Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 89074 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89074 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
That needle in my neck is exactly the kind of thing you’d do for fun, Hunter Knox.
My thoughts drift as I fall in and out of sleep again, but I keep seeing the image of his eyes in my mind. Blue-grey beautiful eyes.
I shouldn’t have kissed you.
Shouldn’t have ever gotten close.
Just fucking leave this place, and leave me alone.
But as I sleep, my dreams don’t become nightmares like I expect them to.
I dream of Hunter at the edge of my bed, but for some reason, I’m not afraid.
I dream of his lips against my skin.
They’re soft, and so warm, just like they were at the Stone and Flame party. He kisses me gently, in the same spot on my neck where the dart took me out.
Or is this real, and I’m just too sedated to know it?
His lips feel so good.
Shamefully good.
“Don’t stop,” I murmur, and he comes back in. It’s like he’s trying to kiss away the remnant of the drug on my skin.
“I’ll find out who did this. I will end them,” I hear him murmur, and I know I have to be dreaming because for the first time in my life, I feel a strong, unwavering emotion that I’ve never felt toward Hunter Knox.
I trust him.
And even somewhere in that surreal state, I know how dangerous that is.
6
Hunter
Rayne makes it way too easy to follow him around campus.
If someone had put a dart in my neck, I would change up my routines.
Take different pathways each day.
I’d go to new places, not leading them along my usual trail.
Rayne doesn’t seem to change anything from day to day in the following week.
It’s been seven days since the night of the incident, and no other attacks have happened. Classes began this week, and I’ve been able to map out Rayne’s schedule pretty easily: he has two classes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and three classes on Tuesday and Thursday.
He goes to the gym daily, and goes for a run around campus most days.
He doesn’t usually go to the big campus dining hall, the Colossus. He prefers the Kettle, usually opting to go there for lunch.
He’s also constantly with my brother.
Fucking constantly.
Some things don’t change, I guess.
And when I watch the way Weston and Rayne parade themselves around this campus like it really is their kingdom, it makes my skin crawl.
Today is the first day that Rayne finally heads to the gym alone.
Thank the fucking gods above.
Finally, my brother isn’t with him.
I see him duck in through a pair of double doors on the side of the big campus gym, and I follow after him.
As usual, the gym building is crowded. Rayne is holding his phone against his ear, and I catch snippets of his conversation.
“It’s going good, Mom,” he says, and a flare of bitter jealousy creeps through me.
Every time Rayne’s mom dropped him off at school or at our house, growing up, I was jealous.
His mom was perfect, as far as mothers go.
Loving, kind, and supportive of her son. Her hair was chestnut brown just like his, and she always wore it in a messy ponytail as she went off to work shifts at the diner. They didn’t have money, but Rayne could never understand the depths of how lucky he was to have a deeply caring parent.
My mother was gone since before I could start forming memories. My father said she broke his heart, but I’m convinced he was the one who cheated on her, driving our mother away.
She sent us Christmas cards every year from her house in Sweden.
That’s all Wes and I have ever really heard from our mother.
“Semester’s been a banger so far,” Rayne is saying to his mom now as he walks down the long hall in the gym building. “We’ve been having a lot of fun. Classes are kind of hard, but that’s always true. Yeah. I love you, too.”
Interesting.
He isn’t telling her about the attacks at all?
Maybe he doesn’t want his dear old Ma to worry.
Rayne disappears for a moment past a giant group of cross-country runners, freshly changed into their uniforms and walking down the gym hall like a flock of tall, wild birds.
I manage to catch a glance of his hair as he heads into a separate room, and I duck in a moment later.
It’s a tiled room full of more rows of lockers and private showers in the back.
Inside the room, it’s not as crowded, and I only see one small group of guys hauling duffel bags out the door as I head in.
For a minute I think I’ve lost him.
I go to the back of the locker room and hear a shower running, but when I look inside the stall, no one is in it.
I catch a whiff of Rayne’s sunscreen, a smell I’ve gotten used to after sharing a room with him this week.