Dead in Bed by Bailey Simms, The Complete First Book by Adrian Birch Page A

me.
I could smell the hay dust on him, just like I always could whenever he used to
hug me.
    “Oh, thank God,” he
said. “You’re here. You’re here.”
    Now my mom appeared,
and right behind her came Danielle and Ian. Even my nephew Tyler slouched over
for my big return.
    Everyone had been waiting
for me. I hadn’t even considered that anyone besides Shawn would know I’d been
gone.
    My dad let go of me,
and now my mom stepped forward, her arms folded. I could tell she was waging an
inner battle between relief and being totally pissed at me. It looked like the being-totally-pissed-at-me
side was winning.
    “I sure hope you have
a good explanation for all this,” she said. My mom was small but tough,
especially during moments when she had to be emotionally strong. She gave me a
quick hug, then held on to both of my shoulders. “Do
you know how worried Shawn’s been?” she whispered, glancing upstairs. “I’ve
never seen him so sick with worry.”
    Just then my husband
appeared at the top of the stairs.
    He looked as if he’d
been crying, and he was as pale as he’d been in the locker room the night
before. His expression reminded me of the one he wore during the days after his
accident, and during the endless months he'd spent in the hospital with pins
holding his spinal column together.
    He didn’t say
anything. For a moment he just stared down at me, folding his arms around his
now-pudgy frame, and I just stared back up at him, not knowing what to say, and
everyone else just watched silently. I realized I’d been holding out hope that
somehow, for some reason, it would turn out that it had been Shawn who I’d been
with in the motel last night. I’d hoped that we’d both gotten so drunk that
maybe on a whim we’d just run off to the Starlight to make up for all the intimacy
we’d been missing.
    But now even that
remote possibility was gone. If Shawn had been worrying about
me all day, that meant he didn't know I was at the motel. I cheated on
him. I still had no idea who I’d slept with last night, but now I was sure that
it wasn’t my husband.
    I didn’t know what
else to do other than to just start talking. I couldn’t stand everyone staring
at us. There was no way I could tell my family the truth, so I started making
things up that I hoped were half-way believable.
    “I got stuck inside
the fairgrounds,” I explained. “I’m so sorry. I realized I left my phone at the
bar when they started evacuating everyone.” My whole family kept staring at me,
listening, so I kept talking. “I ran back to look for my phone, but the police
wouldn’t even let me back into the Buckshot. By the time I made it all the way
back to my car, they were already closing up the gates at the fairground. They
wouldn’t let me out. I had to sleep in my car. But this evening I finally
talked Jason Gibbs into letting me leave.” I glanced up at Shawn, who was now sitting
down at the top of the staircase. “I have no idea what’s going on around here.”
I almost started to cry, but I regained my control. I swallowed and took a deep
breath. “I haven’t even really talked to anyone all day. I don’t understand.
What’s been happening?”
    After my speech, my
mom was clearly feeling a little more generous. She gave me her signature
sideways hug and started rubbing my shoulder. Ian cleared his throat.
    “Tyler,” Ian said.
“Take your sister upstairs, please.”
    “Why?” Haley asked.
    Ian didn’t say
anything. He just raised his eyebrows sternly and Haley immediately dashed upstairs.
Tyler followed. Ian took me by the shoulder.
    “Let’s go outside,” he
said.
    I let him lead me out
the door. We sat on the porch swing.
    “Honestly, we don’t
know much more than you do about what's going on, Ash. There’s a lot we don’t
know. But what we do know… It’s not good—I can tell you that much. It’s
not just the fairgrounds and the high school. There are roadblocks on all the
highways coming in and