Tomorrow's Lies (Promises #1) (31 page)

Because if Flynn, who can wiggle his way out of most anything, can’t make it, then how in the hell am I supposed to?

Flynn

I
wake up in a hospital room, confused as hell. There’s a pretty blonde nurse jotting down notes on a chart. “Where am I?” I ask her.

My voice is scratchy, no more than a hoarse whisper, but the nurse hears me. Her head jerks up, surprised. “You’re awake,” she says.

I look down at all the tubes in my arms, and then at the many monitors. “How long have I been out?”

“A couple of days.”

“Jaynie… I have to go to Jaynie.” I try to get up, but the room spins and shifts in all kinds of funny ways. I fall back on the bed. “Shit, maybe not quite yet.”

The nurse rushes over to the bed, where she checks my tubes to make sure nothing has been dislodged.

“You need to stay put,” she states firmly. “You suffered a fairly severe head injury and—”

“You don’t understand,” I interrupt. “There’s somewhere I need to be. Someone,”—I struggle to put my thoughts into words since I’m still foggy—“someone I love is waiting for me. She needs me.”

The nurse pats me on the arm and offers me a reassuring smile. “Mr. O’Neill, when all your tests come back with normal-range results, I’m sure you’ll be discharged. But until then you need to stay calm and try to get some rest.”

Events from before everything went black begin to come back to me.

When I remember how Allison’s body was missing, I carefully ask, “What exactly happened to me? Things are really fuzzy. Was anyone else hurt?”

“You don’t remember?” The nurse appears surprised.

I shake my head, which only make things spin again. “No,” I mumble.

“You were brought in by…let’s see here…” She scans the chart. “Oh, here it is. Mrs. Lowry came in with you and one other person, a woman in her early twenties. She was injured, as well, in the accident.”

“Wait, what accident?”

I may have some blurred and mixed-up memories, but I know what Jaynie did to Allison.

The nurse seems not to know this, however, which could be a good thing. She continues to read the charts, reciting completely contradictory info to me.

“Oh, okay,” she goes on. “It says here the woman who was injured along with you is Mrs. Lowry’s daughter. Uh, hold on… Her name is Allison, and apparently she was helping you with a project in the craft barn when she tripped over something and fell onto a sharp object.”
What?

“It says here when you went over to help her, something heavy fell from a shelf and hit you in the head.”

“It says that, huh?” I say.

These are all lies in the chart, a clearly made-up tale. Seems Crafty Lo is craftier than I ever gave her credit for. No ambulance was called to the house and the police were not involved in any way. Mrs. Lowry drove me and Allison to the hospital. But why would Crafty Lo make up a bogus story? Why cover up what really happened? She has no reason to protect me, or Jaynie, so why would she
?

A light rap on the door pulls me from my musings. “May I come in?” a cheery voice rings out.

A vivid memory of Mrs. Lowry wielding a hammer makes my monitors go crazy.

“Mr. O’Neill.” The nurse hurries over to my bedside. “What in heaven’s name has you so worked up?”

The door swings open, and Mrs. Lowry steps in the room. I can’t react. If I blow the cover story she made up, I’ll be implicating my own ass and possibly Jaynie’s.

Mrs. Lowry’s gaze falls on me, and I can’t help but recoil.

Whatever Crafty Lo is up to, it can’t be good.

The nurse relaxes when she sees it’s only Mrs. Lowry who has come in the room. Of course. She
is
the town’s savior, after all.

With an audience in place, Mrs. Lowry puts on her best phony face and rushes over to the bed.

“Oh, Flynn,” she gushes. Fake tears fill icy-blue eyes that tell me I’d best play along. “I’ve been
so
worried about you. The entire time you were unconscious, I kept thinking how kind it was of you to come to my daughter’s aid when she tripped in that dreadful barn. And then”—she waves her hand around at all the tubes and monitors—“for you to end up injured, as well. Such a sad turn of events for all involved.”

Turning to the nurse, she adds, “I suppose what they say is true, huh?”

“What’s that?” the nurse asks, brow furrowed.

Crafty Lo laughs, a high-pitched titter. “That no good deed goes unpunished. You’ve heard that one, yes?”

The nurse smiles tightly. She is clearly uncomfortable, but nods and agrees.

Typical Forsaken townsfolk behavior, no one daring to question anything Mrs. Lowry deems to be true. Her word may as well be gospel. If she claims something heavy “fell” on my head, then that’s what happened. Forget what the wound itself may reveal. Same with Allison. Mrs. Lowry may as well have written up the charts herself.

Eyeing me with interest—probably wondering what I’m thinking—Crafty Lo asks the nurse if she can have a minute alone with me.

Mrs. Lowry naturally gets what she wants, and once the nurse is gone, she turns to me, the façade falling away with astonishing speed.

“You little fuck,” she spits. “You’re lucky I didn’t kill you back at the house.”

“Yeah? Why didn’t you?” I ask.

She pulls up a chair and sits next to my bed. Adjusting her tweed skirt, she says, “Because that would have been too easy on you. What I have in mind for your future is much worse. And I’m going to enjoy every minute of it.”

I feel sick. “What are you talking about?”

Her eyes drill into me, and it’s evident where Allison gets her mean streak. “First, if you think I haven’t pieced together what really happened, you are sadly mistaken. My daughter told me what she could recall, and I figured out the rest.” She lowers her voice. “If you want that little tramp of yours to remain a free woman, as well as you yourself staying out of prison, you’ll do exactly as I say.”

I bristle at the mention of the girl I love. “Just leave Jaynie out of this, okay?”

“It’s a little hard to do when she’s the bitch who tried to kill my daughter.”

“It was self-defense—”

Mrs. Lowry waves her hand in front of my face. “Don’t lie to me, Flynn. What Jaynie did was no accident. And you helped her get away.”

I start to interject that Jaynie had a reason, but what’s the point? Mrs. Lowry doesn’t care what her daughter did to drive Jaynie to attack her.

Mrs. Lowry continues, her every word another nail in my coffin. “If you want to keep Jaynie from being charged with attempted murder, you’re going to do exactly what I ask of you. Otherwise, I’ll recant my story. I’ll tell the authorities you threatened me and made me lie. I’ll tell them you were an accomplice to your girlfriend’s crime.”

“I don’t care what happens to me,” I mutter. And I don’t, not really.

“That may be, but I know you care what happens to the girl you got pregnant.”

I am stunned. She does know everything. “You know?”

“Yes, I know.”

“Then you have to know why Jaynie—”

She cuts me off. “Stop right there. There’s no excuse for Jaynie’s actions. And”—she suppresses a bored yawn—“if you want to hear my honest opinion, I think my daughter did you both a favor.”

I am going to throttle this bitch. And I do lunge at her, but she slides her chair back, the legs screeching as they scrape across the linoleum floor.

“Stop right there,” Mrs. Lowry hisses. “If you hurt me, you and your slut both go down. Don’t think I’m bluffing.” Her eyes drill into me as she says, “I saved the scissors, you know. They’re in a plastic bag, with your girlfriend’s prints all over them.”

I close my eyes and slump back in my bed, defeated. There’s no way out. The bitch has me by the short hairs.

“What do you want, exactly?” I ask.

She leans in, confident now that she knows she’s got me. “I want you to promise to never again see Jaynie. No seeking her out, no trying to contact her in any way. No going through back channels, like contacting Saundra or Mandy. And I want you to remain here in Forsaken. Not at my house, of course,” she scoffs. “You’re eighteen now so you can go get a job and find your own place to stay.”

I say in a dead voice, “Okay.” I wish she’d finished me off now.

“Sleep on the streets if you have to,” she continues, reveling in the fact that I don’t have a home. “I really don’t care about that part. But remember”—she stabs a finger in my face—“I’ll have people watching you all the time. This town loves me, and don’t you forget it. If you so much as even
think
about Jaynie Cumberland, I will have you both arrested for what you did to my Allison.”

With her words, I am condemned, trapped once again. Not by the law, or as punishment for the crimes I committed by helping Jaynie get away. No, I am shackled by a woman who always seems to end up holding all the cards. There’s no way out of this one, not if I want to protect Jaynie. And I
will
protect her, even if it means breaking my promise to her.

“Do you agree to my terms?” Mrs. Lowry asks, like this is another one of her business deals. To her, I suppose it is.

The first crack in my heart fissures as I say, “Yes, I agree. I will stay in Forsaken. I will stay away from Jaynie.”

“Good boy,” I am told.

And with that, my fate is sealed.

Jaynie

T
he town of Lawrence is only a few minutes’ walk from the park, and Delmont’s Deli is easy to find. A cute storefront of red brick nestled between a thrift store and a bank on the main drag. The bank and thrift store are closed and consequently pitch-black. But there is a light on inside the deli, despite the fact it’s now the middle of the night.

It takes a lot for me to muster up the courage to pound on the door. I’ve been secluded and isolated for so long that the thought of interacting with a stranger leaves my chest constricted. But I have to do this. Like Flynn said, all of this will have been for nothing if at least one of us doesn’t make it.

Inside Delmont’s Deli should be Mandy’s friend, Bill. He doesn’t know it yet, but he holds the key to my future.

I knock once more, this time more frantically. “You’ll be okay,” I assure myself.

I am so close to a breakdown, cold and exhausted and still wet. Now that I’ve had time for the events of the night to sink in, I’m also terrified.
What if the police come? What if Flynn and I go to trial? What if I never see him again?

“All right, all right, hold on a minute,” a booming baritone calls out from inside the deli. Thankfully, the voice sounds more amused than aggravated. “No need to crash in the door. I’m coming.”

I take a step back. My legs feel gummy, and I’m close to collapse. Damn, I need sleep.

Another light flickers on inside, this one closer to the entrance where I await salvation.

A young man with caramel skin, tall and with a slender build, twists a lock on the other side of the door. He looks at me through the plated glass and smiles kindly. I can’t help but smile back.

“Are you Bill Delmont?” I blurt out the second the door is open.

“Yes,” he says. “And you would be?”

The floodgates burst open. “I’m a friend of Mandy Sullivan. She was supposed to tell you about me. My name is Jaynie, Jaynie Cumberland.”

Realization dawns on Bill Delmont’s face. “Oh, yes, yes.” He steps aside. “Come on in, Jaynie.”

I walk into the deli and under the lights, I catch Bill frowning as he takes in my appearance. “Rough night?” he says with absolutely no humor in his tone.

“Yeah, you could say that.” Gesturing to my disheveled clothes and still-not-dry hair, I add, “I kind of had to leave where I was staying in a hurry.”

Bill doesn’t press. “No need to explain,” he says.

He appears not one bit surprised to have found a wayward girl at his place of business in the middle of the night. He’s obviously seen worse, and I’m glad. I feel less self-conscious.

“Sometimes,” he murmurs, “leaving in a hurry is better than not leaving at all.”

“You sure got that right,” I reply.

He motions for me to follow him to the back of the deli. We pass a bunch of tables and some plushy chairs then stop at a counter in the back.