She takes a few steps closer to me, and I can see every place where I hit her. A black eye is blooming on one side of her face, and she sports several scrapes on her cheeks from my nails and the rocks and twigs we rolled around on. Her wounds have been cleaned though, the blood washed away so that all that’s left are little red scratches and purpling bruises. I doubt I look like that right now. I’m probably still a blood-smeared, filthy mess.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I grit out.
Her voice drops, her eyes narrowing a little. “You should know. You were a really bad girl. You spent more time here than I ever did.”
More time than she did? Have we been down here before?
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I insist through gritted teeth. The throbbing pain in my head is getting worse, and it feels like someone is trying to rip a piece of my brain out.
My gaze flicks around the room, searching for clues. Something. Anything.
You spent more time here than I ever did.
The words play on repeat in my mind as I scan the small space. Then my attention snags on a crack in the wall, a few feet high, only a few inches wide. There’s something about the way the shadows hit it, the way the gray concrete turns into black and purples and deep blues that reminds me of something I should know, something I was trying to remember…
It comes back to me in a rush. My paintings.
The patterns. The whorls of colors and shadows and darkness.
I do know this place.
Oh, fuck.
My stomach knots as I turn my gaze back to Reagan, my eyes wide. Long-repressed memories are pressing up against the inside of my skull, threatening to break me. Threatening every shred of my sanity.
I know this place.
On the other side of the room, the door scrapes open. Its hinges creak a little, and Reagan’s head snaps up at the sound, the twisted hatred on her face transforming instantly to something softer. Something fawning and needy. The sudden change in her makes all the fine hairs on my body stand on end, my skin prickling with goosebumps as the fractured memories in my mind finally start to take shape.
Reagan takes a step back, and the man who just entered takes her place, coming to stand in front of me.
I crane my neck, looking up into blue eyes and a handsome face. Perfectly styled hair with streaks of gray that accent the coppery-red strands. Movie-star handsome. That’s what I thought when I saw him at my art show, standing in the corner talking to Cliff.
Now I don’t see a movie star.
I just see a fucking monster.
Alan Montgomery gazes down at me, his hands clasped behind his back and his face unreadable.
“Hello, Sabrina.”
To Be Continued…
What Sinners Love, the final book in the Sinners of Hawthorne University series, is on Amazon HERE.
And if you’re dying to talk about the book, come hang out in my Facebook group, Eva Ashwood’s Readers. I post giveaways, teasers, and updates there too!
Looking for another series to binge? Try my completed dark high school romance series, Slateview High. Turn the page to check out the cover and blurb.
"You're in our world now, Princess. You're ours."
My whol
e life, I’ve been groomed as American royalty, raised to be the perfect daughter of the wealthy elite.
On my sixteenth birthday, my father bought me an Aston Martin.
And on my seventeenth birthday, the Feds took everything away.