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Chapter 53
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168 Hours in Hell Chapter 54
NEW STORY -- NEW PLOT -- NEW CHARACTERSGREYSONThe cash slides from my palm into the valet. His fingers curl around the wad of bills as he pulls back, and he looks away.Aw, he’s embarrassed.The girl on my arm giggles and leans into me.Money and good looks will help people get away with just about anything. I learned that at the tender age of five from my father, thank you very much. He toted me around and flashed his smile or his wealth, and doors opened for us.Sometimes literally.Sometimes figuratively.We were invincible.Look at that sentence. Then read it again.We.Were. Invincible.Back when I was a kid, my father and I wore gilded armor. He was a king, and I was a prince. We floated above the rest of society, and nothing was out of our reach.I experienced the world through my father’s view of getting everything he fucking wanted. It’s only natural that I became him.Look, I’m not saying it’s right. I’m just saying this is how it works. People are sheep, all too eager to be
168 Hours in Hell Chapter 55
SIX MONTHS LATERVIOLETA widely known fact about me: I don’t like surprises. I’m jumpy. I make unholy noises. My face gets beet red, and my body gets hot and tingly, and sometimes I feel like I’ve run out of air. Unfortunately, that combination is the perfect reaction for people who do like surprises.Which is why I’ve spent my life being surprised. Birthday parties, jump-scares, visitors I wasn’t expecting… People love to see the dramatic reaction, and I seem unable to help but give it to them.And, naïve me, I keep expecting people will remember I loathe them.Not today.I’ve barely pushed open the apartment door when the lights come on and a dozen people scream, “WELCOME BACK!”I scream right along with them. My coffee goes everywhere, and my feet go out from under me. Only quick hands grasping my arms keep me upright.And falling would probably suck a lot under my conditions.After my heart stops trying to escape from my tight chest, I find my darling roommate-slash-best friend a
168 Hours in Hell Chapter 56
“You look good,” Willow tells me. She extends a tube of lipstick toward me.I finger-comb my blonde hair into somewhat respectable curls and then swipe on the dark-red color. It’s bolder than what I would’ve normally gone for, but I trust my best friend’s judgment. It gives my pink sweater a bit of an edgier vibe.Probably.Maybe it’s wishful thinking.She loops her arm in mine. In the living room, our friends are spread out on the couches and the floor. Now that I look closer at them, they do seem ready to go out. Flawless makeup, nice clothes. Dresses, heeled boots.“Where are we going?” I ask.“Haven. There’s a game tonight, but it should be okay if we get there before it ends. Should we call a cab, or are you good to walk?”Haven is a local bar that’s almost always overrun by CPU students.“Walking is fine.” I’ll pay for it tomorrow, but my blood runs cold at the thought of getting into a car. It was a struggle to sit in the passenger seat of mom’s car on the way here. Our silence
168 Hours in Hell Chapter 57
GREYSONMy teammate nods to the guy sitting at a table full of girls. “Jack, Greyson. Jack is the quarterback on the football team.”I quirk my lips. The football team lost spectacularly this year, no thanks toJackhere. It’s a good thing the hockey team is picking up the slack and bringing some attention back to this school.That’s where I shine.In the spotlight.Well, correction: that’s where I used to shine.My gaze goes to the girl beside Jack, who seems like she’s about to be violently sick. She looks familiar in the way most girls do. Like I might’ve had a chance encounter with her at some point in my life but nothing worthy of me remembering.Maybe we ran into each other here, at Haven. After a game.I smirk at her, and she flinches. Not the usual reaction.Interesting.Steele is going around the table, introducing the dance team. I register it faintly, still trying to figure out the girl under Jack’s arm. She’s watching me, too. Her blue eyes on mine are like daggers. I’m intr
168 Hours in Hell Chapter 58
VIOLETSunlight slants across my face, and I groan. I block it with my hand, but then my overhead light flicks on.“Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty. It’s almost one o’clock.” Willow climbs onto my bed, flopping beside me. “How are you feeling?”I squint at the ceiling. “Like my head is an anvil and it’s being struck by a hammer over and over. Undecided on my leg. Or the rest of me.” That’s a lie. As soon as I focus on my lower leg, pain shoots up into my hip in waves. I grit my teeth.“Well, you went a little hardcore…”Yeah, that’s true. I couldn’t bear to look at Greyson at the bar. He completely ignored me after accosting me in the bathroom. Instead, he flirted with Paris and one of her friends. And meanwhile, I kept freaking out.Why the hell is he here? Did he know I went here? Crown Point University is so far removed from our hometown, Rose Hill. Different state. Hours away. This small town was my reprieve, and now it’s becoming my nightmare.He’s the hotshot no one can shut up
168 Hours in Hell Chapter 59
VIOLETI’ve been getting strange looks all day. And, stupid me, I write it off as being back after a semester away. It wasn’t like I was unpopular. People liked me. I had a good amount of friends, including a lot of the athletes. That was the circle I ran in, being on the dance team. But now, there’s a weird hush that precedes me. I’ve been in a quiet bubble, unable to break through it.Until Amanda finds me.She skids to a stop in front of me in the hallway outside my third and last class of the day. I created my schedule so the majority of my classes were on Mondays and Wednesdays, and I’m paying the price for it now.But besides that, Amanda seems stressed. Or nervous?“What’s wrong?”She bites her lip and releases it. “Willow’s been yelling in the IT department’s office for an hour.” She unlocks her phone and shoves it at me.I shake my head slowly, not taking the phone. But my stomach twists, because I have an idea of what might’ve happened. It could be the worst-case scenario. R
168 Hours in Hell Chapter 60
GREYSONI pop the puck into the air with the blade of my stick, passing it to Knox. He catches it on him, letting it sit for a moment, before sending it flying across the room to Steele.Erik sits in the corner, his head bent as he works on… something.Fuck if I know.We’re all two beers in and getting restless.It’s been a hell of a week. Practice every night has been kicking my ass more than usual, and Coach has repeatedly yelled at us to get our heads in the game. He blew his whistle tonight until he was purple, then finally ordered us to run two miles in the gym and get the fuck out of his sight.Besides that, I’ve been watching Violet.She walks to school with Willow Reed. Sometimes they drive if the weather is particularly poor. On occasion, Violet takes her time and pauses often to rub down her thigh or massage her calf. If it’s cold enough, she walks with a limp. Just slightly sufficient for me to notice.I hate that I want to watch her.I’ve mapped out her schedule: the psych
168 Hours in Hell Chapter 61
VIOLETIt takes me three hours to put my room back together, sans mattress and box spring. In fact, my room looks a whole lot bigger without the bulky furniture. My pictures are all gone.When I first discovered it on Monday, I did three loads of laundry to get rid of the paint on my underwear, and I had to toss all the clothes that were ripped to shreds. But I didn’t want to deal with the furniture. I didn’t want to take down the photos. So I hid it from Willow for four days.Now it’s Friday, a quiet day with no classes, and I have the mental capacity to deal with it.Whoever did this had a lot of anger, which makes me think of Greyson.And trust me, I don’t want to be thinking about him.Willow gets home on the tail end of my cleaning spree, when I’m struggling to push my red-stained, gouged dresser out the front door. The only thing making me feel less guilty about putting it outside with a free sign on it is that I picked it up at a secondhand store for twenty bucks.She watches m
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