Total pages in book: 30
Estimated words: 28781 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 144(@200wpm)___ 115(@250wpm)___ 96(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 28781 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 144(@200wpm)___ 115(@250wpm)___ 96(@300wpm)
One hour later…
Max stood in front of a giant maze leading to a building that I’m assuming was the escape room. “Welcome! To the best escape room in the history of the United States.”
“Oh shit,” Ace said under his breath. “That does not sound promising for us.”
Max grinned wide ignoring all the grumbling amongst the participants, mine included. “We were lucky enough to have the developers build a maze at the lower level, get through the maze, go into the escape room, escape within thirty minutes and you’re onto the next level, sadly two teams won’t make it today, but I have high hopes that some of you will impress us! Dustin here ended up crying halfway through the maze, saying there were bears.”
Dustin adjusted his black glasses and lowered his head. “Stupid test run.”
Max slapped him on the back twice, each time Dustin’s glasses lowered down his nose. “Now! For the first team!”
Please don’t say us. Please don’t say us. Please, if the universe cares even a tiny bit for my sanity, don’t say us. Going first would be a death blow, we’d have no time to study other strategies and again, I hated mazes.
I hid behind Ace like that was somehow going to help when Max announced. “BRI AND ACE! Looks like you’re the lucky ones to go first! Ha. Ha.”
Was it just me or was that laugh maniacal and forced all at the same time?
It was loud. The laugh.
Damning. Going first.
Shit. There went any hope we had.
I looked over at Ace wearily. His pale expression gave me no confidence, his hand gripping mine tightly, however, weirdly.
Did.
Because it was the first time since walking away that I was by his side, and he wasn’t pulling me against him, he was holding me strongly next to him.
They don’t make guys like that often. The ones who allow you to shine because when you shine, they do too.
The same went with strength. He offered his without hesitation, always, and I was the insecure idiot who couldn’t accept it at the time, because I never felt deserving.
I still didn’t, but I realized now that it wasn’t about how I felt, it was about what he had always been willing to give.
Himself.
I was just too stupid to see it.
I stared down at our joined hands and quickly pulled mine away, it would be too easy to get lost in him again, and I knew I didn’t deserve him. It was always so much easier being bitter, resentful, angry, than it was actually looking in the mirror and realizing that at the end of the day…
It wasn’t him.
It was me all along.
Chapter Five
Ace
I hated puzzles.
I found them to be absolutely ridiculous in real life, oh gold star, you sacrificed an abhorrent amount of time in order to get to the end of the puzzle and to what end? Self-validation? A self high five? What? At twenty-five you’re going to put it on your fridge and tell your guests and one goldfish that you finally figured out the other Kardashian sister’s name and now know the name of the last Pharaoh buried in that one tomb before it was discovered in the nineteen fifties?
Seriously though.
It was exactly the same with crossword puzzles and word searches. Congratulations, you can not only spell but know an unimaginable amount of random facts that nobody will ever care about unless you plan on living alone your entire life.
History, I could at least get on board with, but the puzzles always tossed in pop culture and things that didn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things—answers that would haunt you until you finally got them right only to realize you were wrong.
Maybe there was some weird past trauma with puzzles I wasn’t aware of. I mean, when I was in first grade, I did fail my first word search, but I’d been distracted by the cute girl sitting next to me with her pink eraser and unicorn pencil.
That’s on her, she’ll have to take that to judgement day—not me, no I was innocent in all of that, if anything she should feel guilty for having the pink eraser and daring to boast about unicorns when she knew I had a private fascination with horses.
Okay, so maybe there was past trauma. I’ll be man enough to admit that much.
“Okay.” Bri swayed next to me, then shook her head like she was trying to process what we were about to fail. “We’ve got this, all we have to do is just make it through the maze and into one of the hardest escape rooms known to mankind.”
“Simple.” I shuddered an exhale. Mazes, not her strong suit, puzzles, my Everest—yeah, things were definitely looking up for our team.
“Totally.” She started to jump up and down in place, making her pretty dark hair bounce across her shoulders like a shampoo commercial. I hated to admit that my eyes followed every movement as she continued to bounce. Why did she have to be so cute? I hated her. I would hate her, I would not find her adorable, and I would not keep staring at the way her eyes kept scanning the maze like we were about to be fed to the lions. “Doable.”