I missed. And he was gaining on us.
Savvy let go of my hand. She was gasping for air. “Go, Lucy. Run.”
I tried to grab for it again. “Don’t stop. I can hear cars.”
“No. You’re faster than me. Just go. Get help. I can take him.”
“No, you can’t—”
I screamed as a hand yanked on my hair. I stumbled backward, and a fist connected with my face. Stars danced in my eyes. Even Matt had never hit me that hard.
I was on the ground. I didn’t remember how I got there. Savvy ducked as Emmett swung the hammer at her.
She lunged at him, trying to wrestle the hammer from his grasp. It hit the ground with a thud.
She dove for it, scrambling across the dirt. He yanked on her ankle, and she yelled as he dragged her back through the dirt.
I dove forward, dove for her. My brain was still misfiring, spots in my vision. I wrapped my fingers around her arm and desperately tried to pull her toward me. I was holding on to her so hard my hand was starting to ache.
Emmett let go of her suddenly and grabbed something off the ground.
He swung a tree branch, heavy and thick.
It connected with her skull.
She grunted as she hit the ground. I scrambled to her. She slowly sat up, blood pouring from a cut on her head.
Emmett stood over us, breathing heavily. He’d tossed the tree branch aside in favor of the hammer again.
I wrapped my arms around her, protecting her. “Please stop,” I begged. “We won’t tell anyone if you just stop, okay? We were planning on leaving anyway. We’ll just go and you’ll never hear from us again. I promise. Please, Emmett.”
He stared down at me, his eyes black in the darkness.
“Lucy?” Matt’s voice rang out in the quiet. “Savvy? Emmett? Are y’all out there?”
I froze. We’d run back to the car, not to the main road. The car I’d heard was Matt’s.
“Ma—”
Emmett cut off my scream with a hammer to the skull. It barely grazed the left side of my head but still knocked me back. Savvy caught me before I hit the ground.
“Matt! Help!” she screamed.
Emmett lifted the hammer again. I swayed. I was dizzy. I opened my mouth to scream, but nothing came out.
I looked up. Emmett had his arm drawn back, eyes locked on mine.
“You made me do this,” he growled.
The hammer was coming straight at my head.
Savvy shoved me out of the way. He smacked the hammer into her head so hard that the crack reverberated through the trees. She collapsed across my lap. Blood pooled on my dress.
My hands were covered in blood.
There was a buzzing in my brain.
“Savvy?” Matt’s voice was still distant.
Emmett looked over his shoulder, cursed, and then swung the hammer again.
Everything went black.
CHAPTER FIFTY
LUCY
“You’ve been trying too hard to remember things,” Emmett says.
I’m out of the car. I don’t remember getting out, but now I’m standing next to it, and Emmett is looking at me worriedly. His fingers are wrapped around my wrists.
“It’s not good for you,” he continues. “Remember what happened last time you tried too hard? You started creating things in your head.”
The crack of the hammer against Savvy’s skull is replaying on a loop in my brain.
Too real to be something I created.
“Matt told you I was there that night, didn’t he?” Emmett asks.
I blink. “What?”
Emmett’s expression goes dark. “He told you I was there. He promised he wouldn’t, but I should have known that asshole wouldn’t be able to keep a secret.” He puts both hands on my cheeks. “I would never hurt you, you know that.”
“Matt told me you were there,” I repeat, even though it’s a lie. Matt didn’t tell me shit.
Emmett was there? And Matt knew?
“I left the wedding for like twenty minutes because I had to go home to let my dog out,” Emmett says. “I saw you … Well, you don’t want to know.”
“Yes, I do,” I whisper.
“We fooled around, at the wedding,” Emmett says. “We were … Well, we kept doing that. You remember, the times before that. You and I are always making our way to each other.”
That was one way to describe my getting drunk and kissing him twice, I guess.
“Savvy saw us, and she got really mad. I don’t know if she ever told you, but she and I had a brief fling. It was nothing, just a couple of times, but she acted really cold to me after. I think maybe she thought it was more than it was?”