Read Online TIED (A Fire Born Novel) by Laney McMann - Free Book Online Page A

neck wouldn’t move. My brain quit accepting the right signals.
    “You’ve been through too much as it is. Everything’s fine.” He spoke as though he was trying to convince himself rather than me.
    “Fine?” I eyed him. “Everything’s fine? Are you serious ?”
    “You’re freaking out. Don’t freak out.”
    “Tell me what’s going on! Did no one else notice we were close to being frozen to death?”
    “No, that would only be us. I’ll tell you what’s going on when I can tell you.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “I can’t tell you right now.”
    I rolled my eyes. “Stop talking in riddles. You’re making me crazy.”
    “It isn’t riddles. Calm down already.”
    “Whatever.” I sat back, crossing my arms, tension building in my vise-gripped jaw.
    We pulled away from the hospital, driving in silence, a million questions running through my head and making me more angry and confused, while Max kept glancing at me until he turned into my driveway and put the car in park.
    “I thought I was dropping you off at your house?”
    “Like I said, I can walk.” He shifted and faced me, cutting the engine. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
    “I’m not five years old. You can stop talking to me like I’m fragile.” I spit my words out, a slow burn growing in my throat.
    “No one said you were fragile, at least not of body. But of mind …” He shrugged.
    I hit him in the arm.
    He grabbed my hand. “I’m kidding, Lay. Geesh.”
    I yanked it away and climbed out of the car. “I’m not letting what happened go, by the way.” I slammed the door, and the other side mirror fell off.
    “I’m sure you’re not.” He sighed. “Let’s find something to cover your car up for now—until we can figure out what to tell your mom.”
    He cranked the engine and parked the disaster on the far side of the garage in the grass, tossing me the keys once he climbed out.
    We searched the garage, finding the old dusty tarp my mom used once after our roof was damaged during hurricane season. Max slung it over the top of my car. It hung below the windows, covering all but the lower half.
    “Better than nothing. If we’re lucky, she won’t notice.” He shifted his weight and gave me a one-sided hug, chuckling. “It’s good to be back.”
    • • •
    I paced through the living room, sitting down on the couch and standing up again. Thankfully, by the late hour, my mom had already gone to bed. She allowed me to be out late—with Benny—but the expression she’d have had on her face if she saw me with Max? That wouldn’t have been a conversation I could walk away from easily.
    I wandered into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and stood staring at it for a few seconds, before closing it again wondering why I’d opened it in the first place. I wanted to call Max and force him to explain, but I didn’t even know his phone number.
    Everything had happened so fast.
    My mind barely wrapped around him being back. The last six years of my life seemed like it had faded into a distant past, and there I was again as my eleven year old self, except I wasn’t eleven, and something was wrong. Wrong with me, with my memory—with everything.
    I sat on the couch, wide-eyed. Every creak of a branch or rustle of the wind made me flinch. Settling back against the pillows, my eyes fixed on the ceiling, my thoughts drifted in and out.
    My alarm blared.
    I reached to turn it off and fell on the floor.
    It blared again, jarring me back into reality and the fact it was my phone, not my alarm. I squinted at the screen and hit ‘ignore’ at the unknown number, tossing it back on the coffee table before gathering myself up and stumbling through the dark house to my room, where I changed into my tank top and old soft boxers.
    A calm stillness had descended over the night. Usually, the waves crashed along the shore or the wind blew the palm fronds against the house, but everything was silent.
    My phone vibrated against