Series: Webs We Weave Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 167
Estimated words: 162520 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 813(@200wpm)___ 650(@250wpm)___ 542(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 162520 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 813(@200wpm)___ 650(@250wpm)___ 542(@300wpm)
My phone rings in my palm, and I quickly answer the call from Nova. “Hey?”
“Where are you?” The rawness of my brother’s dire concern takes me aback. I figured he’d be pissed I’m here, but not this level of worried.
“I’m at the Konings’ beach. Hailey and I were helping Sidney—”
“You’re with Sidney?” Alarm scratches to the surface of his rough voice.
“Not anymore. She just left. It’s just Hails and me.” I feel so off. Physically off. I struggle to keep my arm hoisted and the phone pinned to my ear. Panic tries to reach me. “What’s going on?”
“You tell me. Rocky just called saying you got roofied.”
“I got…what?” I recognize this sensation that heavies my body now. He put a name to it. “Hailey?” I drop the phone on the ground. It slips out of my hand. What the fuck is happening? I know what’s happening. I know what this is. “I need to sit down.”
She grabs my phone from the sand and follows my hurried pace to the teak lounge chairs sunk in the sand. As soon as my ass hits the cushion, my body sags.
“Phoebe?” Hailey catches my arms, keeping me upright, but I’m falling backward onto the lounge chair. No, no, no, no.
Nova’s voice is muffled in the phone. I try to hang on to Hailey, but my arms droop. “I can’t feel…I can’t control…”
Her eyes are saucers. “Lie down. Lie down.” She helps me lie on the chair like I’m sunbathing. Like this is a voluntary act. A voluntary position.
I don’t want this. I did not ask for this.
I stretch out my legs, but they barely move with my effort. “We bumped into people on our way here, didn’t we?” My voice pitches.
“We squeezed through the crowd.”
“Enough that someone could’ve slipped something in my drink?”
Her horror is mine. I struggle to breathe as the terror starts suffocating me. Rocky. The urge to cry out for him consumes me, but his name is stuck in my swollen throat. Where’s Rocky?
“You’ll be okay,” Hailey assures. “You’re just going to take a nap. I’m staying right here. I’m not going anywhere.”
A nap.
My nose flares and chin quivers as I fight blistering, enraged tears. “I can’t believe this is happening again.” Was the whole whiskey bottle spiked with GHB? Are other people passing out right now, too? “You feel okay?” I ask her.
“I’m fine.” Her eyes keep widening as she stares into the pitch-blackness of the grassy dune cliff.
“Hailey?” I try to sit up. I can’t. I can’t do anything but lie here.
My brain drifts too far away. She’s so fuzzy. I try to squeeze her hand. I barely sense her squeezing mine, but she’s here.
She’s here.
As tunnel vision drives me into complete darkness, I form one last unsteady, desperate plea.
“Rocky.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Hailey
I can do this. I can do this. I can protect my best friend.
Just like you did in Carlsbad.
I clamp my eyes closed, trying to erase the worst night of my life, then I open them with a deeper inhale and determination. I can do this because the inverse is being witness to something more horrifying.
I won’t let anyone hurt her.
“I’m right here,” I whisper to Phoebe, gently placing her limp arms on her abdomen but with more urgency than she can see or feel.
She’s passed out, but she looks less lifeless as I carefully adjust her, combing soft blue strands of hair out of her face. A face that I’ve seen elicit catcalls and wolf whistles, a face that’s had poised men tripping in shined leather oxfords, a face that stuns, that incites desire and greed.
My silent tears fall and wet her cheeks.
“Shit,” I curse and thumb away the droplets.
I’ve never once envied the beauty of my best friend. All the attention she drew as we grew older, I sighed in relief when she’d taken it off me.
She never really basked in the gawking. She never liked it. She just loved being able to shift a spotlight off me, knowing I hated the burn.
Phoebe has always protected me, and at each opportunity, I come up short at protecting her.
Tonight has to be better. I brush off sand from her phone, and I see Nova is still on the line. Quickly, I put it to my ear. “We’re at the beach,” I say in case he didn’t hear Phoebe before. “She’s unconscious.”
“Fuck!” His curse booms so loud I have to draw the phone away from my ear.
In a quiet, shaky breath, I say, “I can’t lift her. I can’t carry her. I’m not strong enough.”
“We’re coming to you.” Nova’s voice is like jet fuel, able to explode everything around him. “Just stay there.”
I don’t have a choice.
I don’t know what’s worse—having no choice at all or having too many terrible ones to pick from.
My head whips side to side as I canvass our isolated surroundings. Dune grass dances in the salty nighttime breeze, and relaxed waves roll over the darkened, coarse sand. Pretty, I’d considered just moments ago.