Page 208 of Hold Me Until Morning

She’d find a way.

She’d find a way.

“I promise,” she muttered at the vacancy of her door. “I promise, Brooke, I will make it up to you.”

Hailey awoke groggy, the hour early, the wispy night still clinging to the earliest hours of the day.

She immediately reached for her phone, going directly to the thread labeled Bestie Brooke.

Hailey had sent at least fifteen texts last night.

Hailey

Please, come back.

Hailey

Can we talk about this?

Hailey

I’m so sorry.

Hailey

I admit it, I’ve had a crush on him, but I never acted on it. Only because I care so much about you. I never wanted to feel the way I do, but I couldn’t stop it. Please understand.

Hailey

You mean so much to me, and hurting you destroys me.

Hailey

Please, Brooke, talk to me.

Agony curled through Hailey’s guts when she found all of them unanswered, the same as the phone calls she had made.

Weary, she dragged herself out of bed. She was still wearing the same clothes she’d had on last night, and she shoved her feet into her boots, needing to get out of her room before the walls closed in on her.

Brooke would forgive her. She had to. She just needed to give her time. She’d make her understand.

She prayed for its truth as she let herself out the front door and moved down the long trail toward the stables in the distance. The sky was still darkened, just hinting at gray, a smattering of stars still littered overhead.

Which was why she wasn’t sure how she even noticed the shape off to her left, in the covered exterior stalls where the stallions were kept during the summer.

The lump that disfigured the normally flat ground.

She slowed as she squinted, trying to make the shape out, and then she was moving in that direction.

One step.

Then two.

Then panic shocked through her nerves and sent her flying into a frenzy.

She ran for the stalls.

Toward the fence that Brooke had sworn she’d never go close to.

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