Sacrificing Sloan (Sloan Series Book 3) (11 page)

“Yeah. They always talk about ice being rough. This is torture.”

“Not like we can have a simple walk in the park.” I sighed, as I grabbed a tree for support. “It won’t be easy getting back.”

“We’ve gotta get down there first. We can worry about getting back later. If you are up to it, we need to move.”

I nodded, though I wasn’t really up for it. My legs ached. My arms were weak like gelatin, and all I wanted to do was sit and rest. I didn’t think we’d been out there too long, but it felt like an eternity.

It occurred to me that we might be chasing a ghost. That we could get to this cabin, and Aaron or Ray or Mr. Lawrence might not be there. Yeah, this was a long shot, but even if they weren’t there, we could still go look for them.

Ray took the opportunity to go ahead of me, and for a brief second, I took the time to let my guard down and fall apart. Not completely. Not totally. But I relaxed my shoulders and let a little sob escape. Just enough to get some of the tension out. There was plenty more where that came from.

I followed Ray again, careful to make sure each step was planted firmly before I tried the other.

This would take forever.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Aaron

Time: Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star

I
DON’T THINK
I
’D EVER BEEN
lonelier, and that was saying a lot, for me. I was used to being a loner. It was sort of my thing, but it was different then. I had Ray. No, we weren’t always in the same room, but we were normally, at least, in the same house. I knew where he was. I was responsible for him.

But out there… with only Boyd’s breathing to keep me company, I hated the quiet.

My hair had dried just a bit, so I knew we’d been under that rock for longer than it felt, and it felt like a very long time.

The time seemed to just stand still. With no clock, no watch, no cell phone, I couldn’t even tell when night would be over.

Was it smart to even look forward to the dawn?

Would there even be a true dawn, or would this incredibly miserable rain just keep coming? I hated it. I hated everything.

I sat up when I heard it. It was a strange sound, a haunting sound, and truth be told, it didn’t sound that far away. At first, I thought it was my imagination, but then it happened again, and I knew it wasn’t.

It was a sound like nothing I’d ever heard before. A low, ghostly moan, only I could tell it wasn’t a ghost— not that I believed in ghosts. I didn’t, but out there, on that night, I came close to it.

I laid back against the rock and closed my eyes to try to shut out the sound. It was probably either a howling animal or one that was hurt. Both cases wouldn’t be good for me.

The howling came more frequently, and I was honestly surprised it didn’t wake Boyd up. It would have woken me up. I covered my ears and settled down a little morebecause the sound was a thousand times worse, out there in the dark, than I could have ever imagined. The rain, I could handle. It sounded like rain. The wind, yeah, it was fine. But that howling. It was eerie.

And I wanted it to stop.

I jumped when the howling changed into screaming. A deep, pitiful scream that sounded like it was right outside my little rock cave.

Boyd shifted, but didn’t wake up. He could sleep through anything apparently.

The horrible sound of the screams sent chills down my spine, and I shut my eyes again, not wanting to see it.

Then again, I wouldn’t get to see it anyway. It was too dark.

“Help!” I swore it screamed, and that’s when I knew I’d lost it.

I hit Boyd’s shoulder hard enough to wake him up. He never budged, so I had to do it about three more times before his head shot up, and he punched me in the arm. I think he was aiming for my face. He also cussed me out.

“Listen.” I said, in the middle of his tirade.

To my complete and utter astonishment, he actually did as I said. It was a banner day. “What is that?” he whispered.

“I thought your super hearing would know.” It probably wasn’t the time for jabs, but I couldn’t help it.

“I wish.” He said, instead of any sort of insult he could toss my way. Out here, Boyd was like an actual person, not a psychopath, which surprised me. I’d imagined a person would be more primal out in the elements. Revert to his true nature.

I knew for a fact Boyd’s true nature wasn’t “nice guy.” Maybe he’d hit his head too hard on a rock coming down the creek.

We listened for a few more minutes. I heard nothing but rain and wind. At least they weren’t eerie.

“Must have been an animal of some kind.” Boyd laid his head back against the rock and closed his eyes. He had to be exhausted. I knew I was.

“Must have been.”

“You scared?” I had a feeling he was mocking me.

“No… you?” I scoffed it out because there was no way I’d tell Boyd the truth. I was terrified. Completely and utterly terrified. I wanted to go home, and part of me didn’t think I’d ever see home again.

I tried not to think about it because it made me hate Boyd all the more. And I couldn’t hate him. Not now because what good would it do me? I needed his help. I’d have to tolerate him. Didn’t mean I had to tell him every single thing that went through my mind.

After a few seconds, Boyd answered. “I’m terrified.”

My breath caught in my chest because I had never thought he’d say it. To beat it all, I never thought he’d actually feel it. I never saw Boyd as the feeling kind. I never saw him as someone who had any sort of anything inside him: no compassion, no love, no heart. And here was, admitting to being terrified to someone he had tried to kill twice.

I had to be dreaming.

“I guess you didn’t expect me to come out and say it.” Boyd chuckled.

Yep. Total dream. It had to be.

“Can’t say I did. I didn’t think you’d admit to ever being scared.”

I felt him shrug. “What good would denying it do?”

He had a point, but still… “It would make me think of you less like a wimp.”

“If wimp was the worst you thought of me as, it would be a good day.”

I had to laugh at that because he was right. If “wimp” was all Boyd Lawrence ever was, well, I would have preferred it.

Then Boyd did something I never in my life thought he’d do… he opened up. “I’m terrified of not getting out of here, okay? Tomorrow or bust, right? We have to reach the main road tomorrow because I don’t think I can handle another night out here. But I’m also terrified of getting back. Going home. Seeing my dad. Going to jail.”

“Maybe you should have thought of that before you attacked us all.” Not the most sympathetic answer ever, but to be fair, I didn’t feel like being fair. I was tired and stuck and quite frankly very, very scared. Nice was hard for me under normal circumstances. This was torture.

“I know that.” He said so quietly I didn’t think I heard him correctly.

“You know that? You know this is all your fault? What about what you said in the cabin to your father about it being anybody but your fault?”

Boyd got very quiet. I didn’t know if he was going to go to sleep or punch me. With Boyd, you never knew what sort of reaction you’d get. I mean, he was the guy who nearly raped his ex-girlfriend because she found God. He wasn’t exactly the most stable of people.

“I know what I said in the cabin.” His voice was a little stronger now, but not defiant. It was like he was getting something deep and dark off of his chest—and tell it to me. Probably the worst person ever to listen to someone’s problems. Especially someone I hated. “I blamed everybody for everything. I blamed Sloan for leaving me, when it was me who broke up with her. I couldn’t deal with her church crap….”

“Why?” I had to know because, honestly, I hadn’t really thought about it before. I knew he’d gone off, but I had just assumed it was because he was a crazy dude. I never wondered if there was a reason. It was my chance… I wanted to know, but I didn’t. Who wanted to understand a monster? Because, if you understood the monster, maybe, perhaps, he wouldn’t be as much of a monster anymore. Maybe he would just be an incredibly flawed human—which, face it, we all are—and I couldn’t hate him as much. No, I’d probably still hate him, but I’d at least understand…

That was a scary thought.

“Why? Why did I break up with the best thing that had ever happened to me for that ditzy Darcy?” He paused like he had to think of the answer himself. “I guess… Look, I hadn’t been to church in a very long time, but I remember when I went, there was this old dude. All he did was preach fire and brimstone, and we were all going to Hell if we weren’t perfect, and I guess… I guess that I figured if it didn’t matter how good I was. if I screwed up once, I’d go to Hell anyway, so why bother? Know what I mean?”

Sadly, I did. I could understand that part of it. “But why attack Sloan?”

I heard him sigh. “Because I was hurt. And I was angry that she’d chosen church over me.”

“But she didn’t choose. You chose for her.”

“I know. I know that now. Back then… I was just hurt, and Sloan wasn’t like she is now. She was as corrupt as I was. You didn’t know her then—man, she was a different person. She was someone I could relate to… someone I could…”

“Go to Hell with.”

“Yeah.” He answered sadly. “I figured I’d found a girl who would get in trouble with me and we’d go through life, and who cared about the consequences? Because there was no hope. The old guy admitted as much.”

“And when she got saved…”

“She left me. It was like I was all alone, and I couldn’t handle it. It’s easier to think about going to Hell if someone is going with you. And then Sloan started acting differently. She didn’t want to do the things she used to do, and she didn’t want to go the same places. She was trying so hard to be a ‘good little Christian’ that it ticked me off…”

“Because you weren’t good.”

“Because I
couldn’t
be good. My father loves me… but my mom.” He scoffed. “My mom used to call me all kinds of names, especially when I did one little thing wrong. Just one, and the world would end. I think sometimes she told the old guy to tell me that at church, so it would scare me straight. I think it had the opposite effect.”

“I’d say so.” I had a hard time with all of this because I found I could relate to it. I could feel empathy for him, and I didn’t want to. I didn’t know if it was the environment, the fear, the exhaustion or what, but for the first time, I actually understood where Boyd Lawrence was coming from. Not the violence part, not attacking Sloan or me or Ray, but the why. I got the why, and that shook me.

“So… I figured if I couldn’t be good enough, I’d just let myself go and become the evil guy I was destined to be. I’d do all these things and not care what others thought. Except part of me did care. Part of me was so sick about what I did to Sloan, and part of me hated shooting your brother.”

“But not a big enough part.” I tried to breathe and relax the fist that my hand had balled up into. I wouldn’t attack him. I wouldn’t…. but it would be oh so nice.

“Apparently. For what it’s worth… I am sorry. I’m sorry for all of it.”

I think I had to pick my jaw off the ground. “Are you just saying that, so I’ll tell the police to go easy on you?”

He chuckled. “I don’t think there is any way they will go easy on me. I’m going to jail, or wherever they put blind eighteen year-olds… Aaron, I’m only eighteen. What a waste of a life…”

The way he trailed off that sentence sort of scared me, to be honest. Yes, I hated Boyd, and the world would be better without him—scratch that—my world would be. Didn’t mean I wanted him to do something rash.

He got very quiet, and my mind raced for something to say. I wasn’t good in these situations. I wasn’t qualified to talk to a depressed psycho. But I felt like I had to. Something in my chest just wouldn’t leave me alone until I did it. “Look, Boyd. You know I’m not your biggest fan.”

I heard him snicker. So he wasn’t asleep, or dead, or something else. Oh good. “Truthfully, I hate you more than any other person in the world, and if you knew my mom or the guys she brought home, you’d know that is saying a lot.”

“Great pep talk, man.” I heard the tears in his voice. It cracked, and he cleared his throat like he didn’t want me to hear, but I did…

It nearly broke me. “I’m not trying to cheer you up. I’m not. There is no way I can. How you feel about yourself is your doing, and no one can change that. That said, I think you got a raw deal with your mom. I can understand that. I did too, only she didn’t get some dude to scare me at church.”

“Not the highlight of my life.” He said. I expected him to come back with some sort of snarky comment, but I guess he was done with those now. We had moved past that to some new sort of phase in our… relationship. Things were getting too real, and I didn’t do ‘real’ that great. I knew that fall off a cliff was ‘real’. I knew the situation we were in was “real,” but there was something therapeutic about sparring with him. It kept me from having to think about how bad things really were. I could just focus on my hatred.

And now he was taking that away from me.

But I couldn’t hate him for it.

“I don’t like what you did. What you did to Sloan, to my brother, to me—that was unforgivable.”

I heard him swallow hard. “I know.” Oh no, was he crying? Boyd Lawrence didn’t cry. He couldn’t cry.

There is nothing more terrifying than finding out a monster is really a man.

I had to keep going, though because this feeling in my chest wouldn’t leave me alone. “I’ve been to church a few times with Sloan and Ray, and what the preacher talks about there—it’s not the scary stuff that the old dude told you. The preacher… he says everybody can be forgiven by God.”

“Even me?”

“Yeah… I don’t understand it, either.” I tried to make it light, but I don’t think it came across that way.

“Doesn’t seem right, does it? Someone like me… getting forgiven for anything.”

I shook my head, and tried to think of the perfect answer, because no…. it didn’t sound right. None of it made any sense, and I wasn’t sure how to word it to sound positive, but not beat around the bush. Some people went to college for years to deal with situations like this… I had to do it by the seat of my pants.