The Hidden Route Picked the Friend novel · Chapter 8 of 24
Chapter 8: Kneel
Briony read the order twice, and the second time her hands stopped shaking.
She folded it along its crease and set it on the table under the tin cup.
"Gallows Bend," she said.
"You've been there?"
"I've heard of it."
She had done more than hear.
It was a bend in the coast road below a stand of black pines.
In every route that dismissed the friend, the last picture of her was her coach rolling toward it.
The game never showed what happened next.
Nobody had ever asked why.
She turned to him.
He was standing very straight by the cot, with the plate half back on his face.
His hands hung open at his sides.
He looked like a man waiting to be sentenced.
"I'm not going to do it," he said.
"I know."
"I burned the first page.
I'll burn this one."
"I know that too."
"You don't know me well enough to."
"I know how this ends," Briony said.
"And you're not in it."
His brow creased.
"What does that mean?"
"It means I'm not asking you to be good.
I'm telling you where you're standing."
She walked to the door, shot the bolt, and dragged the chair under the handle.
When she turned back, his eyes had gone dark.
"Briony."
"Be quiet."
"The page watches the stair."
"Then the page can wait."
She crossed the floor and stopped in front of him, close enough to feel the heat of his body.
Her blood was running high and wild.
She had read her own death sentence in a stranger's neat handwriting.
She wanted to be touched so badly that her skin hurt.
"Take off your coat," she said.
He took it off.
"Shirt."
He took it off.
"Boots."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of The Hidden Route Picked the Friend are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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