Chapter 29
Ramsey~
I was sitting on one of the sports benches that were hidden behind the Ag-Science building, trying not to lose what little was left of my sanity. No one ever came back here because almost nobody studied Ag-Science, so it was a good place to try to collect yourself.
Try as I may, I hadn’t been able to get Wednesday morning out of my head. Even though I’d been the one to set it all up, I never imagined that the scene would be as brutal as it’d been, and that was fucking with me.
Emerson was a no-good cheating whore, but I still couldn’t shake the devastation that I’d felt watching her throw up everywhere. I shouldn’t have felt anything other than triumph that I had gotten my revenge for her betrayal, but two days later, I was feeling a lot of things, and none of them felt triumphant.
Deke had remained quiet about the entire thing, giving me time to sort through the aftermath of Emerson fucking destroying me, and I wouldn’t expect anything else from him. However, Liam…Liam had been avoiding me, and it was becoming concerning.
I loved Liam; he was my brother. He was one of the only two people on the planet that I trusted, and I felt like something irrevocable had changed between us. I knew that he hadn’t been completely sold on what Emerson had done, but if watching what had happened to her bothered me-and I fucking hated her-then I couldn’t imagine what Liam was feeling.
I had my knees drawn up on the bench with my head in my hands when I heard screeching and cursing coming my way. I looked up, and Deke had one hand on Bailey’s neck and the other on her arm, forcing her forward with each step. Liam was walking behind them, and I was pretty sure that I’d never seen Liam look so murderous, even when he’d been beating the shit out of Jamie, Roman, and Ricky.
Deke was foaming at the mouth when they finally reached me. “Tell him,” he snarled.
“Let me go!” Bailey shrieked. “Get your hands off me, Deke!”
I could see Deke’s hand tighten around her neck. “Fucking tell him, you fucking cunt!”
I hopped off the bench, then stood looking at the trio. “What’s going on?”
There was only one thing that Bailey, Deke, Liam, and I had in common, and that was Emerson. I could already feel the pit of my stomach hollowing out before she’d even uttered a word. Whatever this was, it wasn’t going to turn out in my favor.
Bailey’s hands were desperately trying to dislodge Deke’s grip, but she was failing. “I’ve never hit a female before in my life, Bailey, but I swear to God, if you don’t tell him, I will fuck you up.”
Okay, now my anxiety was skyrocketing.
Deke would never hit a female.
“What the fuck is going on?” I asked again. “I won’t ask a third time.”
Bailey let out a sob, and her eyes looked wild and terrified. “It was all a lie,” she cried out.
I could feel ice forming in the marrow of my bones, and fear started creeping down my spine. “What was all a lie?”
“Ramsey, please-”
“What was all a fucking lie, Bailey?!” I roared in her face.
She was openly sobbing now, but she was able to speak, and her confession almost brought me to my knees. “Emerson’s phone, all of it,” she began. “I found Emerson’s phone on the floor near the kitchen bar when it wouldn’t stop ringing. She didn’t have it locked, and I saw all the missed calls and texts from you, and I…I…” Deke applied more pressure. “Ow, okay, okay,” she sobbed. “I called a friend of mine…th…the dealer I use for parties and told him that I’d pay him a thousand dollars if he would help me play a prank. I…he…I told him what to text, and I texted back to make it look like a legit exchange.” Her body was wracking with sobs so hard that she started hiccupping. “When…when you stormed out, I…I called him really quick and told him to answer and pretend he was waiting for Emerson.”
I could only stare at Bailey as Liam started destroying the bench behind me with violent, brutal, forceful kicks and punches to the wood.
It was all a lie.
The text messages, the guy, Emerson’s cheating…it was all a lie.
A. Fucking. Lie
I could feel myself shaking, and my knees were threatening to give out on me. Bailey had set Emerson up, and I had helped Bailey humiliate and brutalize her. Now I was the one in danger of throwing up.
“Why?” Even though I had a good idea what the answer was, I still asked.
Bailey’s eyes went from dismal to defiant. “She’s a nobody!” she screamed. “She’s a filthy nobody from a trailer park! Did you really think that I would let her waltz into Windsor and take the only guy that I have ever wanted?! She doesn’t deserve you! She’s trash, and she belongs with trash!” Bailey’s hate for Emerson was palpable. “You belong with me, Ramsey! Me! How could you fall in love with her?! How could you want her?!”
“I heard this bitch telling Christa and Evelyn how she set Emerson up and was going to get you one way or another,” Deke spat as he finally released her, and I honest-to-God didn’t know what to do with her.
Oh, I knew what I wanted to do to her, but I wasn’t so egotistical that I believed that I could kill her at school and get away with it. Besides, even though Bailey had lied and set Emerson up, what had happened on Wednesday had been all me.
I could have waited until I’d spoken to Emerson before losing my shit. I could have found her and insisted on an explanation. I could have listened when she’d told me about her childhood and absorbed the kind of person that she was, instead of focusing on being between her thighs. I could have trusted her. Instead, I believed Bailey over an explanation that Emerson never got to give.
“You’re going to regret ever crossing me, Bailey,” I told her, my voice ice. “By the time I’m done with you, you’ll be taking a razor to your wrists just to end your misery.”
I turned away from her, then started walking across the schoolyard. Ten steps in, I started running. I ran through the school, towards the parking lot. I jumped in my car, then broke every speed limit posted on my way from the school to Emerson’s house.
Once I got there, I didn’t bother with niceties. I broke the door down, splintering the frame and making the lock worthless. Not caring about the damage, I raced up the stairs to Emerson’s room, yelling for her. “Emerson!”
However, when I got to her room, my heart stopped at the scene before me. The room was void of a lot of her personal stuff that had decorated the room when I’d been here last weekend. Panic started to set in, then I ripped the place apart, looking for any signs that this was still her room. When I couldn’t find anything, I went through the entire house but found nothing.
Emerson was gone.
I raced back to my car, then drove over to Roselyn’s. Emerson wasn’t friends with anyone else in town, so she could only be with Roselyn, and Roselyn hadn’t been in school today.
I barely hit the brakes before I was out of the car and running up the sidewalk to the Greene’s front door. The door was in danger of meeting the same fate as the one at Emerson’s when the door was finally wrenched open by a very pissed off, sick-looking Roselyn.
“What the fuck do you want?” she snarled, though sounding a bit sick also.
“I’m here for Emerson,” I said, getting straight to the point.
Roselyn let out a cackle so evil that it sent chills down my spine. “You’re a bigger egomaniac than I ever thought possible if you think that I’d ever tell you where Emerson is after what you did to her, Ramsey.”
I knew that Roselyn’s loyalty for Emerson ran deep, and I didn’t have a chance if I wasn’t completely honest with her. “I fucked up, Roselyn, okay? Is that what you want to hear?”
She kept up her disdain for me. “Saying you fucked up implies that there’s a way to fix it, Ramsey, and there isn’t,” she retorted coldly.
I’d never had a problem with Roselyn before. Even when she’d started sleeping with Deke and Liam, I’d found her to be different, and I’d been curious about her, but I hadn’t been curious enough to get to know her beyond a head nod here and there. Deke and Liam trusted her, and as unconventional as their relationship was, they seemed to like her well enough, and that’d been good enough for me.
However, right now, I was close to strangling her with my bare hands. “Look, Roselyn, you’ve managed to remain in my good graces because of your relationship with Liam and Deke, but don’t think for one second that I won’t squash you if you don’t tell me where the fuck Emerson is!” I was yelling in her face by the time I was done.
Roselyn planted her hands on her hips, but she relented. She knew that I was serious, and I suspected that she might be a little worried about how the fallout from her defiance would affect her sleeping arrangements with Deke and Liam. “She’s not here, Ramsey.”
“Then where in the fuck is she?”
I wanted to burn the world to ashes when I saw the answer playing across Roselyn’s face. She actually looked like she didn’t want to even say her next words. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “She turned eighteen yesterday and was out of Sands Cove before the sun had even come up.”
I felt like my entire body was shutting down, but I managed to ask, “Did she ever replace her phone?”
Roselyn shook her head. “No,” she answered as her eyes watered. “She said that she’d send me a message on her social media once she got settled to let me know she was safe. But other than that, she wants no reminders of Sands Cove and that includes me.” Roselyn lifted her chin, even though her lips were quivering. “And I don’t blame her.”
I stood there feeling absolutely nothing and absolutely everything.
Emerson was fucking gone .