Page 204 of Phobia

“Ding! Ding! Ding! I think we have a winner. Or a loser, rather.” I couldn’t see Hudson’s grin as he spoke since his face was hidden behind his devil mask, but I knew it was there all the same. I was beginning to question how smart it had been to pull him into something like this. He was still in a lot of emotional anguish and was using anger as an outlet. Which I understood, I did. But this half-baked revenge and justice-seeking was probably doing him more harm than good. And that was my fault.

“This is about the stupid one-night stand I had?” Graysin sounded shocked. “This,” he gestured around, “is completely over the top and outrageous.”

The humor left Hudson’s tone. “Excuse me?”

Graysin jutted his chin out defiantly. There was that spark again. My stomach fluttered.So not the reaction I need right now.

“Let me tell you a little story. Maybe this will tie it together for you. Once upon a time,” Hudson began, “there was a little girl named Olivia, known to most as Livy. She was the sweetest, most kind and generous person in the entire world. She also had a knack for keeping her twin brother in line. She was amazing. She had a happy life, even though her parents died when she was young. She was able to find the beauty in anything. Art was how she coped with setbacks but also how she shared her joys.” Hudson began pacing back and forth in front of Graysin. He didn’t look at him, choosing to stare ahead or up toward the ceiling as he spoke. His voice remained steady, though I knew how much these words pained him to speak. “Livy grew up and went away to college. She made friends and got decent grades. She was happy. But then one day she came across a man.” He paused where he stood and threw a glare at Graysin, then continued pacing. “A very bad man, at the spring break party that Blaine, the guy she’d been dating, was throwing.”

Graysin’s mouth turned down and his brows pinched together. He hunched down into himself even more, looking very bleak.

“Livy and this guy probably had too much to drink at this party. Maybe took a few pills. They ended up in a bedroom together, where the guy took advantage of her while she was blitzed out. Her boyfriend threw a massive fit and broke her heart when he found out. To make matters worse, it turned out that the guy had taken it upon his sick-ass self to take photos and videos during…well, during. Which he then used to blackmail Livy.”

A few tears slipped down Graysin’s cheeks.

Hudson took a deep breath. “That would have all been bad enough, but unfortunately, sweet Livy made the catastrophic decision to take her own life by overdosing on fentanyl pills that this asshole had previously supplied her with. And her twin brother had the unfortunate luck to find her.” Hudson stopped directly in front of Graysin, and stared down at him, long and hard. “Any guesses who the asshole might be in this story?”

“I am so sorry for your loss,” Graysin whispered. Tears fell freely down his face. “I had no idea that Livy had passed away.” He swallowed hard and looked down at his hands clutched tightly together. “I admit that Livy and I had a one-night stand of some sort. I genuinely have zero memory of it, other than waking up feeling sore all over and having a hangover that was nothing like anything I’d experienced before.” He shook his head. “If I took photos and videos, I’m unaware of it. I certainly did not send them to her or to anyone else. And as for the fentanyl, I don’t do drugs. I don’t sell drugs. I don’t give drugs to other people. I swear on my life that I never gave any to Livy.”

I was speechless. Could we believe him? My stomach dropped out when Graysin followed all that with, “I think you need to talk to Blaine Colfield. He’s my best friend, yet I didn’t even know they were dating. That morning, after she’d left, I’d even told him what had apparently happened, and he was completely unbothered and didn’t react any sort of way when I mentioned Livy.”

After that earth-shattering information—which I decided I believed…it didn’t seem like Graysin was lying—we had to regroup. It didn’t feel right leaving Graysin cold and locked up in the warehouse, but we also needed to find out what really happened.

Chapter 8

Hours later, I was still reeling from what Devil had shared. The whole thing was sad and confusing and made my skin crawl. There was someone out there spinning a false narrative about me, and those lies had caused me a massive amount of harm.

I stood by the window of the small room I was now in, trying to get a closer look at anything that might be helpful later if I found myself with an opportunity to escape. The warehouse had a mezzanine system that added a second and third floor to the moderately sized building. There were several small rooms and large storage areas on each floor. On the second floor, one of those small rooms seemed to have once been an employee break room. It was this room that the masks had recently moved me into. The window I was perched behind overlooked the bottom floor. Outside this room, a metal grating walkway led to an open platform area, as well as a metal staircase.

It was nothing much to look at, but my new space was warmer. And I had clothes. And a clock. I could walk around freely within the room. And there was a bathroom off to the side with a tiny standing shower I’d been allowed to use. I’d never thought something as simple as a shower could bring such relief, but it did. I felt almost like a normal human again.

I assumed I was stuck here until they figured out how to bring Blaine in. I didn’t know how they were going to convince him to give them the time of day though. He was not likely to come easy.

Imagine my surprise when the following afternoon I stepped out of the small bathroom to find Blaine sitting at the small card table in the center of the room. Or slumped over the table may have been a more appropriate phrase. He’d clearly been beaten, and when I shook his arm to rouse him, his pupils were blown wide like he was on something. He blinked a few times and then grinned. A chill ran down my spine. I’d never seen a smile like that on his face, and this was the scenario that had prompted it?

“Graysin! What are you doing here? What the fuck happened to your face?”

The pain had subsided. I looked worse than I felt now. I wasn’t sure if it was because my injuries were healing, or because it seemed like things had somewhat shifted between me and my kidnappers and it made everything feel not quite as hopeless.

“Are you high right now?” I asked Blaine.

“As a kite.” He stretched his bound arms over his head and popped his neck side to side. “Your, uh, new friends are…appalling.” He held his hands out to me as evidence. “They cornered me in my garage and drugged me with something. This shit is unreal.”

I slid into the chair across from him. “They drugged you, beat you, and stuck you in this room?”

“Well, we had a chat first.” He shook his head slowly. “I don’t know what shit they gave me, but Christ, I couldn’t keep my fucking mouth shut.” He laughed hysterically, then stopped abruptly and his face went blank.

“And what did you talk about?”

“Spring break.”

I gulped roughly. “What about it?”

“Oh, you know.” He waved a hand around airily. “I told them about the threesome we had after I spiked your and Olivia’s drinks.” I stared at him blankly. “You’re always so uptight about pills. Figured they’d go down easier that way.”

I couldn’t believe the words coming from my best friend’s mouth. My supposed best friend.

“I told them about the pictures I took of the two of you. There are more, some of all three of us. Some of just me and you. Some of me and Olivia. I explained that I’d sent them to her from your phone and then erased the messages.” He scanned my face, attempting to read my expression. I was horrified, repulsed, nauseated. I thought I might throw up. He seemed to settle on annoyed, which was completely off base. “It’s no big deal, Graysin. Don’t look at me like that.”