Page 9 of Wicked Deceit
Dread sits in the pit of my stomach during the drive back to school. I know it can only go up from here with the idle conversation around me and the vow we made to keep Kaycee safe. We won’t let anyone fuck with her again. And she won’t like it because we’ll be up her ass further than we’ve ever been. She’ll get over it and hopefully appreciate it.
“So, it’s settled,” Zepp says as we pull into the school’s parking lot. He stares down, squinting at his phone, and types out a message to Carter. “She’s out of surgery,” he says, and we all let out a collective sigh of relief. “But he can’t see her for a while. Her mom is in there with her right now, and he swears he’ll give us some updates.”
A pink tint takes over the sky as the sun breaks through the darkness. Today is a new day. My baby is out of surgery. She’ll be fine, and we’ll move her ass into our damn house for her own protection. Never again will she wander campus alone or go from class to class by herself. She’ll always have us around. Whether she likes it or fucking not, it's going to happen. Even if I have to put a collar around her throat and drag her from point A to B. Then, I'll know she's fucking safe and with us.
Kaycee
"Wekilledtherabbit!We killed the rabbit!”
My heart hammers against my chest as the darkness pulls me under. My mouth falls open in a silent scream, begging for any noise to come through. Help! I want to scream for someone to save me from this eternal cloud of darkness circling me.
My body sparks to life with aches and throbs, pounding through every inch of my body. It consumes me through a revolving door of pain. The pressure pushes against my ribs, creeping up toward my aching throat. I desperately try to claw my way out of the numbing darkness, but my limbs won’t cooperate again. In the middle of the road, I'm back there, with the voices dancing around me.
“We killed the rabbit! We killed the rabbit!” That voice sings, again and again, echoing through the depths of the endless darkness. It bounces around in my brain, and I desperately want to claw it out.
My elbow snaps in half, and my throat burns when my cries of pain fly from my parted lips. I’m fucking dying, and there’s no one here to save me. Only me. I groan, rolling around on the hard road they left me on, staring into the bright rainbows dancing across the sky.
“We killed the rabbit!” The voice sings again, giggling the whole time they prance around my body in a happy dance of my demise.
Death—my heart sinks into my stomach, swallowing it whole. Am I dead? My breath picks up rapidly, squeezing through the tender ache in my nose. I try to focus on the surrounding sounds instead of the manic taunts echoing in my mind. My entire body stings until a soft murmur from above me soothes the pain instantly. I whimper when a hand lightly brushes through my hair, tucking it behind my ear.
“We’re all here for you, Kace,” my mother’s voice rings through the damn nightmare, settling my aching bones. “She’ll be okay,” she murmurs in a soft voice, talking to someone else in the distance. “Why don’t you boys get some coffee or something, okay? Don’t make me kick you out to get some rest,” she says in a clear, stern voice. “It’s been over a day of you boys watching her sleep. You need to take care of yourselves, too.”
The pain evaporates, and everything settles inside of me, snapping in place. The nightmare voice rings in my head like a constant reminder of what happened to us. But it slowly fades to the background, chased away by the familiar touch running through my hair. Safety seems to wrap itself around me like a security blanket, and then and only then does darkness take over my brain, falling into a dreamless sleep.
My brain rouses again, drifting through a deep and hazy fog. Silence clings to the static filling my ears instead of the incessant voice singing about my death. Pain rips at my eyelashes when I try to peel them open, breaking through to a bright light pouring in from somewhere. I squint, blinking as sandpaper settles on my eyeballs, and I quickly squeeze them shut.
What the hell happened to me? And why is it so hard to stay awake and open my eyes?
A metronome of beeps breaks through the static, invading my ears.Beep. Beep. Beep.Ugh. Make it stop. I peel my chapped lips apart, ready to tell Zepp to turn his alarm off. But nothing comes out except a garbled demand for him to make it stop. The alarm pierces through my ears, and I furrow my brows in agitation. And why isn’t Zepp turning it off?
I grunt, trying to lift my arms to wipe my eyes so I can open them again, but fail when they stay limp at my sides. Panic roars through me when the feeling of concrete sits heavy on top of my body. I take a panicked breath, sucking in as much air as possible, and try to move my arms again. I lift them an inch, but they fall back down, refusing to cooperate with me.
Panic fully sets in, heaving my heavy chest, and I cry out. Why can’t I move? Where the hell am I?
Vicious memories assault my brain, taking me through various distorted visuals, flashing by in rapid succession. One after the other they never stop swirling together in a mishmash of images I can’t quite make out. Again and again they run through my mind until they come in clearer and clearer, and I partially understand what the hell happened to me. It’s still fuzzy and distorted, but it’s there.
The car. The crash. A slight hint at the psychos. Their masks. The giggle. They injected something into my throbbing neck, causing my world to turn to colors. God. My arm, my aching arm. Snap.
My boys! Where are they? What happened to them? Are they safe? Breaths force through my burning nose until my lips pop open, gulping for air, and bringing it to my aching lungs. Everything inside me burns with every breath and rubber bands constrict my chest, making it harder and harder to suck in oxygen.
My eyes finally snap open again, greeting the brightly lit room. I don’t bother shutting them and blink until I can adjust. I’m too amped up with my heart speeding out of control and I need the fucking answers to my questions. My eyes dart around the small white room, taking in the small TV mounted on the wall and the drop ceiling staring back at me. As the beeping picks up, I turn my head and spy the heart rate monitor beside my bed.
My hospital bed.
My breaths pick up at a frantic pace, burning and whistling through my aching nose. I will my muscles to move, finally getting them to cooperate, except for one arm. Cringing, I try to pick it up off the bed I’m in, but it refuses to budge, weighed down by an enormous blue cast.
A lone whimper fills the room as I try to escape wherever I’m at until a shadow breaks through the light. My mom’s soft smile calms my nerves, and her fingers brush against my good arm. I swallow hard when a new pair of hands rests on my legs, looking down at me with such concern that it takes my breath away.
“Baby, shh,” she coos, getting some hair out of my face.
“Mom?” I gasp out in a deep rasp, a heat searing through my scratchy throat.
She nods, a sadness sitting in her eyes. “Yeah, Sweet Pea, you gave us a hell of a scare. Do you remember what happened? You want some water?”
My cracked lips part as the barrage of broken pictures and voices flash through my mind again, flickering like an old movie sputtering to life. The throbbing in my head increases more when I clamp my eyes shut, shaking the images away. I don’t want to think about them or listen to the demented voice repeating what they said through a manic giggle. I don’t want to think about the fact that they tried to fucking kill me—I think. I don’t know what the hell happened or what their intentions were. But I’m still here and not six feet in the dirt. So, either they fucked up and didn’t complete the mission, or they want me alive.
Cool water flows over my dry and heavy tongue and down my throat, chilling my empty stomach. I suck it down, gulp after gulp, through the straw between my lips.
