My eyes sting, but tears don’t come.
I can’t believe this.
Suddenly, my body moves, surprising even me. I reach for the door handle, pulling on it with numb, shaking fingers. But Chase hauls me back before I can get it open, wrapping his arms around me.
“What the hell are you doing, Pool Girl?”
“I have to—we have to—” I scrabble for the handle again, panic rising like a tidal wave in my chest. I don’t even know what we have to do, but we have to do something. Something.
“No.” Lincoln’s voice is rough as gravel. “There’s nothing we can do. She’s fucking dead.”
“But we have to—!”
My pitch is rising, and my movements become even more frantic when Lincoln starts the car.
No. No no no. This isn’t right. Nothing about this is right.
The engine idles with a low sound, and again, the irrationally terrified part of my mind expects the man in black to whip around the corner, to have been lying in wait for us this whole time—or to have heard the soft rumble of Lincoln’s engine from wherever he is now.
But nothing changes on the road ahead of us as Lincoln slowly backs down the small side street. Chase’s arms are still a vise around my body, clamping me tight to him, keeping me from hurling myself out of the car.
“We have to do something!” I shriek, and I know I shouldn’t be this loud, the man in black will hear us, but I can’t keep it inside.
“Yeah, we do.” River’s voice has that same dark, hollow quality as Lincoln’s did. “We need to get out of here. Now. If that motherfucker realizes we saw him, he’ll be after us next.”
“But Iris—”
“Are you gonna save her, Harlow?” Lincoln growls over his shoulder, finally backing us past another small side street before turning onto it. “She’s gone. You can’t bring her back. All you’d be doing is risking yourself.”
“That’s not—” I start, but I don’t finish the sentence because I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to do.
What I saw still feels like an unreal dream to me. A waking nightmare or shared hallucination that we’ll all snap out of soon. Something that happens in movies, or to other people. But not here. Not in real life.
My heart is still beating too fast, my brain moving too slow. My body feels like a strange vessel, an unfamiliar thing I suddenly find myself trapped inside. I’m vaguely aware of Chase’s arms wrapped around me, of the two of us shifting and sliding across the seat as Lincoln whips around turns, but I can’t quite process any of it.
By the time he pulls into the motor court in his family’s mansion and slides into one of the two garages inside the space, I’m wheezing. I can hear the sound, but I don’t even realize at first that it’s coming from me. Lincoln turns back to me, worry flashing in his almost inhuman amber eyes.
“Shit. We need to get her inside. Quietly. Her lips are turning fucking blue.”
“What’s wrong with her?” Chase’s voice rumbles against my back.
“Shock, probably. Fuck. Fuck!” He slams his fist against the wheel again, and the tenor of his voice makes my stomach clench so hard it threatens to expel every last thing I’ve eaten. He might’ve sounded almost calm earlier, but he’s not.
None of them are.
None of us are in control here.
And for as long as I’ve known Lincoln, or any of these boys, the one thing they’ve always been is in control.
“We—we—”
Nothing more comes out. I’m shaking violently now, deep tremors that wrack my body and make my muscles ache.
Lincoln’s gaze zeroes in on me, and a little of the panic leaves his expression, as if having something to focus on helps. “Bring her upstairs. My room. I’ll go inside first and make sure no one’s up. Give me two seconds, and I’ll text you.”
He slides out of the car quickly and slips through the door into the house. Less than a minute later, River’s phone vibrates. He checks the screen and nods. “We’re good. Let’s go.”
I’ve stopped trying to reach the door handle on my side of the car. Iris is too far away to help now, and I don’t think I could coordinate my muscles to grasp anything at the moment. I hear the door on my other side open, and then Chase is pulling me backward across the seat. One of my heels falls off, but he just leaves it, sweeping me up into his arms with a grip under my shoulders and knees. My jacket is on the floor of the car, and I’m still clutching my phone and wallet so hard my knuckles are white, as though I’ll die if I drop them.
The interior of the house is dark, and I don’t like it. It’s too much like the street, like that man, like the dark, dark lump that was Iris’s body. A low moan falls from my lips, and Dax mutters, “Hurry up, dude.”
My body jostles against Chase’s as he takes the stairs quickly, and the next thing I know, we’re stepping into Lincoln’s bedroom. It’s big, twice the size of mine, and even though I’ve been in here before to clean, I barely recognize it right now.
The lamp on the nightstand is on, casting a dim, warm glow around the room, and when Chase sets me down on the bed, I try to crawl toward it. I need the light. I need the safety it offers, the warmth.
“What the fuck is she doing?” Dax asks.
“She doesn’t know what she’s doing. I told you, she’s in shock,” Lincoln says. “Help her, I gotta take care of something.”
Chase tugs me back again, and I shove at his chest, at his arms, trying to break free of his grip.
“Hey, woah, Pool Girl. Calm down. It’s okay!”
He restrains me, grabbing both my wrists in a firm but gentle grip. I’m lying on
