Page 51 of Ramsey & Emerson

I could feel ice forming in the marrow of my bones, and fear started creeping down my spine.“Whatwas all a lie?”

“Ramsey, please-”

“What was all a fucking lie, Bailey?!”I roared in her face.

She was openly sobbing now, but she was able to speak, and her confession almost brought me to my knees. “Emerson’s phone, all of it,” she began. “I found Emerson’s phone on the floor near the kitchen bar when it wouldn’t stop ringing. She didn’t have it locked, and I saw all the missed calls and texts from you, and I…I…” Deke applied more pressure. “Ow, okay, okay,” she sobbed. “I called a friend of mine…th…the dealer I use for parties and told him that I’d pay him a thousand dollars if he would help me play a prank. I…he…I told him what to text, and I texted back to make it look like a legit exchange.” Her body was wracking with sobs so hard that she started hiccupping. “When…when you stormed out, I…I called him really quick and told him to answer and pretend he was waiting for Emerson.”

I could only stare at Bailey as Liam started destroying the bench behind me with violent, brutal, forceful kicks and punches to the wood.

It was all a lie.

The text messages, the guy, Emerson’s cheating…it was all a lie.

A. Fucking. Lie

I could feel myself shaking, and my knees were threatening to give out on me. Bailey had set Emerson up, and I had helped Bailey humiliate and brutalize her. NowIwas the one in danger of throwing up.

“Why?” Even though I had a good idea what the answer was, I still asked.

Bailey’s eyes went from dismal to defiant. “She’s a nobody!” she screamed. “She’s a filthy nobody from a trailer park! Did you really think that I would let her waltz into Windsor and take the only guy that I have everwanted?! She doesn’t deserve you! She’s trash, and she belongs with trash!” Bailey’s hate for Emerson was palpable. “You belong with me, Ramsey! Me! How could you fallin lovewith her?!How could you want her?!”

“I heard this bitch telling Christa and Evelyn how she set Emerson up and was going to get you one way or another,” Deke spat as he finally released her, and I honest-to-God didn’t know what to do with her.

Oh, I knew what Iwantedto do to her, but I wasn’t so egotistical that I believed that I could kill her at school and get away with it. Besides, even though Bailey had lied and set Emerson up, what had happened on Wednesday had been all me.

I could have waited until I’d spoken to Emerson before losing my shit. I could have found her and insisted on an explanation. I could have listened when she’d told me about her childhood and absorbed the kind of person that she was, instead of focusing on being between her thighs. I could have trusted her. Instead, I believed Bailey over an explanation that Emerson never got to give.

“You’re going to regret ever crossing me, Bailey,” I told her, my voice ice. “By the time I’m done with you, you’ll be taking a razor to your wrists just to end your misery.”

I turned away from her, then started walking across the schoolyard. Ten steps in, I started running. I ran through the school, towards the parking lot. I jumped in my car, then broke every speed limit posted on my way from the school to Emerson’s house.

Once I got there, I didn’t bother with niceties. I broke the door down, splintering the frame and making the lock worthless. Not caring about the damage, I raced up the stairs to Emerson’s room, yelling for her. “Emerson!”

However, when I got to her room, my heart stopped at the scene before me. The room was void of a lot of her personal stuff that had decorated the room when I’d been here last weekend. Panic started to set in, then I ripped the place apart, looking for any signs that this was still her room. When I couldn’t find anything, I went through the entire house but found nothing.

Emerson was gone.

I raced back to my car, then drove over to Roselyn’s. Emerson wasn’t friends with anyone else in town, so she could only be with Roselyn, and Roselyn hadn’t been in school today.

I barely hit the brakes before I was out of the car and running up the sidewalk to the Greene’s front door. The door was in danger of meeting the same fate as the one at Emerson’s when the door was finally wrenched open by a very pissed off, sick-looking Roselyn.

“What the fuck do you want?” she snarled, though sounding a bit sick also.

“I’m here for Emerson,” I said, getting straight to the point.

Roselyn let out a cackle so evil that it sent chills down my spine. “You’re a bigger egomaniac than I ever thought possible if you think that I’d ever tell you where Emerson is after what you did to her, Ramsey.”

I knew that Roselyn’s loyalty for Emerson ran deep, and I didn’t have a chance if I wasn’t completely honest with her. “I fucked up, Roselyn, okay? Is that what you want to hear?”

She kept up her disdain for me. “Saying you fucked up implies that there’s a way to fix it, Ramsey, and there isn’t,” she retorted coldly.

I’d never had a problem with Roselyn before. Even when she’d started sleeping with Deke and Liam, I’d found her to be different, and I’d been curious about her, but I hadn’t been curious enough to get to know her beyond a head nod here and there. Deke and Liam trusted her, and as unconventional as their relationship was, they seemed to like her well enough, and that’d been good enough for me.

However, right now, I was close to strangling her with my bare hands. “Look, Roselyn, you’ve managed to remain in my good graces because of your relationship with Liam and Deke, but don’t think for one second that I won’t squash you if you don’t tell me where the fuck Emerson is!” I was yelling in her face by the time I was done.

Roselyn planted her hands on her hips, but she relented. She knew that I was serious, and I suspected that she might be a little worried about how the fallout from her defiance would affect her sleeping arrangements with Deke and Liam. “She’s not here, Ramsey.”

“Then where in the fuck is she?”

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