Sacrificing Sloan (Sloan Series Book 3) (6 page)

Ray scoffed. “Like anyone would know day and night with this storm. When is it supposed to stop raining?” He asked me, and I saw Mackenzie’s face fall. It was me he was talking to, not her, and it had to sting. It would have stung me, if I were to be honest.

“They don’t know. The weather man said it was a very slow-moving system. Said the rain might slack off, but we can get rain for up to three more days.”

Ray’s eyes fluttered back in his head, and he rubbed his hands over his face. I don’t think he noticed the IV in his arm until he lowered his hands because his brow furrowed, and I feared he’d rip it out.

I don’t like blood, and I sure didn’t want to see it now.

He looked at his hands long enough for me to wonder what in the world was going on in his head. When I couldn’t take it anymore, he turned to Mackenzie, “Can you please go get the nurse for me? I want to get home.” He sounded like Ray again. The Ray I knew and—okay—I loved. I did love him, but not like I loved Aaron. And not like Mackenzie loved him. Who Ray loved was anybody’s guess. I bet he wasn’t thinking very much about it at the moment.

“They won’t let you leave…” She started.

“Please…” Ray did something totally unexpected. He put his hand on top of Mackenzie’s. Her breath hitched, and if I’m honest, mine did, too. Her hand was so small and delicate. His was torn and ragged and bruised. It had an IV shoved in one of this veins and tape, lots of tape, holding it down.

Ray didn’t seem to care, though. For the first time, he really seemed to notice Mackenzie was there. I mean, he saw her before. He acknowledged her, but not in the way a person acknowledges someone he or she cares about. This time, he ran his fingers over her knuckles, and he turned his back to me like it was only the two of them in there… together. The way it should be.

I looked away to give them their space. The last thing I wanted was to be the third wheel between them. They deserved better than that. Both of them did.

“Are you feeling alright? You look pale, especially for you.”

“I’m fine. I’m not worried about me. I’ll make it. Just a little cold.”

No one spoke for a second.

“Mackenzie… I’m sorry how I’ve acted the last few days. To be honest, I don’t remember everything, but I do remember… I remember ignoring you, and I’m sorry for that. You should never be ignored.” He placed his knuckles gently to her cheek. Her eyes fluttered shut, and her head tilted toward the contact. I swore a little moan came from her throat, but I wasn’t entirely sure. If Ray had been Aaron and I had been Mackenzie, there would have been moaning, so maybe I was projecting.

“You don’t have to say you’re sorry.” Mackenzie’s voice cracked and shook like she was nervous. Ray was the first guy who had paid any attention to her since Travis Blaylock, Boyd’s best friend, and we all knew how that turned out.

“I do.” He placed a curl behind her ear. “And I am. I’m sorry. Mackenzie…” From the corner of my eye I saw her back straighten. “Please… please go get the nurse, so I can go home. I promise, I won’t do anything bad. I’ll go straight home, and I’ll rest until either the rain stops, or I can go find Aaron on my own.”

“Maybe they will find him before then…” Mackenzie said hopefully.

Ray’s head lowered. “I hope so.”

Mackenzie bit her lip and stood. She turned to go toward the door, when she turned on a dime and went back to Ray. Before I knew it, her hands were on either side of his face, and her lips were on his.

Holy Hannah!

I wasn’t exactly sure where to look, since technically, I did still have my arm wrapped around him, to keep him from falling on the floor. This was… awkward. Not because of Ray and Mackenzie. I was happy for them… but… my arm and my body seemed to be in the way.

Finally, Mackenzie backed away and placed her fingers to her lips. “Whoa.” I don’t even think she knew she said it.

“Yeah.” Ray swallowed hard.

Definitely chemistry.

Definite.

Chemistry.

“So…” Mackenzie stumbled backwards. “I’ll go… and check on the nurse… see if we can’t get you home.”

“Thank you.” He called when she reached the door.

Mackenzie’s hand hovered above the handle, and she hesitated. She kept her back to us, but tilted her chin and neck, so we knew she was talking to us. “You aren’t lying to me, are you, Ray? You are going home and taking it easy. No lying to me.”

“No lying.” Ray answered.

Mackenzie gave him the biggest smile I’d ever seen before she left the room.

Left me and Ray alone.

Left me sitting on the bed with him, holding him up. “That was really nice of you. I’m glad you are going home, and I’m glad Mackenzie means so much to you. You make a cute couple.”

Ray’s eyes watered, but his lip curved into almost a sneer, only sneer was never a word I’d use to talk about Ray. “I lied to her.” He said simply, as he stood and went to the clothes I had gotten for him at the gift shop from the top of the dresser.

In front of me, God, and everybody, Ray stripped out of his hospital gown and put on a pair of black jeans and a gray tee shirt.

“You lied to her?” I don’t know why I asked. I already knew…

His eyes were glossy from unshed tears, and I supposed fatigue. “I can’t put her in danger, Sloan. I can’t do it. But I have to get my brother.”

I stood, fear running all through me. “I’ll tell the doctor.”

“You won’t.” He sounded so confident.

“I will.”

“You won’t… because you want him back, too.”

I started to argue with him, but I couldn’t. I did want him back. I wanted him back more than anything in this world. “You have to help me, Sloan. We can do this.”

Mackenzie came back before I could give my answer with a surprisingly chipper nurse in tow. I spent the next twenty minutes locked in Ray’s bathroom with my back to the wall, my bottom on the floor, and my head in my hands.

What was I going to do?

CHAPTER TEN

Aaron

10:09 AM

“
H
OW LONG ARE WE GOING TO
wait for him to come back?” Boyd grumbled from his usual perch at the kitchen table. His head faced my general direction, but it sure wasn’t facing anywhere near where my eyes were.

“Oh… by all means, if you are that antsy, follow him. I’m sure you’ll get really far before the bears get you. Or better yet, before you walk into the river.”

“Creek.” He so helpfully replied.

So… help… me… God…

I laid my head back and tried my very best to keep my cool. I hated to admit it, but Boyd had a very good point. We agreed last night to wait for Mr. Lawrence to come back with help. It seemed the natural and normal thing to do. He couldn’t see. I couldn’t walk. The blind leading the injured, as it were. But it was getting late. I could hear the water getting closer and closer. It had held off longer than I imagined, so I was grateful about that, but still… I wanted out of there as much as Boyd did.

Maybe even more so, though my reasons had to be different than his. I wanted my family: my brother and my girlfriend. He wanted his freedom. To escape somehow, and not be where the police would find him.

Different sides of the same coin—we just wanted out.

I really did wish Boyd would get mad and leave. It would be funny watching as he stumbled into the storm. I wouldn’t feel bad when I found the buzzards chewing out his eyeballs.

Too graphic? Maybe, but Boyd wasn’t my favorite person. Not by a long shot. Still, I supposed it was wrong to wish for his death or dismemberment or castration.

“Hmmm…” Boyd seemed to consider what I had told him… clearly missing the snarkiness of it all.

“Hmmm… what? It was a joke, Boyd. Nothing to hmmm over. You can’t see and I can’t walk, so we are pretty much stuck here until your father comes back, which, I hope, is very soon.” But the idiot had his thinking face on. It was sort of a cross between when a person had to poo and eating a lemon.

Boyd didn’t even react to me, which should have been my first clue that something was about to go wrong. He tapped his fingers on the old beat up table and mouthed some words I couldn’t decipher.

Surely, he couldn’t be thinking about going and getting his father. “You aren’t really going after him, are you? You know that’s suicide, right?”

“Awww… Aaron. I didn’t know you cared.”

“I don’t.” I didn’t, right? I didn’t care about what happened to Boyd. I had
just
thought about how wonderful it would be to see his cold dead body as buzzard breakfast… and now what? Now I cared? Nope… uh-uh… not what was going on. I was worried for Mr. Lawrence. That was all. I wanted him back safe and sound. I didn’t care about Boyd at all.

“Or are you scared of being left here alone with the big bad creek coming up and no way for you to run away from it? Need me, don’t ya? And it just kills you.”

“Yeah… I need you Boyd. Like I need a hemorrhoid.”

Boyd laughed. An actual amused chuckle. Nothing evil or mean or menacing or weird or crazy about it. Just a dude my brother’s age, laughing lightheartedly. For the first time ever, I really looked at Boyd. Not as the psycho I thought him to be, but as a person. A real person. His body was built like a huge football player, but his face had a bit of his baby fat left on it. He looked young. Really young. Too young to have as much hate as he had in his heart. Too young to have done what he’d done in his life: assault, attempted rape, attempted murder, stalking, kidnapping. It wasn’t right. At one time, Boyd had his entire life ahead of him. Why had he thrown it away?

At the prom, when Boyd had come out of the shadows and held me at gunpoint, the first thing I focused on was his eyes. Dark. Cold. Evil oozing out of them. They glared at me like I was an ant that needed to be squashed, or an inferior being.

Now I looked at the bandages on his eyes. The ones Boyd picked at and would probably take off soon. When he did, what would I be able to see in them? Hate. Anger. Or would I see fear?

The good thing? Boyd couldn’t see the fear in my eyes. Not of Boyd. I couldn’t be scared of him, but of not getting out of the cabin. Of being found dead there, in my little hidey hole, or by the side of the creek. Or… getting back home and finding out Ray was dead. I knew I couldn’t deal with that.

Something else that scared me… I hadn’t been gone but two days, but I was so afraid Sloan had already mourned me, moved on, and found someone else.

I feared a lot of things…

Never getting home.

Letting Ray down.

So many things.

But I couldn’t tell another living soul because the only other living soul in that cabin was Boyd Lawrence.

“Dude, you got real quiet.” Boyd picked a piece of tape from his bandages and winced. He’d have them off in no time. “You know my other senses
have
increased.”

“You don’t say.” A little smile curved on my lips before I could stop it. Good thing Boyd couldn’t see it, too.

“I do say. So if you are thinking of attacking me, I warn you, it won’t end well.”

“I’m not attacking you.”

“Scared?”

“Hardly. How pitiful would it be to hit a blind man? Not even sporting!”

“That’s discrimination.” Boyd smirked, and I hung my head with a bit of a snicker. It was never good to bond with the enemy. Was this what Stockholm Syndrome was like? Without the romance anyway…

“That’s human decency.”

He scoffed. “Whatever. I’d kick you when you were down, if I could… oh, wait. You can’t stand
to
fall down.”

It was almost like bickering with Ray. Almost. Except I liked Ray. “Are we going to do this all day?”

“Why? Need more time to think of witty comebacks?”

“More like need time to sleep because this is a waste of time.” Fun… but a waste of time.

“Sleep… Hmmm… Well, I guess we could take a nap and wait for the water to cover us. Seems a peaceful way to die… or we could talk about my plan to get out of here.”

I knew he’d been hemming and hawing about something over there.

I don’t want to hear the plan. I don’t want to hear the plan. I don’t want to… “
What plan?”

“Thought you wanted to sleep.” Boyd pulled the rest of the bandages off of his eyes. He blinked a few times and placed his hand in front of his eyes. Nothing.

“Jerk.”

“Loser.”

I wasn’t going to answer. This was stupid. I’d spent my entire life being quiet and stoic. Why couldn’t I do it around Boyd? Apparently, he brought the chatterbox out of me. “What?”

And… now I wanted to smack the smirk off Boyd’s face. “It’s obvious. Don’t you see? Pun intended.”

“More than you.”

“Obviously.”

Could I smack him now?

“Think… Aaron.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Think. Use that big ugly forehead of yours for something besides brooding.”

“You should talk.” was my awesome comeback. Yeah… I quit.

“T-h-i-n-k…” He dragged the word out like he was talking to a two year-old.

I really didn’t get it, and it killed me. I hated looking stupid and especially when faced with either rich people at school, or crazy people who kidnapped you and threw you over a cliff.

Fun times.

Boyd shook his head, and I think he instantly regretted it. “See… Don’t you SEE, Aaron. SEE… SEE… Aaron.”

“Yes, I can see, Boyd. Okay. Sheesh! I can see. My eyes work, but I don’t see… haha… how that is going to help? I can see. You can’t. You can walk. I can’t. We can’t…” Oh… oh no. No. I got it. I didn’t want to get it, but I got it. “That’s stupid.”

“It’s not.” He sounded offended. “It’s not stupid. You can’t walk. I can. I can’t see. You can. We can help each other.”

“You gonna carry me, Rhett Butler-style?” Because there was nothing to do besides laugh at the absurdity of it. Only Boyd wasn’t laughing.

“If it gets us off this mountain, I just might do it.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Sloan

Noon

“
I
CAN WALK.”
R
AY HUFFED, AS
I held his arm over mine and helped him walk into his house. Walk was an understatement for what we were doing because it wasn’t exactly walking. It was… well… it was awkward. I’m short. And while Ray isn’t exactly tall, he’s taller than me, and he had to lean down on my shoulders, which made it all kinds of weird. I tried to help and not hurt him, but I wasn’t doing a good job of it.