Page 140 of Hunting Pretty

Maybe there was a good reason why Ty kept secrets. Maybe there was a reason he never told me his name.

I’d never been this close to the truth of who he was. And it terrified me, what I might find.

“You know,” Lisa said softly, “you don’t have to go through with it.”

I shook my head. “Ineedto know.”

I hit Search, the click of the mouse sounding like a gunshot in the deathly silent office, and braced myself for whatever was about to surface.

As the search bar spun, my stomach twisted into knots. Anxiety prickled up my spine, making my fingers tense on the keyboard.

It wasn’t too late to stop this. I could close the window, shut my laptop, and walk away from whatever dark truths were about to surface.

What if what I find changes how I feel about him?

The thought gripped me with icy fingers. I’d already begun to see something in Scáth—something deeper, something real. But this… this could shatter it.

What if there was a reason he kept his secrets? A reason I wouldn’t be able to forgive? Did I really want to know?

I glanced at the screen, my breath catching as the first few results blinked to life. One link. Then another. Then a dozen more, all lined up like a wall between me and the truth.

My chest tightened as I stared at the rows of newspaper article links. There was no going back now.

Lisa pushed her fingers through mine and gripped my hand as I leaned in toward the screen, silent and breathless.

I fought to keep my hands steady as I clicked on the first article. My heart pounded in my ears, drowning out everything else.

The headline hit me like a punch to the gut.

Seventeen-Year-Old Murderer Sentenced

My eyes raced over the lines, jumping erratically from sentence to sentence, barely able to focus. The wordsblurred together, fragments of horror settling in as I tried to make sense of it. Murderer. Sentenced. Seventeen. Jail.

The full weight of it pressed down on me, suffocating.

My chest tightened as the truth clicked inside me, like a lock turning into place.

A wave of memories and emotions crashed over me, slamming into me all at once.

The red and blue lights lit up the entire front of the mansion. They spread across the wide green lawn, reached all the way to the tops of the birch trees. I was drowning in them as I stood barefooted on the gravel drive, arms wrapped tight around my shaking body.

The rain cut straight through my nightgown. But I didn’t think the cold was the reason I couldn’t feel my fingertips. Why I couldn’t move them.

I sawhimin handcuffs, fighting against the officers who were trying to drag him toward the police car.

He was shouting at me, eyes wild like a trapped animal, but all I could hear was the roar of blood rushing in my ears.

The crack of the officer’s knuckles against his cheekbone brought sound crashing back in.

I heard officers shouting and rain splattering. For a moment his head hung heavy between his shoulders, most of his weight supported by the men dragging him backward.

But as they opened the door to the police car to shove him in, he lifted his head and found me with his gaze.

His eye was already swollen from the knuckles of the police officer’s brutal fist. But the pain etched across his face was deeper than the darkest bruise.

He screamed, “I love you more!”

I heard myself screaming. “Ty!”

---