Page 216 of Hold Me Until Morning

Maddie screamed.

Screamed and screamed.

And my goddamn heart shattered at the sound.

My sweet little Button.

The one who beamed all her adorable, innocent light.

I couldn’t let this happen to her.

And I fought harder, reaching out to get the bastard by the ankle just as he angled the gun down.

“Freeze!” Ezra’s voice banged through the room, and that point-blank shot didn’t come for me.

It was lifted and fired in Ezra’s direction.

The fiend kept shooting as he backed out.

Gunshots rang out across the room.

I prayed to God Ezra took cover because there was no chance that he could fire back. Not with the piece of shit using Maddie as a shield. He kept firing the whole way as he jumped back out the window.

And the shots…they just kept coming…just the same as the pain that burst in my body.

FORTY-NINE

BROOKE

EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD

The suitcase bounced on the steps behind her as she hurried downstairs. Tears blurred her eyes and blades of hurt gouged her heart into a mangled, mutilated mess.

It sucked so bad when you loved someone so much and they didn’t love you back. It sucked even worse when that person was in love with your best friend.

Brooke had known it the whole summer. Had known it in the way Cody had watched Hailey like she was an untouchable angel that he admired from afar.

She choked on a tiny sound when she hit the bottom landing and the thought slammed through her aching mind.

Cody wasn’t wrong. Hailey was an angel.

Brooke knew that, too.

She knew that Hailey had watched him the same way, though she had tried to pretend as if she were unaffected. She had tried to be supportive and encouraging while Brooke had thrown herself at a man who so clearly didn’t return her feelings. A man she had told lies to, assuring him that the fling they were sharing hadn’t meant a thing when she’d wanted it to mean everything.

She knew.

She knew.

But that didn’t mean it wasn’t agonizing. It didn’t mean that seeing Cody embracing Hailey the way she’d longed for him to embrace her hadn’t cut through her like a dull, cold knife.

It was that pain that drove her through the quickly darkening house and out onto the front porch where the sky was stretched in a wispy gray, the west edge only tinged in pink.

There, she stopped, trying to catch her breath.

To see through the disorder the sight of Cody and Hailey had stirred her into.

The slap of betrayal clashing with the smack of truth of what Hailey had said.

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