Page 169 of Waiting For A Girl Like You
Emmett’s gaze bounced from Michael to Emily, then onward, striking each of them until his gaze landed on Taylor, who swayed where shestood. Hair disheveled, her clothing clinging to her sweaty skin, she stared at him with open contempt.
“Go or stay, Emmett. I don’t care.” Taylor jerked her head back, attempting to knock her hair from her face as if appearances still mattered. “You were never worth anything to me.”
He only hesitated for a second, but finally, Emmett turned and darted into the fog, leaving them for good.
Michael gave a short nod toward the trees ahead. “This is where we part ways. The fence line is just there, running adjacent to a side road. When you reach it, take a left, and it’ll take you into town, but you’re going to have to haul ass.”
Not waiting any longer, Claudia shifted Madison to her back and helped Emily with Damon. The three siblings hustled through the mist, never looking back.
“Let’s go,” Damon’s booming voice called as their forms disappeared. “We don’t have time.”
Michael dug into his pocket and produced a folded slip of paper. He held it out for Jamison to take. “When it’s over, this is where you can findme.”
Glancing at the paper, she didn’t know if it was the hit to her head or the adrenaline roaring through her, but she had no idea what she was looking at. The scribbles appeared to be just a bunch of numbers.
“It’s where I proposed to Cecilia,” Michael told her. “Right down by the lake.”
Liam took the paper from her. “We’ll see what we can do.”
But neither of them moved.
Despite everything—the countdown, the danger—Jamison couldn’t leave without knowing what was going to happen to Taylor. And from the stillness that had come over Liam, she knew he needed to hear it, too.
Understanding, Michael lowered his gun, and Taylor took a stumbling step back, nearly falling without the use of her arms to balance her.
“Tell me about Cecilia’s final moments.”
The raw desperation in Michael’s demand saturated the air, covering the very mist surrounding them with his anguish. There was no need to hide from the pain, not here at the end, and to hear him release his torment with a few simple words brought tears to Jamison’s eyes.
“What do you want to know?Hmm?” Taylor’s face twisted in macabre delight. Mascara ran in black rivers down her cheeks, her body shaking with excitement over the idea of inflicting more pain. “Do you want to hear how, when we arrived at your place, she really thought it was over between you two? How she was so sure she would never see you again, because who would ever want her? Who could ever want boring, dullCeCe?”
“You and Toby knew otherwise.” Michael slid the small backpack he was carrying around to his front. Jamison hadn’t noticed he was wearing it until now, and she glanced at Liam, who shook his head for her to remain silent. “You two knew I would never leave her.”
“Yeah, but you were off playing soldier.” Taylor popped her bottom lip out. “And poor CeCe. All alone in the world with only her brother to love her. She was so pathetically lost without you that she listened to whatever nonsense we put in her head.”
“She was your friend.”
Taylor threw her head back and cackled up at the treetops. “She was my toy.”
Hand poised to retrieve something from inside the backpack, Michael stilled as a second alarm—this time coming from the main house—wailed louder than the first.
Taylor took a step forward to hiss directly in his face. “Why don’t I tell you about how when we were out there playing in the swamp, CeCe thought she might be able to escape? And how, when she saw me, she ran like a frightened animal, going straight for the shore and directly to Toby. They usually try to fight, but not CeCe. She was dead the moment she woke up in that swamp, and she knew it.”
Jamison gasped, and Liam tugged her arm, knocking her out of her trance. “We need to go.”
She shook her head. She had to hear this. A part of her needed to hear it. Simone would want to know. Annabeth would need the truth. Will would dissect the moment for years.
And it was up to them to listen. It was up to them to play witness to the end of the story for themselves and everyone else.
“But then she killed herself, ruining all the fun.” Defiant even now, Taylor held Michael’s icy stare. “Toby had been so easy to work up that night that I almost got bored with the whole thing.”
Michael tucked his gun in the waist of his pants and extracted a roll of duct tape from the backpack. He ripped a piece off with his teeth, his stare never wavering. “Keep talking, Taylor.”
Eyes wild and entire body trembling, Taylor braved another step forward. “Oh, I know what you want to hear. You want to know how CeCe never once believed you would come to save her? How she ate that manchineel fruit because her Michael was always the hero for others, butneverfor her?”
“We need to go, baby,” Liam whispered in Jamison’s ear. “Time is running out.”
Jamison almost shook her head again, but quickly changed her mind when Michael’s hand shot out to seize Taylor by the throat.
