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I tried to keep my voice steady. “What does that mean?”

A deep, sarcastic chuckle came from his chest, and I swore it sucker punched me.

“Maybe I’ll just find out what goes on in your home. Maybe I’ll wait until your dad is back home and put a little bug in his ear that your mom is the neighborhood slut, and”—he clicked his tongue—“I guess I can let him know his daughter is a druggie as well.”

My hand slapped on the side of the passenger door, and Eric’s face split in two. He was smiling like the cocky fucking asshole that he was, and it only made my nerves amplify. My skin was itching. Hives were likely covering my chest.

I breathed in and out of my nose, steadying myself before I completely lost control of everything. But that was exactly how I felt. I felt out of control. Every single thing in my life was spiraling and twisting in unfathomable ways.

“Stop the fucking car.”

For once, Eric actually listened and slammed on the brakes. My hand shot out to protect myself from plowing into the dash, and I quickly opened the door, allowing the cool air to coat my body like a blanket.

I wasn’t even halfway out the door before I glared over at him, blood filling my mouth with how hard I bit the inside of my cheek. He was glaring at me too, his gray eyes looking like pools of complete darkness. “I’m not a fucking druggie. You have no idea what you’re talking about or what you’d be doing if you said anything to my father.”

My voice broke at the end, and Eric’s eye twitched, telling me that he noticed the small dent in my armor.

If he tells my father...

I couldn’t even let the thought consume me. I slammed the car door closed with all my might, which wasn’t much, and Eric sped off in the opposite direction. I heard the squealing of his tires in my ears the rest of the walk home.

Chapter Eight

Eric

My fingers hovered over my phone as I continued arguing with myself about what I was about to do. I glanced around the cabin, noting that all my friends were busy partying with beer splashing out of their cups and flirting with one another incessantly like annoying-ass middle schoolers. I leaned back onto the couch, waving my attention over my best friends and their girlfriends who were all four in their own little fairytale world, and typed a sneaky little description into the search engine.

No.

I erased the words with so much force I thought my phone was going to crack. It’d been exactly a week since I gave Madeline a half-ride home from the frat party. I’d avoided her as much as I could during school this week. Someone tripped her in the hall, a mere foot away from me, and she fell to her knees onto the porcelain floor with a loud thud. A former football player and one of our closer friends, Taylor, made a comment that had me dipping my attention to see how she’d react.

“Oh, look. Madeline’s on her knees. No surprise there.” Everyone around us laughed, except me. Instead, I leaned my shoulder on my locker, pulling my books to the side so I could watch her every move.

It didn’t take long for her to stand up, rubbing her red knees in the process. Her face never wavered, though. Every single flawless feature was smooth and in place, as if she were bored with the entire thing. But I saw right through that. Madeline was exhausted. The makeup she’d caked on did nothing to hide the puffiness around her baby blues. Her movements were slow and lazy. She wasn’t not reacting because she wanted to appear tough and unbothered. She just didn’t have the energy.

And that, my friends, was exactly why you shouldn’t do drugs. The after effect just wasn’t worth it.

Curiosity was killing me, though. Not just with the drugs that she was very obviously using, but with other things too. Something just wasn’t quite right with her.

I squeezed the life out of my phone, standing up abruptly in the middle of the party. All eyes were on me. “Let’s go start a fire. I’m fucking bored.”

Everyone cheered, following me through the cabin and down to the hill below the deck. All except Ollie and Christian. They both stared at me with their pressing eyes, but I brushed past them, grabbing a beer out of some girl’s hand in the process. I downed it within seconds, not even tasting the malty flavor.

After getting the fire started, too stuck inside my head to converse with anyone, I ended up sitting back down on a folding chair, but just like that, the thoughts were back. It was like an itch on my back that I couldn’t reach. A scratch in my throat that nothing soothed.

My heart ricocheted off every hard plane in my chest as I pulled my phone out once again.

I typed the words “pink pill AMB” and waited.

My eyes flew over the illuminated screen as I gulped in every last word that the search engine threw out to me.

After a few seconds of processing the information, I slowly clicked my phone off, sliding it back into my pocket. I stared at the fire; different hues of reds and oranges danced in front of my eyes. Ollie, Piper, Christian, and Hayley were all sitting to the left of me, some other people mingling around, shouting and laughing at nothing important, but I continued to stare.

I tried pushing away the nagging questions by joining in on conversations and even asking Piper how her brother was doing in rehab. But nothing, and I mean nothing, could curb the annoying fucking need to know more.

I wanted to hurt Madeline so I could make myself stop feeling things I didn’t want to feel. I knew I was taking my anger out on her, and it wasn’t wholly her fault. I was furious at my dad, pissed that he hurt my mom—for years, apparently—angry that he kept texting me and calling the house. I was just fucking mad.

All the time.


Tags: S.J. Sylvis English Prep Romance