AllFreeNovel
Share Us
9
Iawake in my bed the next morning with sleep still lingering in my body and worry coursing through my veins. Yesterday evening Eastern and I had arrived at Oceanside with just five minutes to spare. Apart from the fact we had to hand over out mobile phones again and Eastern almost getting himself expelled within the first five minutes of entering the academy for refusing to hand over his, it was uneventful. I didn’t see Ford again. We didn’t come across Sonny or Camden. Pink and Kate were already in the annex when we reached our rooms and after a brief hello, and another awkward introduction with Eastern, we each headed to our separate bedrooms with promises to walk to the dining hall together for breakfast the next morning. I didn’t tell him anything.
I fucking should’ve, but I didn’t.
Sighing, I sit up in bed. Given the semi darkness, breakfast is at least another few hours away. It’s early still, the sun hasn’t risen past the woods beyond the carpark. My room is cast in shadow, the corners still able to hide the monsters that lurk just in the periphery of my vision. Reaching over I flick on the lamp sitting on my desk, feeling minutely better when the shadows disappear and with it my nightmares that still haunt me even after all these years.
They’re always the same. Mum dead, a needle in her arm. Eastern next to her, blood seeping from his parted lips. Tracy and Braydon with blank eyes and blue lips. My little brothers curled up into a foetal position, lifeless. All of them, except my mum, victims of an unseen enemy. I shiver, feeling a strong desire to scream. I’ve not had this dream for a long, long time. Maybe this is some kind of omen… My subconscious telling me that something disastrous is about to happen.
“Fuck.”
Getting out of bed, I walk into the bathroom and turn on the shower. Stripping, I step under the warm water and let it fall over me, washing away my nightmare and the nagging feeling that something isn’t right.
Tracy is safe.
Braydon is safe.
Eastern is here with me.
My brothers are fine.
Nothingis wrong.
Then why do I feel like the world is about to be tipped up on its axis? Why do I feel as though the universe is conspiring against me once again? That the storm I’ve spent my life trying to control is about to come billowing out of my chest, ripping me and everyone I care about to shreds.
“Asia?” a voice calls.
A male voice.
A voice that belongs to Sonny.
What the hell is he doing here? More to the point, how the fuck did he get into my room? I goddamn locked the door. “What the fuck, Sonny? I’m in the shower. Give me a minute,” I call out, the beating in my chest drumming in time with the storm that’s brewing second by second. Drying myself off quickly, I pull my clothes back on, my skin still prickling with the remnants of my dream and flushed from the heat of the shower. If Sonny’s in my room at this ungodly hour it must be urgent, so I ignore that mass of tangles that is my hair. I’ve got no time to make myself look decent.
“How the hell did you get into my room?” I ask, yanking open the bathroom door.
He holds out his hands, clasped within them are a couple of long, thin, skinny looking tools that look like a larger version of hairpins.
“I’m a thief. I can break into any lock pretty much,” he shrugs, looking both apologetic and proud.
“Couldn’t it wait?” What is it with these boys and their determination to barge into my life uninvited at the most inappropriate times?
“I wanted to give you the heads up before breakfast. I didn’t get here until late last night, otherwise I would have come at a more decent hour. Nice hair by the way. Like the colour,” he says, eyeing the red with interest.
I wave his compliment off. He can’t distract me that easily. “You do realise that a more decent hour would’ve been a couple hours from now. It’s 6:30am, Sonny.” I frown, wiping away a stray bead of water that’s sliding down my neck and pooling in the dip above my collarbone.
“Point taken. But I couldn’t sleep. I guess I took a chance you’d be awake. Looks like I was right.” His gaze lingers a little too long on my chest, before flicking up to my face. He gives me a sheepish grin that’s shadowed in lust. I should’ve at least put my bra on.
Fuck it. I wasn’t expecting visitors. He’s just going to have to deal.
I huff, sitting down on my bed and drawing up my legs, wrapping my arms around them. “Heads up about what exactly? Does this have something to do with Ford?”
“Yeah, pretty much… Wait, why would you assume it’s about Ford?”
“I bumped into him yesterday at the funfair.” I don’t bother to tell him that Ford found me (and by found I mean stalked), then kissed me, said some weird shit and ran off.
“He was there? Fuck. That was stupid.”
“Stupid why?” I frown at Sonny who’s pulling a face that I’m not clearheaded enough to interpret, and that has nothing to do with the fact he’s wearing low slung pyjama bottoms and a grey t-shirt that doesn’t quite meet the waistband. That thin strip of bare skin and line of hair disappearing beneath his pyjama bottoms isn’t distracting me in the slightest. Nope.
