Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 116220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 581(@200wpm)___ 465(@250wpm)___ 387(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 581(@200wpm)___ 465(@250wpm)___ 387(@300wpm)
No presence. No emotion. Nothing.
“He’s fine,” Kyle tells himself, heading to the bar from the wrong end of town. “He’s strong. He can take care of himself. He’s not afraid of anything, remember? Not even you.”
Did Kyle even use his talent efficiently at Elias’s house? His extrasensory power seems so exact and focused at times, like when he is having sex with Elias and has his teeth sunk into him. Or when a gun is pointed at his face by a madman in a pawnshop, apparently. In other times, he wields his talent like a slippery toy, falling out of his hands, sliding this way or that way, entirely unreliable.
How did Tristan hone his Lull? How can someone practice something they’re not even sure how to use? No one’s left to teach Kyle anything anymore. He’s completely on his own.
Even more so now without Elias by his side.
“Why did I say those things?” Kyle blurts out. “Why did I upset him like that? I should’ve been more patient. I should’ve been more understanding. He cares about me. He …”
Elias may be the only person in the world who truly knows Kyle, in a way no one else has, in a way no one else ever will.
Maybe even more than Tristan ever did.
“What have I done …?”
Kyle stops at the park on the way to the bar, his eyes falling on the bench at which he and Elias sat during a few of their late night walks. He grips the side of a tree, bracing himself, and lowers his head, trying to catch his breath. Did he ruin things with Elias? Was it that easy, to end what they had?
Or did something terrible happen?
Something unthinkable?
Heart drumming with dread, stomach flipping over and over inside of him, he pulls out his phone and stares at it, at the undeliverable texts, the failed calls.
He can’t shake the feeling.
Something is very, very wrong.
When he passes in front of the market, he finds Ricardo at the door, locking up. Upon seeing Kyle, Ricardo freezes, terror in his eyes. Kyle stops, alarmed by the strange reaction. Ricardo flinches away in fear, drops his keys, grabs them right back up, then runs off without a word.
Kyle stares after him. “The fuck …?”
He’s still thinking about the weird encounter with Ricardo when he comes in through the back door of the bar. Leland is sitting on an overturned bucket, staring at his phone, eyes wide, appearing tense. Deciding not to startle yet another person who looks unusually on edge, Kyle heads out front, ready to clock in and relieve Becks from her shift, despite feeling anything but ready to face a night of work, considering all that’s on his mind.
What he finds instead is a dozen people huddled at the bar, Cade and Becks among them, all eyes glued to a single phone, watching a video.
The sound from that video rings in Kyle’s ears like a dark and terrible joke.
Shouting. Scuffling. A booming, threatening voice.
Glass shattering.
That’s when it hits Kyle, what they’re watching.
Straight in the gut, taking away all his breath.
“Sorry!” cries out Jeremy, who appears from the back of the crowd, hidden, rushing up to Kyle. “I’m so sorry! I’m so, so sorry. I thought she didn’t do it, I swear, but … but then …”
Cade, Becks, and the others look up from the phone.
Their eyes fill with fear, seeing Kyle.
“Layna,” says Jeremy, nearly in tears. “She … She posted it online … on her page. She secretly posted it, the video, before her mom got her phone … the video from last night.”
Of all the terrified eyes on him right now, it’s Cade’s that Kyle focuses on, Cade’s that penetrate him the deepest.
Cade slowly lifts up the phone, gives it a reluctant wiggle. “Got 889,901 views, give or take,” she says, voice so small, it’s nearly gone. “Looks like you’ve gone viral.” She shifts her eyes, adds: “… Kyle.”
17.
You’re Fucking Kidding Me.
—∙—
Kyle sits in a chair in the middle of Cade’s office. There’s a cup of coffee on the desk in front of him he hasn’t touched yet, a cup Cade brought him an hour ago. It’s cold now.
He can’t move.
Is he even breathing?
The door opens from behind, Cade slips in. “Sorry,” she sighs, “needed to get a few things settled, all done, everyone’s heads are still on their shoulders. Mostly.” She comes up to the desk, face set into a semi-permanent grimace. “You holding up? Need more time alone? You don’t have to work tonight. Becks already said she’s got nothing going on, she can stay late.”
“No, it’s fine,” recites Kyle automatically, starting to rise. “I can still work. I’ll just … I’ll …”
Then his brain shuts down again, his words gone.
He drops back into the chair, staring blankly ahead.
The video was taken down. But not before a countless sum of people snatched it and uploaded it to their own pages, and from those, countless other shares and postings, on and on.