Page 189 of Hunting Pretty

Cormac placed a hand on my backpack. “You’re not going anywhere.”

I rolled my eyes and tugged against him. Would he everget the hint? “Oh my God, Cormac. Don’t be a fucking creep. Let go.”

He let go.

My backpack thumped onto my bed.

Ugh, how did I ever find him cute?

“What do you want, Cormac?” I shifted my hair over my shoulder so it wouldn’t get caught in the straps and I turned so I could hoist up my backpack. “I’m late to meet my friend.”

I felt a pinch in my shoulder and flinched.

I turned to see Cormac pulling out a needle from my skin. He’d… he’d injected me with something.

What the fuck?

I grabbed at my shoulder, at the pinprick where he’d stabbed me with his needle. “What are you doing?”

Cormac just watched me, a smug smirk on his face.

My limbs began to turn to liquid, my vision blurring. “W-what did you…?”

My knees gave out.

Cormac’s glare was sinister as he caught me in his arms. He leaned in so close that I could smell his sour breath.

“You are coming with me.”

THE SHADOW

Even as I drove to Ava’s house to meet her, something didn’t feel right.

Like, I was missing something.

There were too many loose ends. Too many unanswered questions.

I knew it.

Ava might not realize it yet, too overwhelmed by everything that had happened in the last few hours, but she would.

Perhaps not today.

Perhaps not even next week once we were sunning ourselves on some far-flung exotic beach.

But one day, she’d wake up, the cracks in Dr. Vale’s story growing too wide, so wide that she would fall back in it.

I could only hope that I’d make her happy enough that she’d never want to return to this suffocating island.

The feeling grew even worse when I discovered the audio file that Ava had sent me on my phone.

I let it play over the Bluetooth speakers, my hands gripping the wheel so tightly that my knuckles went white, my jaw hurt from clenching.

I listened to her confronting Dr. Vale about her pills being memory suppressors.

I’d never forget what I inadvertently allowed to go on for that year Ava lived with us at my father’s estate. I didn’t deserve to. It was fitting punishment for my boyhood crimes.

But I could help Ava forget.

---