Love Kills (Lilah Love 4)

“He said the backyard,” she replies, scanning. “This way!” she adds, and suddenly she’s dragging me through several groups of about a half-dozen bodies.

Our destination is apparently the outdoor patio, where a fire is burning in a stone pit, and despite it being April, and in the sixties, surrounded by a cluster of ottoman-like seating and lanterns on steel poles. Plus, more people are here, and now instead of Selena Gomez rattling my teeth, it’s Rihanna.

“Danielle!” The shout comes from Jesse, who is sitting in a cluster of people to our far left. Of course, Danielle starts dragging me forward again, which has me feeling like her cute dog that doesn’t want to be walked. Correction: Her forgotten dog that doesn’t want to be walked, considering she lets go of me and runs to Jesse, giving him a big hug. I’m left with one open seat, smack between two football players: David Nelson and Ramon Miller. Both are hot. Both have dark hair, though Ramon’s is curly and excessive, and David’s is buzzed, understandably since I think I heard his dad is military. Okay, I know his dad is military because I’ve been crushing on him since he showed up at school six months ago.

I sit awkwardly between them, and stare desperately at Danielle, who just stuck her tongue down Jesse’s throat in a familiar way that says it’s not the first time. I need to leave, I think. I’ll just get up and leave, but then, what if she panics? What if she forgets that Jesse can’t be in on ‘the incident’? We can never tell anyone what happened. Why did I think this night was a good distraction?

“Hey there,” David says, piercing me with his blue eyes.

“Hi,” I say.

“You look like you want to crawl under a rock,” he comments.

“Do you know where I can find one?”

He laughs. He has a good laugh. A genuine laugh and since I don’t know many people who do anything genuinely, I feel that hard spot in my belly begin to soften. “I’ll help you find one if you take me with you.”

“You don’t belong under a rock,” I say.

He arches a brow. “And you do?”

“Belong,” I say. “No. But happier there right now, yes.”

“That hurts my feelings,” he says, holding his hand to his chest as if wounded.

“Oh. No. Sorry. I just meant…I don’t do parties.”

“Because your dad is a politician,” he assumes.

“He doesn’t exactly approve of events like this.”

He laughs again. “Events. Right.” His hand settles on my leg and there is this funny sensation in my belly. “I’ll make sure nothing goes wrong. Okay?”

“No. No, I’ll make sure nothing goes wrong.”

He leans in and presses his cheek to mine, his lips by my ear. “Then I’ll give you extra protection.” I inhale, and he pulls back, suddenly no longer touching me.

My gaze lifts and I find Danielle looking at me with a big grin on her face. David hands me a shot glass and Jesse hands Danielle one. She nods, and I don’t know why, but I just do it. I down the liquid in what is my first drink ever. The next thing I know, David’s tongue is down my throat and when I blink, I’m not even sitting on the back patio anymore. I’m lying on a bed and he’s pulling his shirt off. And I don’t know how I got here. I don’t know what is happening. Panic rises with a sense of being out of control. I stand up and David reaches for me, but I shove at him.

“No!”

I dart around him and I must be drunk but I think my feet are too steady to be drunk. I run from the room and keep running down a hallway and to the stairs. I grab the railing, flashes of images in my mind. David offering me another drink. Me refusing. David kissing me and offering me yet another drink. I had refused. So why was I just on a bed and unaware of how I got there?

“Hailey!”

At the sound of David’s voice, I take off down the steps, not even sure where I’m going, but I don’t stop. I push through bodies and I’m on the porch in what feels like slow motion. I’m running down the stairs. I’m leaving. I have to get out of here.

***

I blink awake, cold, with a hard surface at my back. Gasping with the shock of disorientation, I sit up, the first orange and red of a new day in the darkness of the sky. I’m outside. I’m…I look around and realize that I’m on the bench of a picnic table. I’m in a park. I stand up and start to pace. I’m dressed in black jeans and a black sweater. The party. I went to the party. I dig my heels in. Did I get drunk? Wouldn’t I feel sick? I’m not sick. I’m not unsteady. My tiny purse I carry with me often is at my hip. I unzip it and pull out my phone. Ten calls from my mother. No messages from Danielle.

“Danielle,” I whisper. “Where is Danielle?”

I dial her number and she doesn’t answer. I dial again. And again. I press my hand to my face and look at the time. Five in the morning. My car is at Jesse’s house. I start walking, looking for a sign, anything to tell me where I’m at. Finally, I find a sign: Rock Creek Park. The party was in McLean. Rock Creek is back in Washington, a good forty minutes away. I lean against the sign and my mother calls again.

I answer. “Mom?”

“Thank God,” she breathes out, her voice filled with both panic and anger, two things that my mother, a gentle soul, and doctor, who loves people, rarely allows to surface. “Oh, thank God. I’ve been so worried.”

“I don’t know what happened, Mom. I blacked out and I’m at a park.”

“Near Rock Creek,” she says. “I know. I did the ‘find my phone’ search but it’s not exact and I was about to call the police. I just knew—” She sobs before adding, “I just knew you were dead in the woods. I was about to get help. I was about to have a search start.”

“I—Mom, I—”

“Go to the main parking lot.” She hangs up.

My cellphone rings with Danielle’s number. “Where are you?” I demand.

“At Jesse’s,” she says. “Where are you? I was asleep and I thought you were in a room with David, but he was with some other girl.”

“You don’t know what happened to me?” I ask.

“No. Jesus. What happened?”

Headlights shine in my direction from a parking lot. “I’ll call you later,” I say. “I have to deal with my mother.” I hang up and start running toward the lights. By the time I’m at the driver’s side of my mother’s Mercedes, she’s there, too, out of the car and reaching for me.

“You have so much to explain,” she attacks, grabbing my arms and hugging me. “I am furious

with you. You scared me.”

“I scared me, too,” I say hugging her, starting to cry, the scent of her jasmine perfume, consuming my senses, and calming me. “I don’t know what happened.”

She pulls back. “Did you drink and do drugs?”

“No. I mean—one drink. I’m fine. I—”

“One drink. We both know what that means. This wasn’t the first time.”

“No. Mom. It was. One drink. I don’t know what happened. Someone drugged me. They had to have drugged me.”

Her lips purse. “Get in the car.”

“Mom—”

“Get in the car.”

I nod and do as I’m told. I get in the car. The minute she’s in with me, I try to explain. “Mom, I—”

“Do not speak to me until I calm down.” He seatbelt warning beeps.

“Mom—”

“Shut up, Hailey,” she says, putting us in motion.

I suck in air at the harsh words that do not fit my mother, who is not just beautiful, but graceful in her actions and words. Perfect, actually, and everything I aspire to be. I click my belt while her warning continues to go off. She turns us onto the highway and I listen to the warning going off, trying to fill the blank space in my head with answers I can give her. But there are none and suddenly she lets out a choked sound and hits the brakes. My eyes jolt open, but everything is spinning. We’re spinning. I can’t see or move. “Mom!” I shout, I think. Or maybe I don’t. Glass shatters. I feel it on my face, cutting me, digging into my skin.

We jolt again, no longer spinning, but the world goes black.

Time is still.

And then there are sirens and I try to catch my breath, but my chest hurts so badly. “Mom,” I whisper, turning to look at her but she’s not there. She’s not there. Panic rises fast and hard and I unhook my belt and ball my fist at my aching chest. Forcing myself to move, I sit up to find my mother on the hood of the car, a huge chunk of steel through her body.