Out Of The Ashes (24 page)

I pushed, and it creaked open wide, like the gaping maw of a deadly snake. Hannah was poisonous, all right. Walking inside, I glanced around looking for signs that my boyfriend was here.

A soft murmur came from down the hallway and I crept that way, black dread pooling in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t want to go, but something kept pulling me toward the faint light at the end of the hall.

“Clay?” I called tentatively.

“Oh, we’re back here, Paigey,” Hannah’s nasty voice answered me.

I kept walking, just like a prisoner being led to her execution.

Shuffling my feet against the soft carpet, I ambled blindly down the dark hallway. When I reached the last room at the end where light shone from underneath the door, I walked right in, too scared to hesitate. Terrified of what I would find.

And the fear of my expectations was nothing compared to the horror that lay before me.

“Clay?” I shrieked.

At least I meant to. But my voice was gone. Where was my voice? Even at my worst, I’d always been able to find my voice. But the vision of Clay, naked in bed with an equally naked Hannah, just stole all of my words away.

I turned and fled. Raced back down the hallway to the soundtrack of Hannah’s vicious laughter following me.

“See, Paige?” she exclaimed with glee. “I told you. I told you he was mine!”

I left the front door standing wide open as I ran to my car. Flinging the door open, I leaned against it and retched repeatedly. Everything I’d eaten earlier in the night greeted me as it came up again. I wiped my mouth with a shaking hand and launched myself inside my car. I dragged ragged breaths into my lungs and stared out the front windshield.

I thought of Clay’s handsome face as he told me he loved me.

Lies.

Anger bubbled up as I thought of the times he’d kissed me, had run his hands gently over my once-burned skin.

Lies.

And Hannah! My brain glossed over the incidents in class as she’d hurled insults at me in front of everyone. The note she’d passed, threatening me. The fact that she’d tried to hurt me in the way I’d already been hurt so badly in the past. The way she’d left me standing in the nude in front of the whole soccer team and their dates. The way she’d let an entire campus in on my darkest secret that wasn’t hers to tell.

Hannah deserved to pay for everything she’d done to me, and everything she hadn’t even been able to accomplish yet. She was a horrible person, and she just got to walk around like she owned the world. It wasn’t fair that people like her got to live, while amazing people like my parents, like my brother, had to die.

I pulled out my phone and dialed Beau’s number.

Thirty-Three

Paige

“You got home late last night, huh?” Gillian asked, her voice lilting in a teasing tone.

I wasn’t in the mood for the Clay banter today. I hadn’t yet told her about what happened last night, and I didn’t plan on it.

“Not really,” I answered.

“Well, it must have been after I went to bed. I know you weren’t here then.”

I remained silent.

“O-o-o-kay,” Gillian said. “What’s up, chick?”

“Nothing, Gill,” I sighed. “I have so much studying to do today, okay? I’d better go get started.”

The truth was, I had no idea what time I’d arrived home last night. I drove around in circles while I spoke to Beau. He wanted to leave then, drive to Rutherford to pick me up, but I’d told him I needed to stay and face my problems head on.

After that, I only remembered waking up in bed this morning, with a migraine headache to go along with the agony my heart suffered.

I plodded down the hallway to my room. Gillian stared after me a minute before going into her room and sitting down in her squeaky desk chair.

The apartment was eerily quiet for a few minutes as Gillian typed lazily on her keyboard and I stared at my ceiling in a dazed funk.

“Oh. My. God,” I heard her say.

“What?” I asked, not moving from my spot on the bed.

“Have you checked your mail today?” Gillian’s voice was shakier than I’d heard it since…well since she’d seen me lying in the hospital bed the night my house burned down.

“No,” I answered in a flat voice. “Why?”

“Paige, come here,” she said urgently.

I wouldn’t have complied if not for the note of panic that radiated from her voice. I left my room and padded down the hallway. Dread filled my heart, because something had worked Gillian into a state. When I arrived at her door, the look on her face weakened my knees. I sank down onto her bed, expelling a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.

Because I knew that look. I’d seen it before, at the beginning of the worst season of my life. It was a look everyone sees at least once in their lives; I’d already seen it and had hoped never to be on the receiving end of it again.

“Who?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper.

She stared at me, tears glistening in her eyes. She brushed at them angrily. Why would she be angry? Unless she didn’t want to be crying for whoever it was.

“It’s Hannah Davis,” she answered sullenly. “She’s dead.”

I gazed at her silently as time stood still. Dead? Hannah? Hannah was one of the most vibrant, vivid people I knew. She sure was last night. She couldn’t be dead. She was alive.

“No, she’s not,” I said dumbly, still staring at Gillian. “Hannah isn’t dead.” I didn’t notice the tremors that were starting to ripple through my body. I pulled at the sides of my hair, teetering on the brink of a breakdown.

“Calm down, sweetie,” Gillian said, trying her best to be soothing when I knew that she was as upside-down about this as I was.

“Stop it,” I said loudly. “Stop using that voice, Gill. Hannah isn’t dead. I just saw her last night.”

“You did?” she asked, furrowing her brow and shaking her head emphatically. “I didn’t know that. But I’m reading a university-wide e-mail. The alert says that a student, Hannah Marie Davis, has died suddenly in ‘a suspicious manner.’ Someone killed her, Paige.”

~**~

And now the aftermath would start. The aftermath that always inevitably followed when someone you know has died. News articles, questions, prying stares. A funeral or memorial.

Let the death festivities begin.

I’d been through them all before, for my family after they died. I could only do so much then, shake my head yes or no when the lawyer or Gillian asked me questions. I was fighting for my own life in a hospital bed at the time.

Not this time. This time I’d have to see everything up close and personal. This was a small school. A murder happening here was going to be huge, inescapable. My friends and I would be a part of all of it.

My friends. Had Clay and the guys heard this yet? Clay was with her last night…and so was I.

Oh Lord, I couldn’t deal with this. Not any of it. I felt trapped, overwhelmed. And sad. Not because Hannah was dead. I’d hated her and I couldn’t force myself to feel one ounce of regret over her death.

Sadness for what Clay and I had lost plagued me. I was in mourning for it. I thought I had found the man of my dreams, the accidental love thing you read about in books and watch in movies, feeling every emotion the characters are feeling and knowing that it would never happen to you in real life.

Well, it did happen. At least I thought it did. But it was all a lie. Clay and I were finished before we had the chance to flourish and I was devastated. Too devastated to mourn for a girl I hated with all my heart.

I walked silently back to my room, ignoring Gillian’s pleading voice asking me to stay.

I shut my door quietly behind me and knelt to reach under my bed. I pulled out my suitcase and began to pack.

Clay

The banging on our apartment door startled me. I was lying in my bed with the most massive hangover I’d ever had.

I’d survived the worst night, and the worst morning-after, of my entire life. When I woke up this morning in Hannah’s bed I was bewildered. I couldn’t remember anything after driving there last night. I freaked the fuck out a little actually, wondering what the hell I was doing there.

I had searched through the hazy fog in my brain, searching for the memories that would put the puzzle together. Then I saw my glass by the bed, my clothes lying in a heap on the floor. And I started to piece it together. When I had looked at my phone and scrolled through my call log, I saw that my last call was to Paige. I vaguely remembered Hannah talking to her on my phone last night just before I passed out.

And when I saw that bitch again, I was going to kill her. But my first priority had been getting home, showered, dressed, and finding Paige.

What must she be thinking? My head had been pounding so badly, I’d lain down on my bed for just a second, until it stopped throbbing like a blunt object was bludgeoning me to death.

The banging on the front door was the next thing I knew, and I sat up straight in my bed, looking around wildly.

“Hold on, hold on!” I heard Drew yell. I heard his footsteps pounding the floor as he rushed into the living room to open the door.

“What the hell, Drew?” Gillain’s voice screamed. “Where the fuck is Clay?”

I jumped off my bed, ignoring the pounding in my head. I threw on a shirt over my faded jeans and hurried out into the living room in my bare feet.

“Gillian? What’s going on?” I asked, dread starting to slither into my stomach.

She walked over to where I stood, a five-and-a-half foot tall force of nature and shoved both hands into my chest, pushing as hard as she could. I barely moved, but her point was very clear.

Gillian was extremely pissed.

“Where’s Paige?” she yelled, jabbing a finger into my chest.

The red polished nail poking into my flesh could have been confused for a needle had I not been looking right at it. It felt that sharp, that painful.

“Paige?” I said, confused. “I don’t know. I fell asleep…something happened last night. She was going to be my first call when I woke up. Is she not at home?”

I began feeling panicked. Gillian’s tone was scaring the shit out of me, and the fact that she didn’t know where Paige was…

Gillian’s face was fading fast; somehow growing paler and paler with every word I spoke.

“No, you asshole,” she said in a deadly flat voice. “I don’t have a fucking clue where she is. After I told her the news this morning, she went into her room and I went to grab us something to eat so she’d keep her strength up.”

She thrust a folded-up piece of pink paper into my chest and I grabbed it. I hadn’t noticed she’d been holding anything; I was so focused on abating her anger.

“What’s this?”

“It’s a letter. From your girlfriend,” she spat.

Gillian sat down on the couch and folded her arms tightly across her chest, glowering at me.

I unfolded the paper with shaky fingers as my stomach dropped to my feet like dead weight from a distressed plane.

Gill,

You’re not just my best friend, you’re like my sister. So this isn’t goodbye, it’s just “talk to you later.” I have to go. I’m so sorry, Gillian, but I have to. I’ll be back, I will. But I need some distance. If I don’t get it, I feel like I might just…break apart. I’ve been broken before, you know that better than anyone. I just can’t sit still and catch the pieces of my heart again. It would kill me this time. You’ve done so much for me. You’ve been the best friend anyone could ever have and I don’t know how my life would have turned out if I’d never met you. So I’m thankful for you and your friendship. I feel like complete shit for doing this to you, because I know you’re going to worry. Don’t bother asking Clay where I am. He won’t know. I hope he never knows. He needs to go on with his life like he never met me, because he was never ready for this to begin with. Don’t take it out on him either, Gillian. It was just too much, too soon. I’m okay, wherever I am, and I will call you soon. If you call me, you won’t get me. You’ll find I left my phone in my room for when I return.

I love you. Always. Don’t forget it, chick.

Love, Paige

I stared at the letter, completely dumbfounded. She left? She left town, she left school?

She left me?

My gaze swung toward Gillian; my mouth open. Hot, stinging moisture blurred my vision . The torture squeezing my heart made speech impossible. I worked my mouth a few times, trying to get it to function properly.

She stared back, the unbridled fury in her eyes hitting me like a brick wall. “’Too much, too soon’? Really, Clay? What did you do?”

I shook my head numbly. “It was bad, Gill. Last night was bad, but not in the way Paige thinks.”

Gillian lunged at me. Drew was there before she could land a punch, grabbing her shoulders. Her feet kicked out at me as she screamed.

“Get the hell off me, Drew! Let me go!”

He held on tight and whispered in her ear. She slowly calmed down, lowering both feet to the floor and slumping in his arms. He pulled her down to the couch next to him.