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“Shane has been arrested,” Julia notes. “About an hour ago. They found the bat in the back of his Mustang. Kaiden went to Sheriff Hicks.”
Kaiden Krammer.You held me down while Shane raped me. You stood by while they beat Grayson to death. But you turned him in.
“What?” I gasp, the smallest amount of pain working through me. “He did? He was there. He held me down while….” I can’t say it. I can’t even say the word aloud. Hysterical cries rip through me, my body trembling so badly my teeth begin to chatter.
I’m losing it. This is it. I’m going to break down, the walls closing in, the lights fading.
Mom cradles my face in her hands, forcing me to look at her. “Baby girl, you need to breathe.” Julia moves to the other side of me, rubbing my back in a calming motion. “We’re gonna get through this. Whatever happens in the next hour, or twenty-four hours, we’re going to get through it.”
I want to believe her, I do, but I’m not sure I can after everything that’s happened in the last few hours.
I don’t know how long she holds me, but it’s long enough, I feel the need to move away to breathe. Staring at my IV, I sigh, trying to hold onto some sort of composure. “What time is it?”
Julia lifts her arm to look at her watch. “It’s a little past eleven.”
My eyes dart around the room to look for a window, but there isn’t one. “At night?”
She nods.
I meet my mom’s eyes. “Does Ethan know?”
“Him and Frankie are in the lobby with Josh and Kelly. Wyatt’s on his way. He had to fill out a police report.”
“Why?”
Her eyes dart to Julia, and then me. “Shane broke into their garage to get the bat.” Her words shake, as if she’s not sure if she should be telling me any of this. “He broke out all the windows in the house with it and then took off to find you guys, we assume.”
“What a fucking nightmare,” I cry, rubbing my hands over my face. It stings, like a thousand tiny sharp cuts all over me. I look down at my hands and arms peeking out from the blanket. I’m covered in bruises and cuts. It looks like I took a cheese grater to my body.
And then I have a thought, what had they been told? I hadn’t been able to get out much of anything to the doctors, and the one police officer who’d questioned me. It was like I was in shock and couldn’t possibly relive the details enough to tell them. Other than names. I gave them every single name.
I replayed what they did in my head, every gory detail that could not slip past my lips and give this horrible nightmare a reality.
Lance Wheeler.You held me down. You watched another man rape me, and tried to do the same yourself.
Colt Adams.You kicked Grayson in the face.
Baron Culter.You held his arms back when Shane took that fatal swing.
Travis Miles.You held his head up and made him watch what Shane did to me. You were his fucking friend at one time and you ruined his life!
Kaiden Krammer.You... let it happen. You might have turned him in, but you let him rip apart our lives forever.
Andyou, Shane Larson,you took a baseball bat, Grayson’s bat, the same one he hit seventy-eight home runs with his senior year. The first bat he ever swung, handmade by his granddad for his fifth birthday. You, took every last piece we had and destroyed it.
Julia hands me another tissue; I didn’t realize I was crying again. Or maybe I hadn’t stopped. “Kaiden painted a pretty grim picture for Sheriff Hicks. He said Shane hit Grayson with his bat in the head. Kaiden thought he was dead already. I think Shane assumed the same. And,” her chin shakes, tears dripping from her cheeks and nose, “we don’t know if he’s going to make it, Evie. They said it’s not looking good at the moment. The bleeding in his brain is extensive, but they can’t speculate until they can repair the skull fracture and relieve the pressure in his head.”
Heat works through me. Unbearable, unimaginable searing heat that licks every part of my body and bursts into flames. I can’t take the images that flood through my head.
The bat.
The way Grayson slumped forward when they let go of him.
The blood.
Blackness surrounds me and this time, this time I give it recognition to take me. I don’t want this pain. Not without him.
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