Left for Dead Came Back for Everything novel Chapter 36

Ring. Ring.

The call connected after two rings.

"Who is this?" an exhausted voice asked over the line.

Hearing her friend's voice instantly brought tears to Eliza's eyes.

She bit her lip, trying desperately to hold it together, and whispered, "Gwen, it's me."

Silence fell over the line, as if someone had hit mute.

The quiet stretched for ten seconds, followed by the loud crash of a chair being kicked over.

"Eliza?" Gwen shrieked.

Her disbelief quickly morphed into a hysterical scream. "Eliza, is that you?"

"Is it really you?"

Eliza covered her mouth, sobbing into the receiver. "It's me!"

Right on cue, Gwen started wailing at the top of her lungs. "You heartless bitch! Are you haunting me from beyond the grave?"

"Why are you calling me? Did Hell reject you?"

Then came a heart-wrenching, ugly sob.

Hearing her best friend lose it completely made Eliza feel incredibly guilty.

When she wanted to die, she thought it was better to just sever contact.

But now, hearing Gwen's devastation, she deeply regretted it.

She cried right along with her. "I'm so sorry. It's my fault. I'm on Claremont Island. Can you come get me?"

Gwen roared furiously, "You stay right there! I'm flying a helicopter over right now. If you pull a disappearing act again, I'll break your other leg!"

Gwen threw her arms around her, bawling uncontrollably. "You scared me to death! Do you hear me? You scared me to death!" She kept repeating the same sentence over and over.

She wiped her tears and snot all over Eliza's shoulder, gasping for air.

Eliza let her tears fall freely. "I'm sorry. It's my fault. I should have called you immediately. I didn't have a phone, and I needed to figure some things out. That's why I didn't reach out."

Then, something clicked, and she pulled back slightly. "Wait, what about you? Are you okay? Did you fall in?"

Gwen shook with rage, furiously wiping her eyes. "Oh, so now you care! I watched you fall into the water. I thought you were dead! Then I saw what happened on that bitch Yvonne's livestream, and I really thought I'd lost you forever!"

Eliza froze. "What livestream?"

Gwen let out a venomous laugh. "Yvonne's livestream. Didn't you know? She deliberately streamed her and Zander's mock wedding out on the deck!"

"When the storm hit, her phone fell into a crevice, and the camera pointed directly at the spot where you went overboard."

Gwen grew even more furious. "Do you know what people are saying online? They're saying the jealous ex-wife tried to upstage Yvonne and Zander's wedding by intentionally throwing herself into the ocean just to get her ex-husband's attention!"