Path of Destruction (Broken Heartland, #2)(21)

“What are the hell are you doing?”

Her body hit the ground with a thud that thundered through her back.

“Answer me! What were you doing?”

She opened her eyes and saw that the boy above her wasn’t her brother at all. The train blew loudly past Hayden Prescott, who was glaring at her with murder in his eyes.

“You scared me to death! Talk to me, dammit!”

She opened her mouth, but she couldn’t find the air she needed to speak. It had been knocked out of her during their fall.

“Why would you do that? Do you know how f*cking selfish that is?” He was bordering on hysterical, but she didn’t know what to say to make it better. “What if I hadn’t been here? What if I hadn’t come to—oh my God. Oh God.” He squeezed his eyes shut tight and shook his head before pushing up off her.

She stood on less than steady legs. “Hayden, wait.”

There was nothing to hold on to for support as the reality of what she’d been about to do hit her full force.

He turned and gave her the fiercest glare he ever had. “Fine. I will wait, because I’m going to make sure you get your crazy ass in your truck and go the hell home.”

“You’re mad at me,” she said quietly, not a question, just an observation.

“No.” He paused and took in a seemingly much needed breath. “I was mad that you ignored me, mad that you didn’t tell me about your brother, and okay, kind of mad that you didn’t come to my grandpa’s funeral. But this?” He thrust a hand out erratically toward the train as the caboose disappeared from sight. “I’m livid about this. How could you even think of doing something like this?”

She stepped close enough to touch him. He was shaking.

“You’re shaking.” Apparently, all she could do in that moment was state the obvious.

He continued yelling at her in a pitch she’d never heard from him before. “Do you have any idea what it was like to pull up and not know where you were? Only to glance over the ridge to see you running like a crazed maniac toward your death in front of a f*cking freight train?”

She’d watched one come flying straight at her brother, the one that had knocked him beneath what was once her truck just after he’d shoved her out of the way. So yeah, she could imagine how Hayden might have felt. Except she wasn’t dead. He didn’t have to carry her lifeless body through the woods to the main road while screaming for help that wouldn’t ever come.

Her emotions returned to her previously numb body in a rush. “I can, actually. I can imagine what that was like. Because I lived it. I lived through watching a train hit someone I love. And I lived it because I was stupid. Because I was dumb enough to think what we had this summer actually mattered, because I thought maybe you were worth waiting out the storm for, because instead of being home where I should’ve been, I was here. The f*cking truck got stuck and he came to help me. Do you hear me? He came to help me. Not you. Not Cooper. Kyle. Kyle came to rescue my stupid self and he got killed instead.”

She was nearly screaming, her voice shrill and breaking on every other word.

“It’s my fault. It’s all my fault.” Her legs began to give out as he came at her, arms outstretched, braced for a hug but unprepared for the hard shove he got instead. She continued shoving him, slapping at him as he wrapped his arms around her despite the abuse she was inflicting.

“Shh. I’m so sorry, angel face. I’m so damn sorry.”

Didn’t matter. All the I’m sorrys in the world weren’t bringing Kyle back.

She threw everything she had at him, screaming until she was completely depleted, but he stayed there, holding her and whispering over and over how sorry he was.

He lifted her from the ground and carried her to her truck. How he kept his footing up the ridge, she didn’t know. She sobbed softly against his chest until he sat her down beside her truck. Kyle’s truck, really, but hers now she supposed.

“I don’t know that I was really going to…to really do that,” she told him, nodding toward the tracks.

“I’m glad you didn’t have to find out. But, Ella Jane, promise me you will never ever do anything like that again. Promise me right now.”

She nodded, but something flashed in his eyes that made her uncomfortable. His expression faltered, as if he was listening to something she couldn’t hear.

“What is it?”

His gaze returned to meet hers. “We have to talk to your parents. You have to tell them about—”

“No,” she said evenly. “We don’t. And we aren’t going to.”

“I have to. I’m sorry,” he said, sounding like he meant it but not like he was changing his mind.

She gaped at him. Surely he wasn’t serious. They’d had sex. She’d given him her virginity. And now he was going to tattle to her parents?

“Hayden? Tell me you’re joking?” She reached for his arm, but he stepped out of her grasp and into his Jeep. “I’ll never forgive you!” she yelled as he cranked it up.

“At least you’ll be alive to be pissed at me. I’ll have to live with that I guess.”

After jumping in her truck, Ella Jane followed him to her house. Surely he was just messing with her. He wasn’t really going to rat her out for something she hadn’t even technically done. Was he?