Tormented (Evolution Series Book 2) (25 page)

Chelsea turned around when she
realised
Anna and I were still on the bed. “Are you two coming, or do I get all those boys downstairs to myself?”

My eyes bugged out. Had Anna’s fix not worked?

“I fixed her. She’s just trying to stir you.”

“I’m kidding,” Chelsea said. I smiled and got up off the bed.

We ended up ordering pizza
and
Chinese, then we all spent the rest of the night laughing our heads off as we had sing off after sing off. I half-thought that maybe I had done something to my own mind when I messed with Chelsea’s because for the first time in ages, I was actually able to relax and not think about my mum and the sick bastard holding her captive.

CHAPTER 23

Two days later, Aiden and I were standing outside the Catholic church of
Broadbeach
. Angels were carved into the sandstone pillars that stood on either side of the front doors, welcoming whoever passed through their threshold. Except when I looked at them, I didn’t feel as though they were welcoming me, but condemning me, as if they knew that it was my fault that everyone who sat in the church for Ben’s funeral was there because of me. I knew they were nothing more than blocks of stone, but I guessed my subconscious wasn’t ready to let me forgive myself for what I had done,
or hadn’t done
, to be more precise. If Aiden could hear my thoughts, he would probably be telling me that it wasn’t my fault, that Ben was dead because of some twisted freak whose idea of fun was to play with people’s lives.

We followed the crowd of people filing into the church, each family being greeted by the priest. Inside, my eyes were instantly drawn to the closed coffin that rested at the front of the room, adorned with wreaths of white lilies. I felt so sorry for Ben’s family because they never got to see his face before they laid him to rest. That would be another thing that I would have to live with for the rest of my life.

“There’s
Chels
,” Aiden said, nodding to the right.

She was sitting with her mum in the row behind Ben’s family. Aiden and I weaved through the many mourners cluttering the aisles, and I sat down next to Chelsea, with Aiden on my other side.

I put my arm around her shoulder and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “How are you feeling?”

“I’ve been better.” Chelsea smiled weakly. She was confused as to why she had come to terms with Ben’s death so soon after the accident and secretly hated herself for it as well. But the moment we sat down beside her, she became more at ease. She thought she felt better because she had her best friend there to support her, but I knew it was just that she was in Aiden’s presence. Ben’s family sitting in front of us seemed surprised, but relieved by the unexpected calmness they felt.

Aiden leaned forward and placed a hand on Ben’s parents’ shoulders to give them his condolences, along with an extra shot of his calming thing. Shock filled their features momentarily, but the expressions were quickly replaced with a peaceful acceptance as Aiden removed the memory of how they felt when he touched them.

The priest walked up onto lectern and began the ceremony. I tuned out as soon as he mentioned Ben’s name. I couldn’t handle hearing anything about his death, or even his life, because ultimately, it was my fault that he no longer walked the earth.

I
realised
how much grief I would have to endure in my life. Almost everyone around me was going to die at some point, and I would keep on living. I picked up Chelsea’s hand and squeezed it tightly. One day, I would be sitting at her funeral, and I wouldn’t even be able to come as myself, her best friend, because how could someone who still looked like a twenty-year-old be her childhood best friend?

I slowly scanned the crowd. Each and every person sitting in the church would die at one point or another, and Aiden and I would live on.
And on.
And on.

I was jolted out of my thoughts of everlasting life when I spotted
Chrissy
sitting a few rows back on the other side of the aisle. She was dressed in a modest black dress with matching black heels and purse. She held a tissue in her hand that she used to dab at her eyes whenever the priest mentioned Ben’s name. I couldn’t hear her thoughts from that distance, but by the look on her face, I thought maybe she had changed since finishing school. Maybe she had turned back to the girl I used to be friends with before she tried to break up Aiden and me.

She must have felt my eyes on her because she turned to meet my gaze. I smiled in an attempt to let her know that we could move past everything. She returned my smile with a raised middle finger. I raised my eyebrows in surprise, and she put up the finger on her other hand. Apparently, she had changed… for the worse. I felt like going over and ripping those fingers off her hand for doing something like that at our friend’s funeral.

Ben’s parents stood up and moved toward the front of the church. It was time for everyone to say
their
goodbyes to the kind-spirited young man who had been robbed of his life so young.

Chelsea stood and pulled me up with her. Crap. She was going to drag me up there.

“You’ll be fine,”
Aiden said silently.

I picked up his hand and pulled him up alongside me.
“So will you.”

The three of us walked hand in hand to the front of the church. Chelsea held herself together, even though she feared she would fall to pieces and make a spectacle by throwing herself onto the coffin, crying her eyes out, and cursing God for taking her love away so soon.

Once we were finished saying our goodbyes to Ben, we moved over to his mother and father, who waited to the side to thank everyone for coming. They were both confused as to why they were feeling so calm and had come to the same conclusion that laying their son to rest was helping to give them closure and move forward.

God, Aiden was good. I only managed to get out a “Sorry for your loss” before leaving the remainder of the conversation to Chelsea and Aiden. Thankfully, the line was moving fast, which meant we couldn’t linger. Chelsea’s mum waited for us just before the exit. She put her arm around her daughter, and they walked outside with Aiden and me following.

Marie stopped at the bottom of the steps. “Do you want to come home, or would you like to stay with Jade for a bit?”

“I’ll come home with you,” Chelsea said. “I wanna get changed out of these clothes.” She looked over at me. “But can I come over later?”

“Of course,” Aiden and I said in unison.

“I’ll give you a call before I leave to come over. Okay?”

“Okay.” I gave her a hug and a kiss on her cheek.

Chelsea and her mum turned around and headed towards Marie’s car.

Aiden pulled me into his arms. “It’s all over now.”

I leaned my forehead against his chest. “I wish that were true.”

“I meant the funeral.”

“I know. I just wish that it
was
all
over. I wish I could figure out a way to get my mum back, and then get rid of the asshole doing all of this to me.”

Aiden kissed the top of my head. “I wish I could make that happen for you.”

“Don’t let me interrupt this special moment of yours,”
Chrissy
said, walking down the steps of the church. I finally understood why Aiden had said that I didn’t want to know what she had been thinking about me. I had never heard so many explicit, horrible thoughts from anyone. Her thoughts shocked me into silence.

She turned her head away from us and walked up the footpath towards the
carpark
. Suddenly, a car that had been moving slowly down the road sped up and veered onto the footpath, heading directly for
Chrissy
.

I stood there, too stunned to move. There was none of that slow-motion thing going on like what had happened over in Thailand when I could literally see the bullets fly through the air. The car skidded to a stop right where
Chrissy
had stood only a second ago, but she wasn’t there. And she wasn’t under the car. She was in Aiden’s arms a few feet away.

“Holy shit,”
Chrissy
whispered, looking up into Aiden’s eyes. “You saved me.” Aiden tried to let her go, but she didn’t loosen her grip.

I rushed over to them. “You can let go of him now,” I snapped. To everyone around us, I probably sounded like some cold-hearted jealous bitch, but they couldn’t hear her thoughts. She wasn’t even thinking about how close she had come to being run down by a car; she was thinking about how good it felt to be in Aiden’s arms and how she thought that was how it was supposed to be. It should have been him and her, not Aiden and me.

“If you haven’t noticed, he’s a lot stronger than me. Maybe he doesn’t want to let go.” She spoke so low that only Aiden and I would have been able to hear her snide remark.

Aiden broke free from her clasp even as she desperately tried to hang on to him. “There will never be a ‘you and me,’” he said in a low, but stern voice. “Just be glad I saved your ass, ’cause I’m guessing if I hadn’t been here, you would’ve been dead.”

He put his arm around me and ushered me towards the car without even so much as another glance in her direction.

“What the hell was that about?” I asked when we were sitting inside his car. “I mean
,
did you see the car? It didn’t look like it was out of control. And then the guy behind the wheel was in too much shock to even get out of the car. He didn’t have a clue how he ended up on the curb.”

“Yeah, I saw it, and I heard the guy’s thoughts,” he said, pulling out onto the road. “All I can say is that whatever happened back there wasn’t right. Something was definitely off.”

I turned in my seat. “Do you think it was DD?” I asked.

Aiden raised his eyebrows, giving me a knowing look. I guessed he was thinking the same thing.

When we arrived at the house, strangely, no one was around. “I thought someone was supposed to be here at all times,” I half-joked.

“Missing me already?” Kai asked, coming out of the pantry with a sumo-sized sandwich.

“Hey, mate,”
Aiden
said. “Don’t suppose you made one for us?”

“Nope. I’m already your baby sitter; I’m not about to become your chef, too.” Kai took a massive bite of his sandwich. “So how was it?” he asked with his mouth still half-full.

“The weirdest thing happened after the funeral,” Aiden said.

My phone beeped from inside my bag. I was pretty sure it was Chelsea telling me that she was on her way over. I left Aiden to explain what happened with the car and
Chrissy
while I walked over to the sofa where I had left my bag. I pulled out my phone, flipped it open, and froze as what was becoming an all-too-familiar unknown number appeared on my screen. Panic rippled through me when I began reading the message. Aiden and Kai were by my side within a blink of an eye.

That one was supposed to be a
favour
to you, but your boyfriend had other ideas.

Now I’ve had to move my plans forward. Someone is going to die. Who that is
is
up to you.

Another message came through soon after we finished reading the first.

Tick, tick, boom 12:06

My eyes glanced up to the top of the screen—12:05 p.m.

“What the hell does that mean?” Aiden asked.