Carissa Lynch - Like, Follow, Kill

One More Chapter

an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2019

Copyright © Carissa Ann Lynch 2019

Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2019

Cover photograph © Shutterstock.com

Emoji © Shutterstock.com

Carissa Ann Lynch asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © October 2019 ISBN: 9780008362638

Version: 2019-08-08

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page Like, Follow, Kill CARISSA ANN LYNCH

Copyright One More Chapter an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2019 Copyright © Carissa Ann Lynch 2019 Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2019 Cover photograph © Shutterstock.com Emoji © Shutterstock.com Carissa Ann Lynch asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library. This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins. Ebook Edition © October 2019 ISBN: 9780008362638 Version: 2019-08-08

Dedication This book is dedicated to my editor, Charlotte Ledger, and my agent, Katie Shea Boutillier. Thank you both for believing in my stories and making me a better writer.

Epigraph Always eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or bed—no escape. Nothing was your own except for the cubic centimeters in your skull. George Orwell, 1984

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

The One Night Stand – Coming in 2020

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

This book is dedicated to my editor, Charlotte Ledger, and my agent, Katie Shea Boutillier. Thank you both for believing in my stories and making me a better writer.

Always eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or bed—no escape. Nothing was your own except for the cubic centimeters in your skull.

George Orwell, 1984

I was born with a scream inside me. Lodged between my heart and throat. Can’t swallow it; can’t choke it down. Can’t spit that motherfucker out. It’s stuck, like me … anchored to the in-between, slowly rotting in the core of me. It festers like a sore, oozing through my bloodstream, sending seeping shocks of silent fury to every nerve ending in my body.

Like an IV, it drip, drip, drips, but there’s never a release.

One of these days, I’ll open my mouth and the world will rumble from the roar.

My body is broken.

Arms like dying, desperate fish, they flop on the seat beside me. Hips yanked from their sockets. Red-rose gashes on my chest and neck.

A deep dark hole where my nose once was.

And my teeth … these teeth don’t belong to me. Like broken eggshells, they stab the roof of my mouth, pricking my cheek and gums.

Are they Chris’s teeth?

If so, how did Chris’s pearly white, now-broken teeth end up in my mouth? Did I kiss him?

No, not a kiss.

I can’t remember the last time I kissed him … but I can taste his blood in my mouth.

Chris with the cocoa-colored eyes and hair like silk on my skin. Chris with the lips, soft as falling feathers on a windy day …

Chris: the love of my life.

Chris: who is dead.

One minute we were laughing … or were we shouting? Discussing our plans for the day … although now I’ve forgotten what those plans were.

And the next … the next … we’re upside-down, strapped in our seats like a rollercoaster, only we can’t get off, we’re stuck, suspended in mid-air. The roof of my Buick becomes the sky. I’m mesmerized as it swirls like one of those psychedelic spinning tunnels, like they have at the county fair.

Oh, the fair. That’s where we were going, weren’t we?

Chris promised me a deep-fried Snickers bar.

And I promised him I’d stay sober.

Chris: The Love Of My Life and Chris: The Headless Man On The Seat Beside Me are one and the same.

This is my fault.

Chris is dead .

I did this.

I. Did. This.

***

I stopped answering my phone months ago, but that didn’t stop my sister from calling. Every day, at five past noon—a phantom phone call, followed by a buzzing barrage of texts.

Hannah is calling … read my phone screen.

But Hannah was always calling. And I, her less attractive, less successful, less stable sister, was always ignoring those calls.

As predicted, the texts came next:

Hannah: How are you today? Want to go out to lunch? Need me to stop by?

Translation: Are you alive? When are you going to do normal things again? Don’t tell me I need to come over there and drag you out of bed again.

Me: Busy. Can’t. No.

My sister is more than my sister. She practically raised me after the death of our mother.

I would love nothing more than to answer her calls, to have her beside me—but not this version of her. Not the sister that tiptoes around me like I’m a melting chunk of ice in the center of a deep, black sea.

I’m a sinking ship she wants to save … but she’s too afraid to come aboard. Because, deep down, she knows I’ll suck her into the murky black hole, too, just like I did with Chris.