Page 69 of The Secrets We Bury

“Megan’s here,” I tell him as I push the red cup in his hand. “I need you to take this to her and keep an eye on her for the next thirty minutes.”

He arches a brow and looks down at the drink. “You think she’d take it from me?” he asks.

“I think you can be very charming when you want to be,” I remind him. “I also think she’s still a little bitter that you left her after I came into the picture.”

His eyes roll. “Ugh, we were nevertogether,” he huffs out. “She was a fuck buddy. Nothing more.”

I lift one shoulder. “I know how girls like her think,” I tell him. “Fucking you was her laying her claim.”

Gio frowns. “You don’t think she tried to fight you because of me, do you?”

“Oh, pretty boy.” I laugh and pat his cheek. “Of course she did, but I need her to drink this tonight—so you’re gonna make it up to me by distracting her while she does.”

He lowers the cup, hand curving over the top to keep it dangling from his fingers as his other hand cups my waist and draws me closer. His eyes find mine, boring deep. “What are you planning, Prep Girl?”

I smirk. “That’s for me to know and you to find out,” I tell him. Pushing against his chest, I wave as I back away. “Go on,” I say. “Text me when the game’s ready.”

26

JULIET

“You know,” I say casually as I scroll through a cell phone that isn’t mine, “in some parts of the world, a woman that commits adultery is stoned to death as punishment.”

Three hours after I set Gio on his task and I’m sitting on a wooden log in the middle of the woods, my ass numb and cold, but my soul warm and happy as I watch Megan White slowly rise back to consciousness.

She doesn’t initially respond to my comment—which is kind of rude. Considering she’s still blinking around, her eyes blurry, and smacking her lips like something dry has crawled up in her mouth and died, I let the inconsideration go. She’s still coming out of the haze from the drugs I dropped into the drink.

I give it another fifteen minutes, humming to myself as I take screenshot after screenshot of the messages I’m finding. When I get to one particularly gnarly insult against Lindsey, I release a low whistle and screenshot that one too. Bored of the silence and ready to get this show on the road, I look up as Megan starts to whimper and gasp.

“You know, I’ve never taken a nude,” I tell her. “You’d think everyone in high school has—but nope. Not even once. I don’t trust anyone.” With good reason.

“What the fuck?” Megan screams as she struggles in her unorthodox prison.

Hopping off the stump, I drift the two feet or so to where her head pokes out of the ground, the rest of her encased in a massive mound of dirt that Lex had dug up for me yesterday afternoon. Thankfully, despite the coldness of winter creeping in—the ground hadn’t been too tough for him to dig just far enough down to put the bitch that thought coming after me was a smart idea.

“I-I can’t feel my hands!” Megan shrieks. “My legs! I can’t feel my legs!”

I roll my eyes. “They’re still there,” I assure her. “A little numb, probably—what with all of the dirt and the drugs—but I didn’t cut anything off.” I pause and then grin. “Well, none of your limbs anyway.”

Turning back, I bend and lift the sable brown ponytail that I’d joyfully hacked off after burying her in the hole in the ground made specifically for her.

“Oh my god!” Megan’s voice grows louder. “You fucking psycho! What did you do?”

Pulling the tie holding her hair together, I let it rain down over her face. She sputters and coughs, jerking her neck right and left as if she can avoid the pieces.

Then, I go to my haunches, getting as close to eye level with her as I can without actually sitting on the ground. It’s not easy when she’s buried up to her throat.

“I decided to play your game,” I tell her matter-of-factly.

“W-what?” she stutters, gaping up at me—looking so ridiculous as nothing but a pale face and short choppy pieces of hair sticking out from every side of her skull. She kind ofreminds me of a wet lollipop that fell on the carpet. “I-I feel air on the back of my—is that my fucking hair?”

“Yup,” I smirk as I let the end of the syllable pop off my tongue.

“You… cut my hair off?”

I nod. “And buried you alive,” I add. “Cool revenge, right?”

Megan’s expression goes slack. “The drink…” She starts putting the truth together. “Gio gave me a beer and said he wanted to talk…”