“Hails?” she sounded a little breathless.
“Yeah?”
“I’m outside.”
“Outside?” I went to the window and sure enough, pulled up alongside the sidewalk was her yellow Beetle. “Why are you outside my house?” My voice trembled as my subconscious slowly began to wake up, alarm bells sounding in the back of my mind.
“Just grab your stuff and come on. Oh,” she added. “And promise me you won’t look at Snapchat.”
“I don’t have Snapchat, you know that.”
“Good, that’s good,” she said, sounding distracted, as I shoved my feet into some ballet flats.
“I’ll be right down.” My heart crashed violently in my chest.
“Okay.” Flick breathed a sigh of relief. “And Hails?”
“Yeah.”
“I love you and I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.” The line went dead, and I stared down at my cell phone, my fingers shaking. Before I knew what I was doing, I’d opened up the App Store and found the Snapchat icon. Promise me you won’t look, she’d said. Letting out a frustrated groan, I shoved my cell phone in my pocket and grabbed my purse.
Whatever it was, it couldn’t be any worse than Thatcher’s last photoshop prank.
Could it?
But as I left the house and saw Flick’s grim expression, I knew I was wrong.
I just didn’t anticipate how wrong.
Cameron
Xander crawled over my legs, running his little car up and down, making all the noises to go with it. “Hang on, buddy,” I said, feeling my pocket vibrate. I managed to retrieve my cell phone without interrupting his game.
* * *
Asher: You need to see this.
* * *
It was a nondescript weblink. I hit open and my world fell away.
“Ameron?” My brother’s voice startled me.
“Hmm, sorry, buddy, I need to…” I swallowed over the huge fucking lump in my throat, moving him off my legs so I could stand. “I’ll be back, okay?”
“Kay, o,” he said. He’d learned a new word thanks to Asher, but since Xan couldn’t say his b’s or r’s very well yet, ‘bro’ became ‘o’.
I walked to the far end of the den and called Asher. “What the fuck am I looking at?” I hissed down the receiver as quietly as I could manage.
“I’m not entirely sure. Thatcher posted the link on his Snapchat story. It looked shady, so I checked it out.”
“It’s... her,” I almost choked on the words. “It’s Hailee.”
“Fuck,” Asher said. “I mean yeah, I thought... but, fuck.”
“Has Jase seen this yet?”
“I don’t know; he’s on his way over here.”