Read My Beautiful Lies (Beautiful Nothing #2) for Free Online Page B

look on her face says it all. She tightens her fist around it, deliberately moving toward the nearest wall. Her back meets it; she slumps down until she is sitting. She flips it over repeatedly with her fingers, her eyes boring into it. Any light she had disappears. 
    “We need to get out of here,” she says, still focused on the pic. I don’t second guess her order, I simply lift her from the ground and half-carry her to the street to hail a cab. I am going to kill Jake. I can’t believe he was following me. We need to talk, but I’m so pissed at him it can wait until after Christmas. He had her and lost her. She’s mine now, and he will be sure to understand that. 
    We have the driver take us to my car and Laney is mute for the ride. We make it back to the car, and I lay her down in the back seat of my silver BMW. She doesn’t acknowledge me at all—she is in a trance so I drive back in silence. I pull in her driveway around one o’clock and open her door to find her sound asleep. I carry her in and lay her in the bed. I don’t know what this is going to do to her. All I can do is wait for it. Wait for her to fall apart again.

Even when I am dreaming, I dream of the voices. They come and go, but right now that’s all I can hear. They want me to make all her pain go away. My eyes won’t open. I am closed off to any other senses. All I hear is her muffled screams and cries for help. I just stand there, frozen. There’s nothing I can do. Even if there was something I could do, the voices would keep me chained to the floor. I jolt awake, my shirt damp with sweat. Laney isn’t in the bed, and I race from my bed in search of her. Reliving the night she tried to take her life, I fly through the bathroom door to find her in the tub. The water is spraying from the shower head as she holds herself in a ball. I climb in and sit down in front of her, turning her around and pulling her in close. I grab her hand to hold and she pulls it away in one quick jerk. I look down, getting a closer look and find her hand is oozing of blood as the guitar pic digs in deeper and deeper when she closes her fist.  Thanks to Jake she is falling apart again. 
    “Laney, drop it. Don’t let him hurt you anymore,” I whisper in her ear, trying to pry her hand open. She’s in shock. She won’t answer to me. She’s completely mute. I just sit and hold her as she holds herself. Minutes pass, turning into hours. I am freezing—my body has gone numb from the cold. She sits in my lap, shivering—not saying a word. Each time I try to move her she pushes back against me. When she snaps out of the state of mind she’s in she lays her head back. 
    Looking at me, she stutters, “Hold me tighter, because if you let go, I will fall apart. 
    “Never,” I tell her, and try to lift her again. This time, she allows me to. I reach around and turn the shower off, then stand with her in my arms. Quickly walking her back to the room, I almost drop her a few times from the numbness. I lay her down, sliding her soaked clothes off and onto the floor. I lift her hand that is tight around the pic and place a soft kiss inside her wrist. As gentle as possible, I open her hand. Her face scrunches up in pain when I pull it from the cut it made. I tell her I’m sorry before going back to the bathroom for a rag and bandage. Her hand is pruned and cold as I wipe it clean and bandage it. 
    How do you know when you’re in love? You put them first, in everything life throws at you. Each time I see her hurt, it hurts me. Every time I think of what they did—what I did—I cringe. I feel like a monster, like our love is a lie. 
    “Do you think he will come here?” she asks, breaking my thoughts. 
    “No, and if he does, he will have to go through me,” I spit out with more anger than I should have. It’s true, though. If he comes anywhere near her, he’s dead. Yes, I made a mistake letting my friends make this whole plan and wanting to be a part of