Deadly to Love by Mia Hoddell Page B

I knew it wasn’t long enough. My eyes still felt puffy and I could feel the dry paths the tears had made on my cheeks.
    “Hello,” I groaned into the phone, sniffling a bit as I did.
    “Rea are you OK? Where are you staying I’m just leaving your house now?”
    I was so shocked to hear Kai’s voice on the other end of the phone I barely registered what he had said.
    “Rea? The address.” He sounded a little out of breath and not in a good mood so I gave him the address before I could wonder why his voice was strained.
    “I’ll be there soon okay? I’ll ring you when I’m outside.”
    Before he could hang up I interrupted him quickly.
    “Why were you at my house?” The previous messages were registering slowly in my mind and groggily my brain was trying to come up with logical answers to the questions I was posing to him.
    “I’ll explain everything when I get there okay? Don’t worry everything is fine, just go back to sleep and I’ll ring you again soon.”
    He sounded so concerned and my heart melted slightly, even though I was still trying to figure why he had travelled all the way from Maveria.
    “I’ll try.” I groaned, already half asleep again.
    “Cya soon.” With that I heard the faint start of an engine and then the constant ring as he hung up.
    I found myself waking after only being asleep for half an hour later to the sound of a phone ringing in the living room. At first I thought it was Kai ringing me on my mobile but then I heard the faint voice of my mum talking somewhere else in the house.
    Walking out of the room that I was staying in, I made my way to the living room, where I saw my mum kneeling on the floor. My aunt’s arms surrounded her as they both cried. The phone lay on the floor a few metres away from them both and their bodies heaved with furious sobs.
    “Mum what happened?” I asked as both heads turned to look at me. I already had my suspicions but I needed to hear whatever it was out loud to confirm them.
    My aunt raised her head from my mum’s shoulder, her face set in a stern, grim line. I already knew what she was going to say before she spoke.
    “They’ve controlled the fires and thankfully they didn’t reach your house but they also found a body in the woods.” I was listening to what she was saying but the words weren’t sinking in. Nothing felt real, my dad couldn’t have been dead.
    “They need to ID the body but the guy sounded almost certain.”
    She went on to say but I had stopped listening. Instead I just stood there in a trance as I tried to comprehend what she had told me.
My dad is dead and I didn’t even get to see him this morning. How can he be gone? He can’t be
.
    I remained silent, not knowing what to say so the only sound filling the room was my mum sobbing. I wanted to comfort her but I needed time to deal with this myself and I don’t like people seeing me cry so heading back to my room I locked the door and for the second time that night collapsed on my bed. Only this time sleep didn’t come. I lay there staring at the same spot on the cream ceiling, thoughts crashing around in my head as I tried to make sense of the past day’s events.
    At some point I curled up on my side, clutching the pillow to my chest for comfort as a few single tears fell from my eyes, staining the pillow. All that had done though was stop me from staring at the ceiling as I was now focused on the wall. I wasn’t sure how long I lay there, the faint chokes of my mum trying to control her cries barely audible, before my phone went off. The sound only faintly registered in my head as I lay there in blank trance. It was almost like I was no longer connected to my body.
    Finally the sound went on too long for me to ignore, so slowly rolling over I fumbled around in the dark for the mobile.
    “Hello?” I sniffed, I hadn’t looked at the caller ID but I still tried to hide the fact I had been crying.
    “Rea? What’s wrong? Are you OK?” His voice was frantic