Winter's Dream (The Hemlock Bay Series) by Amber Jaeger Read Free Book Online

live in an apartment—not that I would mind, anywhere is better than here.”
    “Minnie,” I said, trying to form the words to explain what a huge mistake, what a huge trick this all was, but when she spun back around to me with her eyes shining and giant grin digging all the way back to her ears my explanations dried up.
    “I just never thought I would get out of here. I know what I did to my dad was wrong but they don’t know what he did to me. My choice was to stay there or get locked up. I had to pick locked up, even though I never thought I would get out. And now we have family , I have you, and we’re going home.” Tears were spilling down her cheeks. My heart broke a little for her. I was going back to Hemlock Bay and she was going somewhere safe, wherever that was.
    “Let’s just be careful,” I said lamely. “We don’t really know them so we’ll watch each other’s back, okay?” I was going to kill Jordan. All his promises of playing by my rules had been just as false as everything else he had ever said.
    She must have seen my grim expression. “Oh, Bixby,” she said, grabbing my hand and dragging me back down the hall towards the office. “It’s going to be great, you’ll see.”
    Our send off was less than great.
    “I hope I don’t see you here again,” Sophie said as way of good-bye, “but I won’t hold my breath.”
    And with that I walked out the front doors of what had been my prison for a month. The yard looked just as ugly on the outside as it had from the inside but the air was fresher, lighter, and I gulped in deep breaths. The light was harsh and speared through the branches of the bare trees. A thin layer of crunchy snow and frost covered everything in washed out tones, even the fallen leaves littering the edges of the parking lot. It was a false, forced winterscape and reminded me how quickly Jordan could turn.
    Still, I couldn’t help but smile—I was free, sort of.
    “Over here,” Hazel said, leading us to an old station wagon. With my fingers on the chilled metal handle, I hesitated, looking around my frosty surroundings. Was I supposed to go with these women? Were they taking me back to Hemlock Bay or was Jordan going to jump out and supposedly save the day?
    “Bixby?” one of the aunts asked. “You okay?”
    I nodded and opened the door to settle into a dusty seat. The window was open just a crack and I left it, letting the frigid wind push back my newly grown curls. My breathing was becoming faster and shallower and I struggled to calm myself. Despite all his promises of love and better behavior, I couldn’t trust Jordan. Yet here I was driving off with two strange women who had obviously been manipulated by him.
    No one said anything as we pulled onto the main road but I could see the blissful grin on Minnie’s face from the corner of my eye. I sat up a little higher in my seat as I saw the entrance for the main highway leading back to Hemlock Bay and calculated in my mind how long it would take until I was back home.
    We flew past the entrance ramp. My head snapped around and I watched it fade behind us. “Uh, I think you passed our turn,” I said.
    “No, we didn’t,” said the aunt who was driving with white knuckled hands clamped on the steering wheel.
    “Um, yeah, Hemlock Bay is about two hours that way, back there.”
    The other one shook her head. “Oh no honey, you aren’t going back to your house, you’re coming to ours. Viola and I are going to be watching over you.”
    Panic began to slide around in my belly. “No, that’s not possible. I need to find my brother, I need to check on my grandma—”
    “Your grandma is in a nursing home and your brother is old enough to take care of himself,” the mean one, Viola, snapped.
    My breakfast jabbed hard at my throat and with my watery eyes squeezed tight I managed to force it back down. My thoughts sluiced around as badly as the contents of my stomach. “Okay, we need to get a few things