Path of Destruction (Broken Heartland, #2)(73)
Cameron’s words have played on an endless loop since the moment I stepped into my truck.
“You’re not her keeper. Her parents can handle this without you.”
Stay, she’d said. Cameron wanted me to stay with her instead of running out like I did. I’ve ditched her so many times for my best friend’s little sister I’ve lost count. Can’t really blame her for developing a bit of a complex about it.
She’d made several good points. Ella Jane has parents. Law enforcement officials have been contacted. She was one girl and surely with the search party of dozens, she’d eventually turn up.
But what if she didn’t?
It was the question I knew I’d never be able to answer. All I was sure of was that I’d never be able to forgive myself.
What my parents, Ella Jane’s parents, and Cameron don’t realize is that I made a promise to my best friend. One I intend to keep.
I’d broken our pact, made a move on his girl without even realizing it, but even once I knew, I still couldn’t let go. I tell myself that he’d understand—that if our positions were reversed, I’d want him to be there for Cameron, so it’s okay. But breaking a promise about looking after a guy’s little sister? There’s no way around that. Either I keep my promise and do everything in my power to find her or I break it and go home to the girl I’ve fallen for. While a girl that means more to me than my own life is missing.
“Where are you, Ellie May?” I mutter under my breath into the empty cab of the truck. “Where could you possibly be?” I grip the steering wheel a little tighter as the real question enters my mind.
Why would you leave me, too?
But I know the answer. It lies in the words I said to her when she walked in on me in bed with Cameron. The warning signs I’d ignored at school so that I could hook up with a girl that I knew was out of my league.
My Ellie May was slipping away, drowning in plain sight and I didn’t even throw her a life raft. Her pain was so obvious, so on the surface, but it matched my own too closely so I’d tried not to see it. This was twice now that I’d dropped the ball where she was concerned, and I vowed then and there not to let it happen again.
When I pull into the cemetery, there’s an eerie fog around it that reminds me of the scary movies the three of us used to watch as kids. Kyle and I used to plot ways to scare Ellie until she nearly peed her pants. He and I were a team, but the three of us were family. Without him, there was a rift—one I still haven’t figured out how to fix.
“I’ll fix it, Mase,” I promise him when I reach his headstone. I’d hoped she’d be here, but she isn’t. “I’ll find her. Whatever I have to do, whatever I have to sacrifice, I’ll fix it.”