Page 18 of Secret Obsession
How can there be awewhen the world is falling down around me? I don’t want it to take out my best friend, too.
“I might,” I say carefully. “But… I don’t think you should.”
“Okay.” Her brows furrow. “I’ll see you in the morning, you can decide then.”
“Okay.”
She rises and goes back toward the stairs. Her footsteps are light going up. I check my phone for the time and wince. It’s three o’clock in the morning. I can only imagine the sort of noises I was making while asleep to drive my best friend out of bed and down here.
There’s a bed pillow on the floor. I pick it up and fluff it, then roll onto my back. Violet left the lamp on, which is fine by me. It gives me something to focus on instead of the lingering feel of blood on my skin.
My phone vibrates. I grab it without thinking, swiping open the text message.
Miles
[IMAGE]
My brain seems to lag for a second, because I don’t understand what I’m looking at. It’s one of those large white freezers that people use when their family hunts—my family never participated in that, but I had a friend in elementary school whose family was big into game hunting. They had this exact thing in their garage to store the extra meat.
Miles
Don’t worry, I’m keeping our secret safe.
I cover my mouth.
He doesn’t mean that the guy—the body—theperson he murdered—is in there. Does he?
Miles doesn’t send anything else, and I’m too shocked to reply. In what world would we both be awake at three a.m. anyway? I delete the image and set my phone back down. I feel marginally better once the picture is gone, and I blow out a breath.
That means thereisn’ta body in my apartment. And Miles probably didn’t call the police, since no one showed up looking for me. Or to arrest me.
I’m too jittery for this.
I hop up and tiptoe into the kitchen. I find a bag of chips and the bottle of whiskey I was pouring into my coffee this morning and head back to the couch. It only takes a little bit of scrolling to watch a nice, lighthearted show…
About zombies.
Yeah, I’m losing it.
I drink from the bottle, wincing at the burn, then open the chips. I wrap the blanket around myself and take another swig.
And another.
Finally, some of the edge starts to fade. I relax into the couch and eye my phone. On the screen, someone’s being eaten alive by a zombie. I reach for my phone without thinking. My head falls back on the cushion, and my eyes lower into slits.
“Willow?” Miles answers.
Fuck, I like his voice.
“Why are you calling me in the middle of the night?”
I can’t answer that because I don’t know. His voice sounds raspy, like maybe he was asleep. Impossible, since he just texted me.
“Oh, did you get my text?” Something rustles, like he’s rolling over in bed.
Maybe I did wake him up.
“That’s how it’s going to be,” he continues. “You can’t ignore me, babe.”
