed to accelerate at that. Maybe Hailey changed her mind. Maybe Lana made her. Maybe Deacon? Voices. Louder. Male.
“You’re going to stay in this one,” one of them said. “Don’t worry, it’s only overnight.”
The wood was pried open slowly, dusting more dirt onto me as they lifted it. It was evening, but my eyes still squinted as I looked up. Red cloaks.
“What the fuck?” one of them said loudly. “Will, is this her?”
“Who?” another guy asked, coming into sight. Another red cloak. “Holy fuck it’s her.”
“I’m gonna be sick,” a third guy said.
“Shut the fuck up. Go get me that towel,” the first guy shouted. “Oh my God, dude.”
“What the fuck is she doing in here?” the other one said.
They sounded panicked.
“What do we do with her?”
I felt my chest rake. I had no tears left. I had nothing. One of them came over with a bottle of water and opened it quickly. He yanked the red cloak from his head, took it off and tossed it aside.
“Dude,” another one said. “She’s going to know what you look like.”
“Shut the fuck up. She’s one of us,” he said, his blue eyes familiar, so familiar. Mine widened. Nolan. He looked exactly like Nolan. “Call my brother,” he said. “If we call Logan, he’ll total his car on the way over here.” He leaned closer with the water, but the sight of the clear bottle made me shudder. I shook my head. I couldn’t. I didn’t want to be drugged again. “Hey, it’s just water,” he coaxed. “It’s just water.”
My mouth opened, my lips breaking as they parted. I could taste the blood in my mouth as the water trickled down, slowly at first, and then faster, pouring down the sides of my cheeks. I licked my lips. Nolan’s lookalike was staring at me like he was afraid to move me.
“We’re going to help you get out of there, okay?”
I nodded, emotion clogging my throat. They were helping me. They were lifting me out of the darkness.
“Spoke to Nolan,” the other guy said. “They’re stitching Logan up and then heading over.”
“Oh, that’s right, they had a game.”
“Something you would think you’d know about your brother,” the third guy said.
Nolan’s lookalike glared over his shoulder before looking back at me. “How the fuck are we going to lift her without breaking any of her bones?”
“How long has she been missing?”
“Five days.”
The two guys looked at each other with a shocked expression on their faces. I closed my eyes. I was so tired. So tired. I coughed, then wheezed, then coughed. My chest sounded like a beat up old car.
