Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 79332 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 397(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79332 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 397(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
“Okay…okay.” He fumbles in the pocket of his black jeans, pulling out his phone with so much haste he almost drops it. “Actually, Chris, can you take a photo of me and Ellie?”
Chris, a hulking great linebacker with black curly hair and skin that’s the color of crème caramel, lumbers to his feet and holds out a hand as big as a shovel, grasping for Dornan’s phone. He holds it up as Dornan throws his heavy arm around my shoulder. For a second, I glance up at my friend, catching his broad smile and happy crinkled eyes, and my heart swells. Part of me wishes I could put aside all the years of friendship and fall in love with him romantically. He tried to kiss me once towards the end of high school, but it felt so weird for both of us that we laughed it off. Dornan’s so special to me, but in a way that I can only assume to be brotherly. He’s like the sibling I never had.
Instead, I was saddled with triplet douchebag stepbrothers who I’ve come to loathe rather than love.
As Chris hands Dornan’s phone back, I’m nudged by the crowd. Dornan reaches out and steadies me. “We should head upstairs. It’s not as cramped.”
“Sure,” I say, following as he shoulders his way through. In the hallway, I glance around, expecting to find Colby, Sebastian, or Micky, but my stepbrothers are nowhere to be found.
Dornan is right. It is less crowded upstairs. In one room, we disturb a couple who should have closed and locked the door. In another, Gabriella has her hands all over a guy I recognize from the student council. When I yell her name, she pulls back long enough to shoot me a thumbs up. “Come find me later,” she says before resuming the previous face-sucking. Gross.
In the room at the end of the hallway, we find a large group sitting around in a circle. “Dornan,” a blonde girl with wide-set eyes shouts. “We’re playing seven minutes in heaven. Get your ass over here.”
I grasp his elbow as he steps further into the room, but before I can tell him that reliving the worst high school party games isn’t my idea of a good night, he presses two fingers over my lips. “It’s my birthday,” he says again.
“That is absolutely the last time you can use that line,” I say.
He tugs me down onto the floor to join the circle.
Just as I take my place, the blonde girl spins the bottle in the middle of the floor, and by sheer bad luck, it lands on me.
“You’re up,” she says, jabbing her thumb toward the closet.
“No,” I say. “Really. I’m just here with him.”
“Are you scared?” she asks. All around me, the others make chicken noises.
“I’m not scared. I’m just…”
“Dare you,” Dornan says before I can finish my excuses. I cut him a murderous glance because he’s playing dirty now. Three ‘it’s my birthday’ chants were enough. Now he’s wheeling out the dare!
“Dornan,” I say, my voice low.
“Dare, dare, dare,” he sings.
Shaking my head, I rise, and smooth the fabric of my dress, wishing it would grow an extra three feet. I cut Dornan another murderous stare because he knows I will never back down on a dare, just like he knows the movies that make me cry and the comedians who make me almost die with laughter. The truth is, he knows me too well.
“We’re timing,” the girl says in a sing-song voice.
“Enjoy,” Dornan says.
“Whoever is in there is getting the cold shoulder,” I say. “He’d better keep his hands to himself.” The people in the circle exchange looks and a catch a few smiles that are quickly hidden.
“Lame,” someone shouts as I put my hand on the handle.
“Wait,” the girl says, holding out a scarf. “You’re forgetting the blindfold.”
“It’s darker than Satan’s armpit in there,” Dornan snorts.
“The rules are the rules,” she says.
Dornan quickly fixes it around my head, and darkness swallows me whole. The door creaks open and he nudges me forward. When it closes behind me, I wait in the darkness, knowing I’m about to make a big mistake, but unable to do a thing about it.
2
ELLIE
Whoever owns the closet has too many stinky sneakers for their own good and enough clothes to sink a ship. My outstretched hands make contact with a rail, and I stop, not wanting to touch anything. This closet is cavernous, and I can see nothing through the blindfold. Clearing my throat, I wait for the dude who’s trapped in here with me to say something.
Instead, the lightest graze of fingers against my wrists makes me jump. Before I have a chance to tell them they need to keep their hands to themselves, the fingers trail up the soft skin of the inside of my arm, and I shiver.