Page 114 of Half Truths (Secret Society 1)
“You need to get the fuck out.” Logan stood.
“She’s my daughter. Last I checked you were here out of the kindness of my heart. That can change very quickly.” Dad raised an eyebrow. “You’re not family.”
“Keep talking like that, old man, and I’ll make sure when I put a ring on her finger and change her last name she never sees you again.” Logan paused. “She probably won’t want to anyway.”
“I’ll get security.” Dad’s eyebrows furrowed as he walked out.
I shook my head, shook my legs. The nurses walked inside, tending to me quickly.
“You need to calm down,” one of them said. “She can’t be like this.”
“What’s happening?” the other asked.
“She got like this when she saw her father,” Mom said quietly. “They must have had a fight.”
I shook my head. The door opened again. Lincoln walked into the room using a walker to lean on as he pushed forward. He paused by the door, his eyes meeting mine. He exhaled and kept walking over to me.
“Jesus, Mae.” He sat on the other side of my bed. “You scared the hell out of us.” I raised my eyebrows. He chuckled. “Yeah, I know. Payback is a bitch, huh?”
I started crying again, my chest heaving dry sobs.
“You can have ice chips, but you need to go slow,” the nurse said, bringing over a white foam cup. She handed it to Logan. “And please keep her calm.”
“You don’t want to see dad?” Lincoln asked. “You finally came around to realizing he’s the devil?”
I nodded, tears welling in my eyes. My chest heaved again.
“Oh my God,” Mom gasped, looking up at the television, which was muted on the news. Lana’s picture was on there. Mom grabbed the control attached to my bed and turned up the volume.
“Lana Ly’s body has been found after months of searching,” the news reporter said in her best sympathetic voice. “The police chief is expected to hold a press conference on the matter later today. Our thoughts are with the Le family.”
Lincoln buried his face in his hands. I grabbed his wrist and squeezed, then squeezed again, and again until he looked at me. His eyes were shining. I shook my head, licking my lips.
“She was alive,” I said. My voice sounded foreign and scratchy, barely audible. “I saw her alive.”
“That’s impossible, Mae.” The words came from Logan. I looked at him and nodded.
“Hailey,” I said, but as soon as I said her name, I started sobbing uncontrollably. I looked up at Mom, who’d aged a hundred years in one and was about to age one hundred more and I couldn’t bring myself to say anything other than, “Hailey.”
“Your friend from the coffee shop?” Mom asked.
I tried to shake my head, but my entire body shook, the bed creaking with it. Not even Lincoln’s weight on it could hold it steady. She was not my friend. She was not my friend.
“Baby, calm down.” Logan got closer to me, setting a hand on my shoulder. “Calm down.”
I stopped shaking the bed and nodded, tears streaming down my face. Through the haze, I could make out the marks on my wrists. I imagined my ankles looked similar. I felt sore all over, but especially on my wrists and ankles. I cried again. I tried to close my eyes to spare them from my sadness, but when I did, it was dark and I couldn’t bear to deal with that either. Hailey hadn’t killed me, but she’d managed to break me, and sometimes being broken felt like a heavier burden than the idea of not being here at all. The nurses walked back into the room, one checking my vitals while the other placed a mask over my face and switched on the nebulizer. I breathed in and out. The door opened and my father walked back inside, this time with a security guard. My eyes widened. He’d said he’d kick Logan out.
“Get out.” Lincoln stood, his legs shaky as he leaned on his walker.
“He needs to get out.” Dad pointed at Logan.
“You’re going to have to make me. I’m not leaving her side.” Logan’s entire body seemed to flex, from his neck to his forearms.
“Felipe. You need to get out.” That was Lincoln.
“Felipe?” Dad raised an eyebrow.
He also looked like shit, like he hadn’t slept in days and days. I thought of Lana on the news and how they said they’d found her body. Her body. Not alive. Tears sprung in my eyes. She didn’t deserve that. Had he killed her? Had Hailey? Had Deacon? Had she done it to herself? Did it matter? She was gone, for good this time. I took the mask off.
“Get the fuck out of my room.”
The six of them—mom, dad, Lincoln, Logan, the security guard, and the straggling nurse—whipped their heads in my direction.
“You killed Lana,” I said.
