Page 109 of The Pact

“What the fuck has Ausra got to do with it? It’s bad enough that you’ve been messing around with one of the fucking preacher’s daughters but leave my girl out of it, please.”

Holden shoves his way into the room. “Kels, just shut the fuck up, will you? As I said, as soon as Ausra gets in touch with her sister, I’m gonna be out of your hair. Ausra, can you check if McKayla texted you back, please? She and I have a lot to discuss about our daughter.”

I open my mouth again but something in Kelley’s expression stops me in my tracks. Cold dread begins spreading in my chest.

“Sister?” he asks, shaking his head as if trying to get some clarity. “What the fuck are you talking about? How is Aus—” he stops talking. His eyes darken with confusion and suspicion. The way he’s looking at me is intrusive, as if he were searching for something until he finds it.

He takes a step back. Stumbling against the desk in the front area of his room. He knows and he doesn’t like it.

“Ausra.” His voice is low and angry, still full of disbelief. “Tell me that Holden is drunk or stoned out of his own ass. Tell me that he didn’t say what I think he just said. That you’re related to the preacher’s daughters. They both went to my school. The slut and the freak.” He raises his voice as his eyes still rove all over my face and body as if he were trying to convince himself that what he’s thinking is impossible.

I don’t have a way out and I want to be sick. The way he’s looking at me is ... I’m devastated and furious at the same time.

“I’d be the one you just called ‘the freak,’ Kelley. And I’ve been trying to tell you all night.”

He scoffs. Disbelief is still etched on his face and coloring his voice. “Oh, right. The only thing I heard from you tonight was begging for my dick, for me to fuck you harder. I still can’t believe—”

He stalks toward me, grabbing the curtain of my blonde hair and lifting it on top of my head. That’s when he finally accepts it. “You are her! Fuck!” He’s now straight out yelling. “You look completely different with your hair down and the makeup. With no glasses and normal clothes.”

There’s hurt mixed with the surprise in his voice. “What the fuck is this? Has your father put you up to this? He couldn’t destroy our team when we were at school after trying for four years! Did he send you to fuck us over?”

I try to keep the tears that are burning my throat from falling. I can’t cry now. Not before I’ve explained. “I have nothing to do with my father. I haven’t for months. He wasn’t only forcing me to look like a freak and controlling everything in my life, he was keeping me from my sister and my niece. This is why I left. I’m not that person you saw at school. I never was. That was the result of my parents’ abuse. That was the incarnation of my fear that if I didn’t bend to their will, they’d lock me in a basement or make me disappear. I guess they did make me disappear somehow. I was invisible or the laughing stock of the whole school. But that wasn’t me.”

The look in his eyes tells me that he doesn’t believe me. “If that’s the truth, if you aren’t trying to get our team dismantled, why didn’t you tell us that we knew each other at the beginning?”

I clench my fists, digging my nails into my palms so hard that I’m pretty sure I drew blood. “I’ve been trying to tell you—”

“All night? Yeah, you already said that. Ausra, you’ve been hanging out with us for weeks. Why the fuck didn’t you tell me that we knew each other?”

I snap, raising my voice too. “Because we didn’t know each other! You never even talked to me at school. The only interaction we’ve ever had was you laughing at me and saying hurtful things. I liked the way you guys were with me when we met again. I didn’t tell you immediately, because I didn’t want it to end. I wanted you to get to know me before you knew. I was afraid that otherwise, you’d have wanted nothing to do with me.”

He sneers. “And you’d have been damn right! I would’ve stayed the fuck away from you!”

I laugh, sarcastically. “Good to know. But hey, good news. I do have a pussy, it isn’t sewn shut and your dick didn’t fall off after all! I’d call that a victory!”

His head jerks backward as if I’d hit him. “You heard that?”

I nod. “I might’ve looked like a freak but you certainly sounded like a dick. You weren’t trying to be subtle.”

Holden, who’s been watching our exchange like you watch a tennis match, interrupts our spat. “Ausra, you guys can talk later. Please, I need to talk to Mc. I need your help.”

Kelley shakes his head. “I wouldn’t trust this chick with anything. For all we know, that’s some kind of scheme they’re in on with their father to destroy us.”

I shut him up, walking to the discarded pile of my clothes to retrieve my phone. “You’re fucking paranoid, Kelley! Mc and I have nothing to do with whatever beef our father has with Holden or your team. We both walked out on him and all we want is to live our lives away from him or his church.”

I unlock my screen and show it to Holden. “No, nothing. Now I’m worried too. Let me call her.”

I put my phone to my ear but the phone rings without even going to voice mail. “Maybe she’s out of range or something,” I offer.

“Get dressed,” Holden commands. “Maybe Skye is sick again and she’s alone at the hospital or something. She told me the day before yesterday that she kept having those fevers. Let’s go to your apartment. Call all the hospitals in the area and see if they admitted either of them while I drive.”

I don’t have the chance to react, that there’s another knock at the door. “Kels, Ausra. What’s wrong?”

Bode’s voice is full of worry. Ashton is with him. “We were going back to our rooms when we heard yelling. What the fuck is going on?” he asks as Holden opens the door.

Both men look at me and I swallow repeatedly because the concern in their eyes makes it harder not to cry.

Holden explains. “I came to ask for Ausra’s help. Her sister isn’t answering her phone since last night. I got the paternity test results. I’m Skye’s father. I—”

---