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I’d just become a miserable cliché, one of those poor girls who’d just walked in on her boyfriend in the actual act of having sex with someone close to her.
So not cool.
“Haven, just…wait!”
Of course, I didn’t wait. Like I’d do anything that cheating bastard ordered me to do. Yeah, think again, pal.
Spinning away, I took off in a blind panic. I swear, my brain literally shut down on me, and I reacted on pure instinct. Flight-or-fight time, baby, and I was flying this coop because the idea of fighting didn’t appeal. I mean, what if I tried to kick him in the nads and accidentally experienced some skin-on-skin contact and felt squishy, dangling parts, parts he’d just been putting inside someone else?
Nope, couldn’t do that. So running was in and fighting, out.
Just until I regrouped, processed, and figured out what I was going to do about this, though. Because, holy shit, what the hell was I going to do about this? My entire life had just altered in the space of two seconds. Like flipped onto its freaking axis, a one-hundred-eighty-degree polar altercation of everything I knew and everything I was.
Topher hadn’t just been my boyfriend; he’d been my future. I’d been making plans to move in with him after graduation, pay all my bills with him, eat all my meals with him, eventually marry and start a family with him, share my entire freaking life with him. He was supposed to be the partner and companion I shared everything with. And he’d just ruined that.
All of it.
Blindsided by the betrayal and mortified for being a sucker who’d actually trusted such a liar, I shook my head as my breathing went scattered and my chest heaved, feeling as if it’d just been hit by a Mack truck.
But seriously, how could he do this to me? Oh my God, it hurt. I’d put all my confidence, and faith, and loyalties into this guy. I knew he wasn’t perfect but I had still loved him for everything he tried to be. Except this…this…
Black dots danced in my vision and vertigo assailed me as I shoved open the door to the stairwell and the steps going down seemed to sway unsteadily. I had bypassed the elevator because elevators meant standing and waiting, and who the fuck could stand there and just wai
t in the midst of a full-on, panic-mode crisis?
Yes, running was really the thing to do right now. No idea where I was running to, but I was trying to get there as fast as was humanly possible. Clutching the railing for dear life, I managed to drunkenly wobble my way down the stairs at warp speed. It’d be a miracle if I made it out of the building alive. There was another flight of steps after this one.
Above me, Topher crashed through the doorway, yelling my name. I glanced back, my hair flying into my face. Between brown tangled strands, I noticed he’d put on pants and was in the process of tugging a shirt over his head. Dammit. In the state I was in, he’d catch me soon.
Being caught would be bad. I’d probably claw his face off. And while there was some appeal to that idea—and I mean a lot of appeal—something in me said it was still probably a bad plan, something to do with legalities and jail time. Though, if he caught me and it came to that, I’d gladly spend the night behind bars because the claws would come out. And it’d be so worth it to sink them into his stupid, lying face.
But then, I also worried I’d start crying if he caught me, and there was just no way I was going to let that cheater see one drop of my precious heartbreak. It was hard for me to share my tears with anyone. So he definitely wouldn’t be getting them.
Changing tactics because I really didn’t want to trip and fall headlong down the steps, and the flip-flops I wore were hampering my flight considerably, I pushed through the doorway that led to the second-floor dorms—full of freshmen and sophomores, who had to share a single room, unlike the nicer apartments we seniors had up on the third floor.
Once I entered the hall, it was about an eighty-foot race to the other end, where I could hopefully escape through another door into the stairwell on the opposite side of the building and hurry down before Topher caught up. That was the wish and the hope flooding my veins, and I ran for all I was worth toward the door in front of me to attain that very goal. I was about halfway there when one of the dorm room doors opened, and some guy stepped into the hall, directly into my path.
I didn’t have time to slow down or even warn him I was there before I struck, pounding into him with a force that would’ve knocked pretty much anyone off their feet and sent us both crashing to the floor. But not this guy.
Felt like I collided into a steel wall.
Dazed by the impact, I began to crumble.
“Shit.” In the middle of stumbling backward himself, he caught me with one arm and steadied us both by reaching out to brace himself against the wall with his other. “Sorry about that. I didn’t see you there. Are you okay?”
“No!” I hollered ungracefully, glancing behind me in a panic, even though I hadn’t regained my balance yet. The handle to the door I’d just escaped through started to turn. Topher would enter this very hall in a matter of moments.
Desperate to avoid even eye contact with him, I screeched, “Go, go, go!” and shoved the guy back through the opening of the room he’d been exiting because our little collision had happened so quickly that the door hadn’t even had time to close yet.
“What…?” Caught off guard, he tumbled backward into the room with me, and this time we did crash to the floor, a tangle of arms and legs. But at least we landed all the way inside the room, enough so that I could kick my toes out and slam the door behind us. Then I scrambled to my feet, pretty sure I kneed the guy I’d landed on in a couple of different places in my hurry to get off him so I could return to the door and flip the lock.
Throughout everything, I heard a girl shriek in surprise, crying, “Wick? What the hell?”
Now that I had a locked portal separating me from Topher, I was able to focus enough to become aware of my surroundings. And the word Wick was the first thing to catch my attention.
I knew of a guy named Wick. He was on the team with Topher. I’d never actually spoken to him before, because he and Topher were mortal enemies, and also because Topher had told me Wick had called me a horse-faced troll once.
I don’t know why. He might’ve only been talking shit about me because I’d been dating his nemesis, or maybe he really did think I was butt ugly, but at the moment, I didn’t give a damn what he thought about my appearance. He hated Topher, so he might’ve just become my new best friend.
