Page 42 of Promise Me Not

“Excuse me, miss. I?—”

Mason’s voice cuts off in the exact moment a cold, cosmetic hand whips across my face so hard, I can feel the imprint left behind like the heat of a branding iron pressed into my skin.

I don’t flinch nor look away, but everyone else? They flip the fuck out.

They scream and shout, and when I pull my head forward, moisture pricking my eyes from the sting, I find Nate has Deaton’s mother’s arms restrained behind her back.

Parker tugs me a few paces away, and Mason steps in front of me, blocking me from the vicious woman’s view, but the numbness, it’s completely gone now, and a wave of unease crashes through me.

I stumble, my back hitting the wall.

“Payton?” My brother’s worried voice breaks through the ringing in my ears.

He moves in front of me, but my eyes slide to the left, once again landing on the double doors at the end.

ICU.

Mrs. Vermont.

“There’s been an accident.”

“She’s okay.”

My limbs give out, and I’m falling because I justknow.

I feel it in my bones, in my heart.

His absence. His sweet soul and whispered words.

His promise.

He promised he’d be back.

“Payton!” Parker screams, falling with me. Mason is there, too, maybe someone else. “Payton, talk to me.”

My vision blurs, my eyes closing as my hand subconsciously moves to my belly. It shakes but presses against the soft, stretched skin there hidden behind a hoodie.

Did you leave me all alone?

“This isallyour fault, little girl,” Mrs. Vermont screeches. “Every time you think of my son, remember that. I told you you didn’t deserve him. This must be the world’s way of proving me right.”

My chest cracks open.

“Whoa, what the fuck, lady?” Mason glares, and his mother instantly tells him to stop. “Uh-uh. No way, Mama. This lady just?—”

“This lady just lost her son, Mason.” His mom’s whisper might as well have been spoken into a microphone. Because there it is.

The confirmation.

He’s…gone.

My organs squeeze the life out of me. I’m choking on nothing, shaking and convulsing, tearing in fucking two.

But I don’t think I’m moving.

My brother reaches down, pushing the hair from my eyes, and his touch stings like a live wire. I’m screaming, but no sound leaves me. I’m being electrocuted from the inside out. I must be.

More voices join us then, but all it sounds like is water in my ears.

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