Spirits of Spring (The Haunting Ruby Series Book 4) (42 page)

As I was pulling down the dirt road, I caught sight of a set
of headlights coming my way.
At this time of night, it was
probably just a couple coming back from a little date night sex.
No one ever left these parties this early.
Whoever it was, I was
going to attempt to sell them what I had. Even if they went to the
police later, I would be long gone by morning.

When the oncoming vehicle got close enough, I saw that
it was a pickup truck. Shane Taylor’s truck. He would buy
everything I had so he could resell it later.
I was only a few
minutes away from freedom and a few hours away from seeing
Sophie’s beautiful face. Life was already starting to get better for
me.

I flashed my headlights to get Shane’s attention, then
pulled to the side of the road and turned them off so that he could
get a good look at my car.
He knew me—he would stop to see
what I wanted.

He pulled his truck alongside of me and lowered his
window. “What’s up, Roseman?”
“Hey, I have a full bag I need to get rid of tonight. Will
you give me a Benjamin for it?”

The bag in my glove box was worth three hundred at
least. I figured a third of that would be more than enough to get
me to Ohio and put a burger or two in my belly along the way.

Shane looked at me suspiciously. “How big of a bag is it?”
When I held it
up for inspection, he questioned me further.
“What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing’s wrong with it—Scout’s Honor. I just need to
get out of the business. Tonight.”

Shane uttered a
few inaudible words
to
Dylan
then
replied, “I’ll buy it. But I don’t have that much cash on me. Get in
the truck.”

My luck really
was
starting to change! “Okay. Give me a
minute to park my car.” I rounded the final turn, parked the
Mustang, and ran back to the truck—drugs and phone both
safely stashed in my pockets. I couldn’t wait to text my girl to let
her know that I was on my way.

Once I was in the truck, Dylan handed me an open beer. I
didn’t want to drive under the influence but I
did
want
to
celebrate. It was only a twelve ounce can so I figured that if I
hurried up and drank it, it would be practically out of my system
before I got behind the wheel.

“Cheers!” I exclaimed before chugging the entire thing in
one gulp.
Less than a minute later, my eyelids started to close
involuntarily. There was something in that can besides beer….

I woke up tied to a chair with no idea what time it was or
how long I’d been asleep. Though not exactly certain of where I
was, my best guess was that I was at the party cabin at Silver
Lake. Shane and Dylan drugged me.
What I really wanted to
know was
why
. And what were they going to do with me next.

I let out a groan as I struggled to get out of my bonds, but
quickly realized that it wasn’t worth the effort. Dylan, who had
been slumped over in a chair next to me sat up suddenly.

“Shane! He’s awake!”

Thundering footsteps pounded through the hallway and
came to an abrupt halt at the open door. “Roseman, I thought
you were smarter than that—I really did. Do you remember how
hard it was to convince me to let you
into
this business?
You
should have realized then that getting
out
of it was never an
option.”

I was in serious trouble. I’d never known anyone who
had walked away from the business. I hadn’t been in it long
enough to know what the punishment was for deserters.
I was
about to find out.

Shane hovered over my chair and demanded an answer.
“Tell me why you want out, Roseman, and don’t lie to me. Tell me
the truth and no one gets hurt.”

That’s when I finally understood why Sophie so
desperately wanted me to stop dealing.
I always assumed that
she was afraid that I would get caught and sent to jail.
This is
what she meant when she told me that it was too dangerous for
her to associate with me. She loved me and she didn’t want me to
get hurt. I could have done the easy thing and told him the truth
but it could put her life in danger, too.
As it stood, Shane and
Dylan knew that she and I were broken up—they would never
think to use her against me now. As long as they didn’t know
about the phone call, Sophie and the baby would stay safe.

“I’m afraid of getting caught by the police,” I lied and
tried to make myself sound convincing.
“Liar!” Shane said as he landed a punch straight to my
gut. “Why do you want out?”

I doubled over in excruciating pain. I’d been in a few
schoolyard scraps over the years, but never
with anyone as
strong as he was.
In fact,
I
was usually the one sending my
opponents away with black eyes and missing teeth while rarely
taking any kind of real beating myself.
There was even that one
time that I kicked the crap out of Jeremy who was half my size.
That’s when I realized that I’d been a bully. Now that the tables
were turned, I felt shame at how I’d taken my aggression out on
people who couldn’t fairly fight back.
That made me feel almost
as bad as the punch itself.

I still wasn’t going to tell him the real reason—I was
going to repeat the lie until he believed it. “I’m afraid to get
caught!” I yelled back at him.

“Liar!” he repeated as he pulled back his fist again, this
time planting it firmly against the side of my face.

The tooth on my bottom jaw that had been in bad shape
for a while gave off a cracking sound and my mouth began to fill
up with blood.
The metallic taste was sickening so I spat it out
onto the floor, blood and enamel fragments splattering into a
gruesome pattern at my feet. Dylan grabbed my hair from behind
and yanked my head back up.
He held it in place there while
Shane landed blow after blow to my face.

I’d never known such pain in my life. They were going to
beat me into a slow and painful death.
Would Sophie ever find
out what happened to me? Would she know that I died trying to
do the right thing?
Or would she think that my wild lifestyle
finally caught up with me and I only got what I deserved.
One
thing was clear—she would never know that I died trying to
protect her and our baby. Maybe it was best that way—then she
wouldn’t have to live the rest of her life thinking that my death
was her fault. Shane sent one more punch to my stomach and
everything went black.

This time I woke up in the middle of the woods bloody
and battered but still alive.
My eyes were almost sealed shut
from the beating and open to nothing more than slits. But I could
still make out the lake through the trees, moonlight casting its
glow across the line of boats along the shore.
If they had
meant
to kill me, they would have but I was certain that this was the
only warning I was going to get. I needed to get to my car and
drive as far as my gas tank would let me.
Wherever I ended up,
then and only then, would I contact Sophie. She would find a way
to come get me.

I stumbled through the forest, unable to see obstacles
that were right in front of me.
Every time I fell, the pain got
worse as I landed on every bruise multiple times.
Dirt ground
itself into the open wounds on my cheek and stung like hell.
I
wanted to give up. I wanted to lay down and die. Sophie was the
only thing that kept me going. When I got to Ohio, I was going to
get down on one knee and ask that girl to marry me—ring or no
ring. She wouldn’t care that I couldn’t give her a diamond. If I’d
only realized sooner that money wasn’t the most important thing
to her, we never would have broken up in the first place. And I
wouldn’t be staggering through the woods half dead to get to
her. This was what they meant by “learning a painful lesson”.

It took forever but I finally made it to the clearing where
I’d left my car. I was in so much pain that the simple act of
digging my keys out of my pocket made me wince in agony. How
was I going to drive even five miles like this?
out of energy long before the Mustang did.
I was going to run

I needed to text
Sophie now then find a safe place to hide until she could come get
me. Rosewood was unoccupied and it wasn’t far away. I could
make it there and get lost so deep inside it that no one would find
me.
“I take it they taught you a valuable lesson tonight.” said

a voice from the other side of my car.

“Jeremy!” I said with a sigh of relief. “You have to help me
man! I need to hide until Sophie can come pick me up! I’m in no
shape to drive.”

“Don’t be stupid, Clay.”

“I’m
not
being stupid!” Abandoning the life I’d been
living in exchange for something much better—how could he
possibly think that was stupid? It was the smartest move I’d ever
made.

“Did you tell her what they did to you? Does she know
that they tied you up and beat the shit out of you because of her?”
Jeremy asked as he leaned back against the driver side door of
the Mustang.

“No, I don’t want her to know that this was because of
her. She’s going to feel bad enough when she sees what I look
like.” My legs were aching severely and began to buckle at the
knees. “I need to sit down,” I said, motioning him to step aside so
that I could get into my car.

“Not until you change your mind about leaving.
There
are tons of girls in Charlotte’s Grove. You’ll forget all about
Sophie.”

Why was he arguing with me at a time like this? “No I
won’t! And even if I could, how do you expect me to forget about
the baby?”

Jeremy shrugged his shoulders casually. “Who says it’s
even yours?”

He knew Sophie wasn’t like that. When she wasn’t out
with me, she was at home studying.
He always called her a
bookworm. I was so in love with Sophie that I didn’t notice until
now that he never said anything nice about her.
This time he
crossed the line.
Bruised,
aching,
bloody,
exhausted—even
through it all, I had enough energy left to take a swing at him.

Jeremy caught my fist before it made impact with his
jaw and sent a heavy, work-booted foot sailing into my gut.
An
instant searing pain in my side sent me to the ground, gasping in
agony. It felt like something exploded inside of me.

“When I told Shane to teach you a lesson, I assumed you
would learn it.”

I felt another internal blast as something else inside me
shattered into fragments—my heart. My best friend sold me out.
My best friend was trying to keep me from the only thing that
would ever make me happy.
My best friend set me up for this
beating and was now determined to finish the job himself.
The
betrayal hurt worse than anything else.

He grabbed me by the hair and dragged me away from
the car and toward the shallow end of the lake. I started to cry. I
was too weak to fight. But I was too strong to give in.

“This is for all of those times you ditched me on a
Saturday night so that you could spend time with your precious
Sophie
,” he said as he dunked my face below the surface.

I held my breath as the dirty water flowed over my open
wounds,
washing
away
the dirt but seeping
in with
a
deep
burning sensation.
My lungs were just beginning to cry out for
oxygen when he yanked me back up into the cool night air.

As I struggled to catch my breath, he asked me one
question, “Have you changed your mind yet?”

He didn’t give me enough time to answer before he sunk
my face beneath the surface again.
Foul water crept into my
nostrils but I kept my mouth sealed tightly shut. While he held me
under this time, he fired off another reason why he was torturing
me.

“This is for all the times you made fun of me!
For all the
times you treated me like your little sidekick—not your best
friend!
For giving me that stupid nickname that no one ever
forgot.”

I was caught between anger and confusion. That wasn’t
how I thought of him. That wasn’t how I treated him. Why did he
see things so differently than I did?
I started calling him Kermit
years ago because of his last name, Carmott.
I loved Kermit, the
frog when I was a kid.
How was I to know that it would stick?
How was I to know that he hated it? I thought he always told me
the truth. Where was the Jeremy I’d known my whole life—the
Jeremy who was practically my brother?
When things got really
rough at home, his house was where I always went—even
after
meeting Sophie. He knew the darkness in me, the darkness I was
afraid to let her see.
Where was
that
Jeremy?
Where was he?
How could I have been so wrong about him?

He held me under water longer than he had the first time.
I was starting to lose consciousness. Just before I blacked out, he
ripped me back up viciously.
While I struggled to catch my
breath, he told me one more thing.

“This is for dragging me into this messed up business then
trying to walk away from it yourself.
This is for getting me
hooked. This is for ruining my life.”

I knew it was the end before my head was even back
under water. Jeremy shoved me back down violently and held me
down with an iron grip, shaking my head back and forth in a fit
of pure hatred.
He was right—at least about one thing.
I never
should have convinced him to start dealing.
I made the choice
willingly then dragged him along with me like always.
I was
prepared to die with that regret. I hoped that I burned in Hell for
it.