All the Inside Howling (Hollow Folk #2)(106)

Becca was waiting for us when we returned. She took one look at me, one look at Emmett, and then one look at me. “What happened?”

“I decided to go on a walk,” Emmett said.

Becca turned her puzzled expression on me, but I pushed past both of them and went into the bathroom. The reality of what had just happened was starting to hit me, now that the shock was wearing off. I had been inside Emmett Bradley’s mind, and I had told him I loved him. No, I thought, shutting the door and sliding down it. I had . . . I had let him feel everything I felt about him. Jesus, how could it get any worse? He’d already told me that he just wanted to mess around. He’d already told me he never wanted to date me. Sure, he’d apologized—but now, I realized, he also hadn’t said that he had changed his mind. And then, accidentally, I’d bared my soul to him.

Turning on the faucet, I sat on the edge of the tub and let my feet defrost in the warm water. It was bad enough that I felt so attracted to Emmett even after he’d rejected me. It was a hundred times worse—a thousand times worse—that he knew, perfectly, intimately, exactly how I felt about him. And Austin. God, what was I supposed to do about Austin? The way I felt about him, the way he made me feel, those were things that I didn’t want to give up. They were things I couldn’t give up. But all that was in the past too, of course. All that was before I’d hurt Jake.

Through the thin motel wall, the sounds of raised voices reached me. Then footsteps thudded across the small room, and the bathroom door clicked open behind me. I said, “Becca, I’ll be ready to go in a minute.”

But instead of Becca, Emmett slid onto the ledge next to me, rolling up his jeans and slipping his feet into the water. After a few minutes of silence, he said, “Kind of a rollercoaster morning.”

“Yeah.”

“Sorry I yelled at you. I thought I was helping. I was trying to get you mad. You’re a hell of a dangerous guy when you’re mad, but dangerous seemed better than seeing you so hurt and scared. The rest of it, what happened, it’s my fault. You shouldn’t—” Lines of color creased his cheekbones. “You shouldn’t be embarrassed.”

“Great.” I let another moment trail past. “Sorry I got your shirt all snotty.”

“Sorry I ran away.”

“Sorry I ran after you,” I said, trying for a smile and the right tone, the tone that would make all of this a joke, and we could just go back to normal. “Now you’re going to think I’m desperate and clingy.”

Emmett shook his head, bending at the waist to trail his fingers in the water. When he sat up, he looked me in the eyes. For a moment he just sat there, studying my face, and then he leaned forward and kissed my cheek. “Austin can be jealous if he wants to. Hell, maybe it’ll be good for him.”

Then he got out of the tub, tracked wet footprints across the tile, and left me alone with the warm water, with the bristle of his stubble fading against my cheek, and with my heart draining out of a hole in my chest.

When I finally mustered up the courage to leave the bathroom, Becca and Emmett were on opposite sides of the room. Emmett had his coat on, and he was angled towards the window and away from Becca’s glare. Becca, arms folded under her breasts, was digging her nails into her palms and clenching her teeth together. Emmett turned to me as I stepped out of the bathroom, blushed, and said, “I’m going to make some calls. See about a car.”

“You do that,” Becca snapped.

Emmett shot out the door so fast that he practically left skid marks. Becca rotated, her glare peeling off my top layer of skin, and I thought about what she’d said the day before as we approached Union Station. You’re vulnerable. I don’t know why, Vie, because you know who he is, and you know what he is . . . he’s going to hurt you, and I mean really hurt you . . . he’s going to hurt you . . . he’s going to hurt you.

“Say it, whatever it is.”

“Nothing.” Her tone, in contrast to her glare, was soft.

“Becca, we didn’t do anything.”

She just shook her head. And then, in that same tender voice, asked, “How bad is it?”

“I’m fine. I promise.”

For a long moment, she studied me, as though trying to tell if I were speaking the truth. Then she hefted the duffel bag that we had taken from the locker in Union Station. A hole the size of a quarter showed where the bullet had ripped through the fabric.

“Well,” she said, “you’re not going to be fine in a moment. I’ve been doing some research on River Lang. I wanted to know what he cared about so much that he rented a locker in Union Station to keep it safe, what he cared about so much that he didn’t dare bring it to Vehpese.”

“And? What was it?”

Tipping the duffel bag onto the bed, Becca pointed at the first item that emerged: a massive black revolver, dinged on one side where the bullet had struck the day before.

“Well,” she said, “for starters, that is the gun he killed his parents with.”





I stared in Becca, trying to make sense of her words. “Someone killed River’s parents?”

Shaking her head, she took a seat on the bed and began sorting through the items from the duffel bag. “No. River killed his parents. He’s been carrying around his . . . trophies ever since, I guess.”