Page 6 of Madness & Mayhem

His fist flies out, plowing through the door behind me. I listen as the shards of wood splinter beside me, falling across my body and to the ground at my feet. I let out a scream, curling my head forward and folding my arms around my neck.

“You’re fucking lucky you’re one of us. You’re lucky you’reyou,” he snarls. Grabbing onto my shoulder, he pulls me away from the door. Swinging what remains of it open, I shiver as I stare at the empty lighthouse.

Though it’s not empty outside. I can hear the chaos. The screaming, the sirens, the people losing their absolute minds.

“I suggest you get out of here, baby Lake. Everyone saw you out there. There’s only so much we can do to protect you in here,” Archer says quietly, almost like it’s a threat.

I swallow, my arms and legs and chest shaking in terror. I look up at my two friends, the people who mean so much to me growing smaller by the day. “What are you guys going to do?” I whisper.

He pushes me out the door, stepping out with me.

“We’re going to try and clean up your fucking mess.” He shakes his head at me. “I could kill you right now, Lakyn, but if you’re going down, you’re going down by our hands, not the hands of the fucking police,” he growls, and my eyes widen in fear.

“Get the fuck out of here, Lakyn. Disappear for a while. It’s for your own good,” Kyler snaps, stepping out and stopping alongside Archer. They stare at me, a wall of their own, refusing to crack.

They are emotionless. They are brutal.

“Fucking go, Lakyn!” Archer snaps under his breath, and my gaze drops to my hands, covered in dried blood, bruised and swollen around my knuckles. I realize my body has gone numb, to the point I don’t know whether I’m standing or floating.

Nothing feels real.

I spin on my feet, running toward the back door of the lighthouse. Police are setting up the yellow tape. The yellow tape that seems to be following my life lately. It’s everywhere I look, and I’m unable to escape it.

Chapter Two

REIGN

Fuck.

I let out a hiss between my teeth as I pull my hand away from my stomach, feeling the stickiness against my leather glove. The leather is warm against my skin, the overwhelming flood of blood seeping down my wrist.

“Ughhh,” I groan, pressing my hand back against my stomach as I stumble through the woods. My entire stomach throbs, radiating through my arms and down my legs. Even my head pounds, and the need to fall to my knees and give up, let my body sink into the dirt or wash away in the ocean, only intensifies by the second..

I can’t, though. I can’t give up. One stab in the fucking stomach won’t break me.

Though, the betrayal on Lakyn’s face very well might.

My free hand flies out, and I wrap my fingers around the roughness of the bark of a tree, my nails digging into the sharp wood and as I pull myself forward, my feet stumble over a loose root.

“Fuck!” I roar at the top of my lungs.

I refuse to get caught. The police won’t get me. I won’t allow them to. They’ll have to drag me through the woods and the dirt, across the pile of dead bodies I’ve created.

Everything I’ve ever done is for her, and what happened tonight won’t stop me.

Even the aching in my gut of murdering my best friend. It was never supposed to happen. I never wanted him to fall from the window. I never wanted him to die. It was an accident, something that should’ve never transpired, though it did.

And I can’t take it back.

I can’t put air in his lungs. I can’t make his heart beat.

What’s done is done, and my best friend is dead.

I’ll have to live with his death. I’ll take the pain for what I’ve done.

Because it is all for her.

It started off because of her.

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