Total pages in book: 185
Estimated words: 191421 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 957(@200wpm)___ 766(@250wpm)___ 638(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 191421 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 957(@200wpm)___ 766(@250wpm)___ 638(@300wpm)
Because he’s the only one who seems stable when everything else is shifting and sliding around me.
“Why did you bring me that gift?” I explain. “If you hated me so much, why did you give it to me?”
Was it his way of mocking me somehow, hurting me? Making me feel important so it’s more fun when he snatches the rug from under me?
It still sits in my nightstand drawer, his gift.
Shoved to the back but still there.
So many times I thought about giving it back to him. Just leaving it where he’d find it later so I didn’t have to do it face to face. But I couldn’t do it for some reason.
I couldn’t let it go.
Pressing his thumb down on my lip, tugging at it, he whispers, “Happy birthday, Echo.”
I know I should say something right now.
Something like, thank you and please can you move away from me? Can you please stop looking at me like that?
But I can’t say a single thing.
I can’t make a sound.
All I can do is look up at him. And think.
What I thought so long ago.
That he’s sexy and beautiful.
Symmetrical.
One sharp feature giving way to another. Proud cheekbones hollowing out and slanting down to a stubbled jaw. Smooth forehead and arrogant brows sculpted down to thickly lashed eyes. His straight nose off setting his wide mouth.
His mouth.
Smooth and curved and gosh, looking like the softest pillow.
And I don’t know how it happens. I don’t know who makes the first move but I’m pressing against that plush pillow.
My mouth is pressing against his mouth.
And I’m…
I’m devouring them, his lips. I’m swallowing them.
Or maybe it’s him who’s doing that. He’s devouring me, my lips, swallowing them with his own.
No, wait.
I think it’s both of us.
We’re both doing the devouring and swallowing.
And holy God, I don’t understand how that happened. I don’t understand how we came to this.
To me pressed up against the bedpost and him pressed up against me.
As we kiss each other.
As he kisses me and I kiss him back.
And not just with our mouths either. We’re kissing each other with our whole bodies.
We’re tangled up in each other.
Somehow his hands are in my hair, fisting it, pulling at it, messing up my braid. Like this is the very first thing that he wanted to do as soon as he got his hands on me. And my own fingers are on his shoulders, his biceps, scratching his skin, pulling at his t-shirt. Like that is what I wanted to do.
Feel the thickness of those arms and rake my nails on his skin because he makes me so mad.
And apparently, I also wanted to suck on his tongue.
Because I had a feeling that it was going to be tasty.
His tongue was going to be sweet and delicious and so heated.
And gosh, it is.
It’s like sucking on summer.
It’s like sucking on sunshine and watermelon and lemonade.
All the things that I love.
All the things that I crave all year round.
I have a feeling that I taste like all the things he craves too. Because he’s sucking on my tongue as well. In fact, he’s going harder at it, at me, at my mouth. Thrusting his tongue inside, going deep, reaching the back of my mouth.
And when I moan because I don’t think anyone has ever been so deep inside of me, it drives him wild.
It makes him groan and growl and I think that I have never heard a sound like that before.
Such a needy sound.
I want more of that. I want to hear that sound forever.
But a second later, it gets drowned out by another sound.
A big one.
A bang. Loud enough to break us apart. To have reality zap in.
And the moment we break apart, I feel such a chill, such a cold stark fear that I shake with it.
But that’s nothing compared to how much I tremble and shake when I swing my eyes to the left and find the source of that loud noise. It was the door to my bedroom opening, crashing against the wall. And it was him who did it. Who opened the door.
My boyfriend.
Who at this very second stands on the threshold, watching me.
In his best friend’s arms.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Present. St. Mary's School for Troubled Teenagers
I’m a criminal.
A troublemaker. A delinquent, a lawbreaker, a culprit, an offender.
Or at least people think I am.
I don’t blame them.
I mean, I do wear a mustard-colored skirt, white knee-high socks and black Mary Janes: the uniform of St. Mary’s School for Troubled Teenagers. An all-girls reform school located in the middle of the woods in the town of St. Mary’s.
And as the name suggests, only criminals go there.
Criminals who have done bad things. Who have broken laws, caused mayhem, wreaked havoc.
Criminals like me.
So this should be easy for me. What I’m doing tonight.
This being stalking.
Well technically, it’s not stalking.