A worn inscription was there, the edges smooth with time. D + R = 4Ever
But right beneath were freshly carved initials in the center of a crude heart. L + E
Not forever. Not always. Just their two initials linked without a time attached.
And that was exactly how it felt when they got on a plane that night to begin their future.
Together.
In love.
Limitless.
Thank you!
Thanks so much for reading By the Hour! I hope you enjoyed reading Lane and Elle’s story as much as I enjoyed writing it.
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Hope to see you around online! Now read on for a sneak peek of the first book in a brand new series, The Ones Who Got Away, and an excerpt of Off the Clock if you missed where the Pleasure Principle series started!
The Ones Who Got Away
Coming January 2018
CHAPTER 1
Nothing can save you. Liv Arias rubbed goose bumps from her arms as she read the words scrawled on the sign taped under a maniacal-looking wasp painted on the wall of the gym. Nothing can save you from the sting! More hand-drawn posters hung crookedly around the ridiculous mascot, bubbly cheerleader handwriting declaring that the Millbourne Yellow Jackets were going to take down the Creekside Tigers. Some smartass had drawn a tiger with a swollen face and an Epi-pen with an X through it.
Nothing can save you. The level of artistic skill on the cartoon should’ve made Liv smile. Back when she was in high school, she would’ve never been the one making school spirit signs, but she would’ve appreciated the art and the sarcasm. Today, she couldn’t find enthusiasm for either. Because it all felt off. The new name for the school. The weird, too smiley mascot. Her, being there.
This wasn’t the gym where it had happened. That building had been knocked down within months of the tragedy. Spilled blood covered with dirt. A memorial courtyard was in its place now on the other side of the school. She’d taken the long way around and had avoided walking past it on her way in, afraid it would trigger all the stuff she’d fought so hard to lock down. Even after twelve years, she couldn’t bear to look at a list of names that should’ve been in a graduation program instead of etched onto a memorial. People she’d sat next to in class. People she’d bee
n friends with. People she’d thought she hated until they were gone and she’d realized how silly and superficial high-school hate was. Now they were just names on stone, memories painted on the walls of her brain, holes in people’s hearts.
“You said you weren’t in the gym when the first gunman came in.”
The interviewer’s calm voice jarred Liv out of her thoughts, and she blinked in the bright camera-ready lights. They’d been talking about the tragedy as a whole, but hadn’t gotten into the details of the night yet. “What?”
Daniel Morrow, the filmmaker putting the documentary together, gave her an encouraging nod, making his too-stylish hair flop across his forehead. “You weren’t in the gym…”
Liv swallowed past the rubber-band tightness in her throat. Maybe she’d overestimated her ability to handle this. She’d agreed to it because the proceeds were going both to the families of the victims and to research that could help prevent things like this from happening. How could she say no to that and not look heartless? But in that moment, she wished she’d declined. Old fear was creeping up the back of her neck, invading like a thousand spiders, the sounds and memories from that night threatening to overtake her. She closed her eyes for a second, focused on her breathing.
She wasn't that scared girl anymore. She would not be.
“Do you need to take a break, Ms. Arias?” Daniel asked, his voice echoing in the dark, empty gym.
She shook her head, the lights feeling too hot on her skin. No breaks. She needed to get this over with. If she took a break, she wouldn’t come back. She opened her eyes and straightened her spine, rallying up her reserve of calm, that place where she went and pretended she was talking about things that happened to someone else, to people she didn’t know, at a school she’d never heard of. “No, I wasn’t in the gym. I’d gone into the hallway to get some air.”
Not entirely true. She’d left the prom to sneak into a janitor’s closet with Finn Dorsey. But she and Finn had never told that part of the story because he’d been there with a “proper” date, and he would’ve never wanted his parents or anyone else to know he was sneaking off with someone like Olivia Arias. She’d first dragged him into the closet to fight with him, to let him know how she felt about being passed over for his student council president date. But fighting had only stoked the fire that had burned between them back then. Young, misguided, completely inconvenient lust. They’d been rounding second base when they'd heard the first shots fired.
“What happened when you were in the hallway?”
Liv didn’t want to picture it again. She’d wrestled with flashbacks for so long that it felt like inviting the devil in for another stay. Her only reprieve in the last few years had been one-hundred percent avoidance, cutting herself off from everything and everyone from back then. Letting the scene run through her mind could be too much. But there was no helping it. The images came anyway.
“When I heard the shots and screaming, I hid in the janitor’s closet.” She and Finn had thought it was some kind of prom prank until they’d heard Finn’s date, Rebecca, shout the word gun.