Read Online Silence by Becca Fitzpatrick - Free Book Online Page B

the side of the road for fifteen minutes just to calm down.
Dating Hank Millar.
Was she sadistic? Out to ruin my life? Both?
     
    One glance at my mom’s pilfered BlackBerry proved I’d missedall but the tail end of first period. The dismissal bell would ring in ten minutes.
    Intending to leave a message, I dialed Vee’s cell.
    “
Hellooo
. That you, angel?” she promptly answered in her best temptress’s voice. She was trying to be funny, but I nearly tripped.
    Angel.
    The mere sound of the word caused heat to lick up my skin. Once again, the color black raced furiously around me like a hot ribbon, but this time there was more. A physical touch so real I stopped in my tracks. I felt an enticing brush along my cheekbone, as if an invisible hand caressed me, followed by a soft, utterly seductive pressure against my lips….
    You’re mine, Angel. And I’m yours. Nothing can change it.
    “This is crazy,” I muttered out loud. Seeing the color black was one thing, but making out with it was taking it to a whole ’nother level. I had to stop haunting myself this way. If I kept it up any longer, I was genuinely going to doubt my sanity.
    “Come again?” Vee said.
    “Uh, parking,” I covered up quickly. “All the good spots are taken.”
    “Guess who has PE first hour? This is so unfair. I start the day off perspiring like an elephant in heat. Don’t the people who make up our schedules understand body odor? Don’t they understand frizzy hair?”
    “Why didn’t you tell me about Scott Parnell?” I asked evenly. We’d start there and work our way forward.
    Vee’s silence hung sharp between us, only confirming my suspicions: She hadn’t given me the whole story.
Intentionally.
    “Oh, yeah, Scott,” she faltered at last. “About that.”
    “The night I disappeared, he dropped an old Volkswagen off at my house. That detail slipped your mind last night, did it? Or maybe you didn’t think it qualified as
interesting
or
suspicious
? You’re the last person I would have expected to give me a watered-down version of what led to my kidnapping, Vee.”
    I heard her chewing her lip. “I might have omitted a few things.”
    “Like the fact that I was shot?”
    “I didn’t want to hurt you,” she said in a rush. “What you went through was traumatic. More than traumatic. A million times worse. What kind of friend am I if I just heap it on higher?”
    “And?”
    “Okay, okay. I heard Scott gave you the car. Probably to apologize for being a chauvinistic pig.”
    “Explain.”
    “Remember in middle school how our moms always taught us that if a boy teases you, it means he likes you? Well, when it came to relationships, Scott never outgrew seventh grade.”
    “He liked me.” I sounded doubtful. I didn’t think she’d lie to me again, not when I’d just confronted her, but clearly my mom had gotten to her first and brainwashed her into thinking I was too fragile for the truth. This sounded like a beat-around-the-bush answer if I’d ever heard one.
    “Enough to buy you a car, yeah.”
    “Did I have any contact with Scott the week before I was kidnapped?”
    “The night before you disappeared, you snooped around in his bedroom. But you didn’t find anything more interesting than a wilted marijuana plant.”
    Finally we were getting somewhere. “What was I looking for?”
    “I never asked. You told me Scott was a whack job. That was all the evidence I needed to help you bust in.”
    I didn’t doubt it. Vee never needed a reason to do something stupid. Sad thing was, most of the time I didn’t either.
    “That’s all I know,” Vee insisted. “I swear it, up and down.”
    “Don’t hold out on me again.”
    “Does this mean you forgive me?”
    I was irritated, but much to my dismay, I could see Vee’s point in wanting to protect me.
It’s what best friends do,
I reasoned. Under other circumstances, I might even have admired her for it. And in her shoes, I probably would have been tempted to do