Buried Alive

by Brown, Stacey Marie

  “Please tell me!” I crunched my hands into balls.

  She closed her lids briefly. When they opened again, a resolve was set in them.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Brennley

  (Nine Years Earlier)

  The bonfire grew closer as my boots followed the tracks the boys left behind. The moonlight did little to guide my way. I had forgotten a flashlight. I was impulsive and passionate, and tonight I was in an even greater hurry to get up to them.

  It had taken me much longer than I thought to get away from my parents, and the boys probably thought I wasn’t coming. Dad was not too keen to let me out late at night with my “older” boyfriend, but having Bryan there relaxed them. They figured Bryan wouldn’t let anything go on they didn’t want, which was true, and why I had to somehow get my brother to leave Jonah and me alone tonight.

  Low noises reached my ears as I spotted their silhouettes on the other side of the fire. Wanting to scare them, I crept quietly up, but as I got closer, I saw their outlines blending together in shadows, moving in frantic motions.

  A low moan of ecstasy flowed over the crackling fire. My gaze latched on to the two figures, and I spotted the striped beanie I had given Bryan for his birthday, which didn’t leave the slightest doubt I had walked up on someone else’s bonfire.

  Bryan stood, his hands on the hips of a bent-over, half-naked figure. Both asses were bare, their jeans down around their ankles as their hips thrust frantically, pumping.

  My limbs tingled, my chest constricted, my stomach knotted. A primal instinct inside already knew what I was seeing, but my brain would not let me accept it. My throat swallowed in on itself and I froze, not able to move or tear my gaze away from the scene.

  “Harder…” Jonah moaned, gripping the foldout chair. “Jesus, you feel so good.”

  “Brennley could come up here at any time.” Bryan’s head tipped back as he slammed harder into Jonah, his voice thick.

  “I know…but I can’t stop wanting you. It’s all I’ve been thinking about since you stood on the winner’s box with me…fucking you over and over,” Jonah huffed through his words. “Oh god…” His face turned toward the sky, crying out.

  Bryan slammed ruthlessly one last time, his mouth parting, both of them roaring out in pleasure, panting.

  Jonah’s face turned up toward Bryan, a smile spreading over his face. “Damn, I love you.”

  Bryan pulled Jonah against his chest and grabbed his face, his mouth covering Jonah’s fervently. Their kiss was passionate and consuming. Love.

  Jonah had never kissed me like that. Ever. Not even close.

  My body started to shake, vomit stinging the back of my throat. My entire world upended.

  “I love you too,” I heard Bryan mutter back, their lips finding each other again.

  A noise strangled out of my mouth, and they jerked their heads toward me.

  “Oh shit,” Bryan hissed, but I had already turned around. Run. That was my only instinct.

  “Brennley! Wait!” The sound of rustling clothes and belts rang in my ears, pushing my feet faster. A guttural sound rumbled in my chest, my eyes burning. Bile swished in my belly, my vision blurring.

  I heard my name over and over, fear growing thicker in their voices the more I hurried back down the mountain. On wobbly legs I couldn’t move fast, and the crunching sounds of their feet in the snow grew closer behind me.

  “Brennley…please…” Bryan grabbed for my hand. “You don’t understand.” I yanked away, curving away from him, but Jonah jumped in front of me. They quickly corralled me, and I darted around trying to find a way out.

  “Bren! Stop. Please hear us out.” Jonah held up his hands as if I were some wild animal. “It’s not what you think.”

  “Not…not what I think?” I screeched. “I just saw you…you…” My throat closed up, not letting me get out the words. Was that making love? Screwing? “You said you loved him.”

  Jonah’s gaze jerked to Bryan, his Adam’s apple bobbing.

  I shook my head, still not able to fully take in what I saw. “But-but you love me… You said you loved me…” The statement tapered off, crumbling on my tongue like ash, the realization hitting me like a slap. He never actually had. “Oh my god…” My hand went to my chest, my ribs crunching down on the air.

  “Bren.” Jonah reached out.

  “No!” I snapped at his hand. “Don’t. Touch. Me!” Anger shot through my veins like adrenaline. “You used me! How could you?” My hand continued to hold my chest, as though my heart was going to fall out. My attention flashed to Bryan. “You’re my brother…you’re supposed to protect me.”

  Anguish tore through his features. “Bren, I am so sorry. We didn’t mean for it to happen but…” He glanced over at Jonah, love glowing in his irises, twisting the knife already digging in my gut. “No one can know. Please, don’t tell anyone, especially Mom and Dad or the media.”

  I took a step back. “You’re worried about your career?”

  “No. Yes…It’s about…” Bryan dropped his chin to his chest, his feet shifting. “No one will understand. Everything will be taken from us.”

  “So…it was all right to use me as a beard?” My arms flew out, slamming into my legs, looking between him and Jonah. “I loved you.” My voice cracked addressing Jonah. “And you were okay with acting as you did also? Just so no one would find out the truth?”

  Endless agony emptied out my heart with the realization of what they had done, and would do, to protect each other, to keep their love safe and concealed. Even my own brother had offered me up as a front.

  “We wanted to tell you.” Jonah’s face contorted with grief. “I never wanted to hurt you.”

  “Hurt me?” I sputtered. “You ripped out my heart! I thought you loved me.”

  “I do.”

  A derisive laugh snorted out of my nose.

  “Just not the way you deserve.”

  “How long?” Rage built up my spine, shoving back my shoulders.

  They both shifted, giving each other a loaded look. Every look only stung more. This whole time I thought I had the perfect boyfriend, the one I would share those looks with, so close we didn’t need to talk.

  “Stop it!” A shrill cry came out of my mouth. “Stop looking at each other. I asked you how long. Tell me the truth.”

  Jonah gulped, his gaze going to the ground.

  “Almost a year,” Bryan stated. “Since last November.”

  As if someone punched me, I bent over, my hands gripping my thighs, bile moving up my throat. “Oh god.” November was my birthday, when I turned fifteen and Jonah had taken notice of me, when I no longer was the little sister, but the girlfriend. True, he never asked me to be, but I never needed him to. He never denied it when the press or our parents called us a couple. Not once. In magazine articles he would call me his girl. We were together. But now I couldn’t recall a time he called me his girlfriend. It had all been fake. From the very beginning, they used me to deflect attention from their relationship, to steer talk about why they were always together and neither was seen going out with girls. I was perfect to stop any rumors.

  All the times Jonah brushed off my advances flooded back. How he kissed me when we were in public but barely touched me beside hugs in private. How easily, when I had a curfew, they could continue to hang out alone on the mountain with each other, without anyone getting suspicious.

  I was a prop. Grief shredded my throat, fraying my vocals, my body bending over farther with pain as I howled.

  “I’m so sorry, Bren,” Jonah whispered. The apology only incited more rage to vibrate my bones.

  “Fuck you!” I bolted up, screaming, the clear night sky ringing with my pain. “Fuck you both!”

  “Bren, I know you’re upse—” I didn’t let Bryan finish before I whirled around and took off, not caring where I was going. I couldn’t be in their presence one more second.

  Hot tears stung my frozen skin as they flooded down my face.
My mind shut down from the anguish grating my heart into slivers. I didn’t care I was heading up the mountain. I didn’t care about anything except fleeing them. Running from the pain.

  The deeper my legs dived into the snow, the heavier my heart grew. Emotion swirled so violently inside, I felt as if I were going to combust. Their calls sounded farther away, drowning the noise in my head. My mind flickered through the moments, the times Jonah would kiss my forehead good night or stop when things started to get heavier between us. It was always me who pushed for more, who instigated our make-out sessions. I stupidly assumed he was a good guy waiting for me to get a little older before we crossed that line. Together.

  Little did I know he was crossing the line all the time. Just not with me.

  Humiliated. Angry. Hurt.

  Those seemed like simple words compared to what I felt.

  “Brennley! Stop!” Bryan’s voice echoed around me, but I ignored him, my love for him right now felt more like hate. He had been my idol. Someone I trusted and believed in more than life.

  My boys. My team. The only two I’d listen to on and off the course.

  It all felt fake now.

  “Please, Bren, stop!” Bryan called hoarsely from a distance.

  My brain automatically took his order, halting my legs, but it did the opposite to my gut. Unveiled rage ignited flames in my stomach, bursting through my limbs and up my throat. I started screaming, throwing anything the snow didn’t cover, smashing them against the rocky slope.

  “Shhh! Brennley, don’t scream!”

  Tears rolled down my face as I dug for more rocks to throw. My wails ricocheted up the mountain and back down the valley, echoing the agony finding its way out, while my heart continued to crumble.

  A faraway rumble, as though a storm was moving in, spread over my howls of anguish, lifting my head. A crack splintered up the peak, as if a building were being torn down.

  “Brennley!” Jonah and Bryan both screamed for me, anxiety raising their voices.

  Standing there, staring up, I wanted nothing more than for it to come down. To take me away. To end the pain. The thought of getting up the next day, acting like my heart hadn’t been shattered, that the people I loved and trusted the most hadn’t completely betrayed me, was too much to think about.

  “Come on!” I yelled, holding up my arms in a challenge. “Break me too! Go ahead, come get me!” The mountain seemed to respond to my dare with loud thunder, shaking the ground.

  “Brennley! Stop!” My brother’s voice moved closer, and I looked over my shoulder. He trudged through the snow, running for me, his face a mask of fear. Jonah hurried, close on his heels.

  Booming pops and cracks quivered the ground underfoot and my gaze went back up. Moonlight spotlighted the tumbling snow rushing down.

  Like being awakened from a nightmare, awareness of the peril, of what was really happening, slammed into me. Holy shit! I whipped around, seeing the boys still coming for me. No! What were they doing? They should be running away.

  Out of my peripheral vision I saw snow flash past me. Inside I knew. I understood I was not going to make it.

  Please. My eyes locked on my brother’s then Jonah’s. They headed into danger, coming for me. Please, save them.

  But Mother Nature was cruel. I was the one who welcomed death, who challenged and taunted her. But she took them in punishment, keeping me alive to recall my lapse, to remember to never take her in vain.

  I paid the price every day.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Rhys

  No. Fuck no.

  I stared at her, trying to let her story seep in, but my mind rejected it like a scratched DVD.

  “No.” I waggled my head. “You’re lying.” It was more in hope than what my gut told me. Seeing the heart-wrenching pain on her face told me she was telling me the truth.

  She swiped a tear off her face, folded her arms, and closed her jacket firmer around her while I felt no cold.

  “I wish,” she said softly.

  So many times I had imagined my brother’s last moment. None of them were even remotely close to the truth.

  My brother had been in love with Bryan Evans? Had been fucking him minutes before his death… It wasn’t the fact I just found out my brother was gay, which was a shock in itself. But the idea I had never really known him hurt deeply. What my brother had shown the world about himself, the image he put out there, was not the real him, but we gobbled it up without question.

  Piercing sadness lashed my chest. I had not known him any better than the media. I believed the articles. The two snowboarding kings, leaving both hearts and records broken, were secretly keeping their love under constant guard. Fooling everyone, including the one who believed in them the most. They used Hannah to hide behind.

  My eyes drew over her.

  I also had always thought the avalanche was a complete accident. But it wasn’t the full truth either. Somewhere in my mind I understood she was young. Upset. But the girl who had lied to me for so long had been the one who caused it.

  My brother was dead because of her. But she survived.

  I stumbled back, a wave of nausea whirling my head making me dizzy. “Fuck.” I was going to be sick.

  “I am so sorry.” Her voice broke with a wave of sorrow. Subconsciously, I understood it wasn’t really her fault. She was as much a victim as they had been, but I couldn’t get past everything she told me. It was as though believing so heartily in something, you had no doubts, and then finding everything you knew to be wrong.

  Bryan and Jonah were cruel in using Hannah as their cover, but at the same time they stayed to save her, probably knowing they might die.

  The ground wouldn’t stay steady under my feet, moving me around in tight circles, my lungs constricting.

  I had demanded the truth, the secret she had carried for years. Now I also carried the weight on my shoulders and soul. If my parents had learned the truth back then… The press…

  They were right. No one would have accepted it. Most of all my parents. He was their perfect prince. One who fit their mold of ideal son.

  “Holy shit. Holy shit.” I leaned over my knees. People say they are fine with it, but the media secretly understands what sells. Men want to be them; women want to be with them. If they came out, they wouldn’t be looked at the same. They’d be “gay” instead of “snowboarders.”

  “Rhys…” Hannah touched my back. I jerked up, moving away from her. She was now tied so tightly to my brother’s death I couldn’t separate the girl before me from the girl I had fallen for.

  “I can’t…” My head spun, and I understood the reaction to flee. To see if I could escape it. The truth was too much to take at once, my mind shutting down. “I just can’t right now.” I took a few steps back.

  Her chin lowered to her chest, her arms wrapped around her stomach. She nodded, hurt crinkling her eyes.

  Wounding her only moved me further away from the agony spreading like a disease over the cemetery. I wasn’t built for this. For years I numbed myself to emotion, now I was drowning in it. Buried in it. “You’ve had time with this…”

  She stayed silent, her fists crunching the fabric of her jacket.

  “I have to go.” My muscles in my legs itched to move. To get far away. “I’m sorry. I can’t deal with this right now.”

  “I understand.” She peered at her feet. “You know where I am if you need to talk.”

  She was comforting me?

  Her kindness simply steamed more anger into my head, glazing my eyes. “Yeah. Don’t count on it.” I spun for the path, which led to where my car was parked. With every step I felt even more fury rise…at myself. I was an asshole, but I couldn’t stop. The anger and pain I held on to for so long engulfed me in darkness.

  I jogged to my car, got in, and peeled away, not looking back. The instinct to keep driving and not stop until the border was between me and this fucked-up mess pressed my foot on the gas pedal.

  “Fuck
you, Jonah,” I seethed, feeling the loss of her more than him. “Even in death you somehow take everything.”

  I felt betrayed by him. Not once had he let me see him as he really was. Not one time had he behaved as a brother to me. He lived with a secret he could never express to the world. I would have understood, supported him, even if our parents hadn’t. But he was more concerned about his image, about sponsors, and being the dark-haired prince of the snow in the commercials than being honest.

  I thought about their using Hannah to hide behind, as though her heart didn’t matter. Shit, she was only fifteen. How could they do that to her? My teeth ground, wanting to go back in time and protect the fearless, full-of-life girl from the pain that would shred her of her vivacity. The press destroyed the rest of the young girl.

  My vision hazed with emotion, and I shook my head and pounded my fist on the wheel until fury pushed it away. As if my car were in control, it took me back to the cabin, my brakes squeaking as I rolled up to the garage.

  Lights blazed warmly from inside, glinting on the snow like sparks. A figure came up to the living room window, peering down. Graham held a phone to his ear, but at spotting me, he hung up and turned for the door.

  I leaned my head back and scrubbed my face. I didn’t want to deal with him, but I had no energy to do anything about it.

  The driver’s door swung open. “Where the hell have you been? I’ve been calling and texting for hours.” He gazed at me expectantly, but when I didn’t answer he spoke again. “I was worried about you, man.”

  I huffed, climbed out of the SUV, and stalked past him to the porch steps.

  “Reporters have been calling ceaselessly wanting interviews or at least a response about this whole thing.” He followed me up, shutting the front door behind us. My skin sizzled, the heat from the fire thawed it from the hours of snow pelting at it. “I can’t believe she did that to you.”

  I went to the fridge, grabbed a beer, and gulped the entire thing down. Beer was not going to be enough; my legs directed me toward the liquor cabinet, to the whiskey.