Page 122 of Sacrifice
“Hello?” he asks, sounding distracted.
“Hey, Will. It’s Julia.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I need to talk to you.” I pace the floor from the door to the window, trying to burn off some of the energy I can’t seem to rid myself of.
“Is Ever okay?”
“Yes. Ever’s fine.”
“Okay. What’s up?”
“Will . . . Hunter Davidson just left here.”
“What? He just left where?”
“The hospital. He showed up here with another guy. Jason Someone.”
“What the fuck?”
“I don’t know. They walked in here and gave me a check. It was all so weird.”
He pauses, the line rife with tension. “Did he do anything else? Say anything else?”
I stop pacing. I look out the window and a part of me wishes I could just jump out of it. It would end the drama, the pain, the confusion.
“Yeah, he did. And I don’t know what to say to Crew.”
“What did he say?”
I laugh, my voice crackling with nervous energy. “It wasn’t as much what he said, Will . . .”
“Did he touch you, Jules? Did he do something to Ever?”
“Ever’s fine. She wasn’t in here most of the time . . .”
“Look, I’m going to need you to be really honest with me here. You’re gonna have to tell me what happened so I can help you.”
“I don’t want Crew to do something stupid,” I whisper, my hands starting to shake.
Will exhales, the sound of his breath rippling through the phone. “If Davidson touched you, Crew will go to prison. Fact as fuck.”
I sit on the sofa and bury my head in my free hand. I know Will is right. I can’t blame Crew for wanting to go after him. But I can’t let that happen. Not now.
“He pushed me against a wall, Will,” I blurt out. “He grabbed me . . . you know . . .”
“Imma fucking kill him myself, the stupid motherfucker!”
“Will, stop! Listen to you,” I cry. “I can’t tell Crew this ifyouare acting this way. I don’t want to lie to him, but what do I do?”
He mutters a string of profanities under his breath, the sound of something slamming against something else bursts through the background. Finally, he says, “We can’t tell him. Wecan’t.He’ll lose his head and probably shoot the cocksucker.”
“So I lie?”
“No,” he says. “You omit. You can tell him later, after the fight. But if you tell him now, his focus will be gone. Fighting is as much mental as it is physical and if he knows this, he’ll lose the fight evenifhe manages not to go to prison.”
“But—”
