Redemption Hills: The Complete Collection

7. Milo

SEVEN

MILO

Rocks flew up from his back tires as he barreled down the dirt road. Sweat streamed from his temple and blood pooled on his shirt at his side.

His hands gripped the steering wheel like it might keep him chained to sanity as he struggled to see through the blur of fear.

Rushing ahead to meet it.

To cut it off.

To stop it.

“You failed.” The memory of the venomous voice played in his ear like the tolling of the dead. “Your betrayal won’t go unnoticed.”

It was said one second before the shearing pain had impaled him.

Darkness had sucked him under.

How many hours had passed, he didn’t know. Night had possessed the earth, crawling through the trees and sinking into the crevices.

He shoved the gas pedal to the floorboards, the tail of the truck fishtailing as he whipped around the curves.

It was little relief when the building finally came into view, his headlights illuminating the trailer. The tires skidded as he rammed on the brakes and threw the truck into park.

He didn’t shut it off.

He jumped out and ran.

Searched.

Shouted.

“Autumn? Autumn?”

Only the vacancy echoed back.

A sickly awareness that sank into his flesh.

Dread.

Desperation.

He burst out the back door and into the night.

His footsteps pounded.

The water glittered like black ice.

Milo plunged into the freezing cold.

It swallowed him whole.

An abyss.

A chasm.

Darkness. Darkness.

He sank to the bottom where it reigned for eternity.

Where his life was left without light.

A roar erupted from my soul, so loud it battered the walls and shook the panes of the windows.

A reverberation that curled through the darkened cabin like the call of the forsaken.

The lost.

The abandoned.

The desolate.

Air heaved on tormented shockwaves from my lungs, and my shoulders jutted in spastic quakes as the room spun.

Agony crawled across my flesh like tiny demons searching for a home, infiltrating the fissures that were torn open wide, pain squeezing my ribs in a fist so tight I was sure I was being crushed.

Night after night.

It gathered like dust and dirt.

A heaped grave at my feet.

I sat upright in my bed, half disoriented and half seeing too clearly.

Each time the nightmare came to collect, I felt like I’d been dragged in front of a mirror that replayed every hope I’d dared to dream on a distorted loop.

Round and round and round.

All while forcing me to stare at the one responsible for destroying it.

I inhaled through the pain, fuckin’ desperate to reel it back in, but it was only getting deformed and contorted when I felt the shift in the dense, dark air.

That was one second before I heard the creak of the floorboards.

My chest squeezed in a fist when there was a light tapping against the door.

The sound crawled through the atmosphere and wrapped me like solace.

A blanket of comfort that I didn’t deserve.

“Milo?” Her voice was a timid call, a whisper that panged against my heart.

Despair gusted from the depths.

“I’m fine, Tessa.” The lie lashed from my tongue.

Seconds raced, and I swore that I could hear her heartbeat thundering from the other side of the door.

“I don’t think you are,” she finally whispered through the wood. Her voice a crutch.

A lure.

Peace.

“Can I…come in?”

I needed to tell her to go. Hell, I needed to tell her that this whole thing had been a bad idea from the start. After the way I’d reacted this afternoon when she’d asked me about Autumn? I needed to end this before it was too late.

But it was my fool mouth that was muttering, “Yeah, Tessa, you can come in.”