Page 8 of Under the Lies

“I don’t believe you.”

“Well that’s too bad,” I shoot back. I glance down at my phone, I have less than five minutes to get to class. Time to end this conversation. “Have a good day now.”

I spin on my heels and am about to walk away when he calls out, “She’s missing, Sayer. She ran away.”

I stop, mid-step. Missing? Turning around I meet his eyes, they smolder in anger. “What do you mean?”

“She ran away. After she paid you a visit,” he speaks slowly, condescendingly.

“I got that. Thank you.” I bristle, eyes narrow. “And what? You think I helped her?”

“The day Harlow goes to you for help is the day hell freezes over. No, I don’t think you helped her. But that doesn’t mean you don’t know something. Think hard, Sayer. What happened when she stopped by your place?”

I’ve been thinking about it all day! I want to shout. I swallow them instead. “You can keep asking, Noah, it’s not going to change my answer.”

The frustration grows on his face, tension lining his eyes.

A small, satisfied smile tugs at the corner of my mouth.

“Sayer,” he growls in a deep timbre. “You’re not the only nuisance I have to see today.”

My fist clench. The way he says it…putting the blame on me. Like any of this is my fault. Yeah, I don’t think so. Despite the chilly January air, I feel warm all over. Heated with anger.

“Oh, I’m sorry, did I make you come here?” I snap, earning a few curious glances from students passing by. They quickly divert their gaze when they see Noah. We both ignore them. “Did I hunt you down to waste time going in circles when not liking the answer you’ve already been given? No! That was all” —I poke his chest— “you.”

Not amused with my smart mouth, Noah takes a step toward me with a deep frown, seizing my wrist. He’s quiet, the only sound between us is my deep, irritated breathing, but his jaw clenches.

“Have you had enough, yet?” I ask, quietly. “Enough of wasting both our times?”

He’s so close that his scent is invading my senses. The richest amber, the deepest mahogany with hints of tobacco.

A pressure presses down on my chest. I want to lean in, knowing I should push away.

“No,” he answers, matching my tone as he stretches out a hand to grab the end of my scarf. He tugs on it, pulling me close. “Not until I know where your sister went.” Said like a man on revenge.

A chill unrelated to the weather slides down my spine.

What did my sister do?

When she was at my apartment she kept glancing out the windows, shifting the bag from her lap to the floor back to her lap. Unable to stop fidgeting. Restless.

I didn’t think anything of it, chalking it up to Harlow being her normal self, but what if it wasn’t?

Looking at Noah, I’m afraid to ask. This close, I can feel how tight his body is wound. Whatever Harlow did it’s not anything I want to get mixed up in. Not anything I want to have a kernel of knowledge of.

Knowledge is power, my granddad always said, and with knowledge came burdens.

I have enough of my own burdens, I don’t need to bear any of my sister’s. Not anymore. “I wasn’t lying when I told you I don’t know where she is.”

“But you know something.”

It wasn’t a question.

I don’t have a chance to deny it, either. With my silence, Noah pounces, pulling me so there’s no space between us. My palms flat on his pecs. “Play this game all you want, Baby Brooks, but we’re going to find her, and if I find out you’re doing anything to help her I’m coming for you, too.”

My skin blazes with the feel of his lips brushing against my cheek, to my ear. “And when I do,” he whispers in a low, gruff voice. “I’m going to make you pay.”

I don’t move. I don’t blink. I don’t even breathe. I can’t, not when my lungs are seized in a tight, painful grip.

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