Page 81 of The Worst Kind of Promise
The roughness of Hayes’ growl chafes my ears, and he digs his phone out of his pocket, the screen illuminating his face. I’ve never seen him so distressed before. Not before a game, not before a big conference,never.
“Her phone’s still here,” he chokes out, and something changes in his irises. That initial outrage, the shock, the confusion—they’ve all amalgamated and shapeshifted into pure fear.
He doesn’t look at any of us but instead stares at the opaque darkness rolling over our doorstep like a foreboding omen. “We need to find her.”
Guilt spumes inside me, threatens to revolt from my stomach. “It’s my fault.”
“I don’t care whose fucking fault it is. We need to find her,” he repeats, his face strained with bulging veins, spit flying from his lower lip.
Gage grabs his keys from off the coffee table. “Should we call the police?”
“You can call them once you’re in your car.” Hayes tosses the rest of the guys their keys, and a scurry of sneaker soles, jacket zippers, and jangling bits of metal follows his instruction. The worst kinds of thoughts pistol through my brain—her encountering a horde of bad people without me there to protect her, her running miles away and never being found again. Maybe she darts into the street and an oncoming car doesn’t see her.
I shouldn’t have raised my voice. I shouldn’t have fought with her. I shouldn’t have gone to visit Saxon.
For as loud and urgent as Hayes’ voice is, the tremor doesn’t go unnoticed. “Everyone split up. We don’t rest until she comes home, got it? We call each other if we hear or see anything.”
“I didn’t hear a car engine,” I pipe up, the tacky saliva in my mouth seeming to proliferate.
Bristol’s eyebrows stitch together. “What?”
“She didn’t get in a car. Wherever she is, she’s on foot.”
Hayes begins to usher everyone out of the house, leaving me and him the last of the group to exit. And it’s then, in this moment, that I realize we’re both panicking over the loss of the most important person in our life.
“Then she’ll be easier to find,” Hayes concludes.
* * *
I don’t knowhow long I’m driving around for. Maybe an hour and a half. It’s silent in the Jeep, void of Faye’s teasing quips—void of her effervescent personality. There’s nothing but unending darkness in front of me, around me, behind me. Even the stars have long fallen from the sky, blanketing our town in funeral-like desolation.
I’ve circled the perimeter of town twice, even followed the less-traveled routes hidden by far-reaching willows, and there’s been no sign of her. I checked the parking lots thoroughly, traversed over rocky, uneven terrain with only my phone flashlight to guide me, spent an hour wanting to tear my hair out and cry and run into my mother’s arms like a little boy. I need to find her. Iwillfind her. Not finding her isn’t an option.
I can’t imagine what will happen if we don’t find her.
I don’t want to. I don’t. I don’t. I don’t.
I’m right back at the intersection before the turn into our ice rink. No other car is on my strip of road. The red glow of the stoplight spills over the front of my vehicle, lighting my interior through the reflective surface of the windshield, and the only noise to bring me any sort of comfort is the steady purr of my engine. My fingers wrap tightly around the steering wheel, compounding the pain under my bandaged knuckles. The bleeding must have stopped, but it’s stained a good portion of the gauze.
I need to change it soon if I want to prevent infection. I need to eat. I need to sleep. But I know I won’t be able to do any of that until Faye is safely back in my arms.
If she’s on foot, there’s only so much distance she could’ve traveled. And she doesn’t know Riverside. No shops are open. The only place she knows is…
My bloodshot eyes behold the behemoth arena sitting right beside me, and even though the light is still red, I immediately turn from the middle lane into the parking lot.
I’m not the fastest guy on the team. A lot of my padding slows me down. But I don’t even feel the burn in my thighs or the air rushing out of my lungs when I sprint toward the building.
Please be here.Please.
I jostle the handles on one side of the entrance. Nothing. The small morsel of hope I’ve clung to like my life’s depended on it is slowly slipping through my fingers, kinetic sand that can never hold its shape.
No, no, no. This is my only lead. If she’s not here, I have nothing.
My hand skims the handle on the opposite side, and without even putting any pressure on it, the door creaks open. A sliver. No projection of inside light. But a sliver. And that’s all I need.
Muscle memory carries me through the building that I’ve grown to know as a second home, desperation and fear peddling my legs, the chill from the rink sinking into my skin. I can see my breath swirl out in front of me, and I’m not wearing enough clothes to combat against the perpetually low temperature, but none of that matters.
Because right as I see that tempered glass, my eyes hook onto the small figure sitting on the curb of one of the side openings. I’ve never felt my heart burst with such relief before—it’s almost too much for me to handle. But looking at Faye, unharmed and in one piece, blasts me with a warmth like a varicolored sunrise in the dead of winter, persimmon and purple shades bleeding into one another around an epicenter of gilded sun.
