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“I don’t fucking know, okay? Stop destroying my room.”
“What’s this fucking noise?”
I look up. Alistair’s standing in the doorway with his arms folded, casually yawning.
“Penelope is gone,” I tell him.
He frowns. “Huh? But she said she’d go back to your room.”
My pupils dilate, and I lunge at him, grasping him by the shirt. “You took her from me?”
“No. She came to me on her own,” he replies, grasping my hands. “Release me.”
“Where is she?”
“She didn’t want to sleep, but I told her to go back to your room. I don’t know where she went after,” he says. “She seemed shocked by the diary, though.”
“What?” I frown. None of this makes sense.
“Apparently, a page is missing,” Ali says.
My grip on his shirt loosens, and he tears away, patting himself down.
Why would she leave the fucking building when she knows those Phantom fuckers are out there?
Unless …
“Eve’s old room.” I shove past him, heading out the door.
Fuck. I should’ve known that diary contained something important. It just wasn’t in the fucking book anymore, but lingering in her old room.
Like a secret meant to stay buried.
Or found … by a particular someone.
“What? Why would she go there?” Dylan shouts, following me through the hallways to the stairs. “The whole place burned down.”
“That’s where Eve kept the diary. She’s looking for that missing page.”
I grab a pair of clean pants from the stack near the laundry room along with some spare shoes and put them on before I head out the door.
I have to find her.
I bolt out onto the street and go straight for the sorority house, the scent of burning ashes penetrating my nostrils as I get close. The doors have been taped off and sealed shut, but I know she’s in there.
I go to the back where I find a ladder that’s down.
Bingo.
I jump up and climb to the top, where a window at the far end of the balcony has been pushed open, the glass shattered. I walk toward it, but when I look inside, no one’s there, and the door has been left wide open.
The floor is tinged in blood.
Someone was here.
Fuck. I missed her.
I race back down the stairs and rush back to the frat house. Instead of Dylan’s car, I put on my helmet, grab my motorcycle from the garage, and race off the property. She has to be on the school grounds somewhere. There’s no way she got away that quickly.
I drive around the campus, searching for her, ignoring anyone who calls me out for driving on my motorcycle this late at night. But I don’t fucking care who wakes up from the noise. I need to fucking find Penelope.
Where is she, goddammit?
I cross the campus all the way to the forest. Near the cliff, I spot a small glimmering cell phone shining in the dark.
Penelope.
I race toward The Edge and come to a stop, then hop off my motorcycle.
She’s sitting at the very ledge of the cliff, her feet dangling into the air.
Fuck.
I pull out my phone and text Ali and Dylan the location.
“Penelope …” I tear off my helmet and put it on the seat. “What are you doing here? Why did you run off in the middle of the fucking night?”
She glances at me over her shoulder, but her solemn eyes bring a chill to my spine.
“Why didn’t you fucking tell me the truth?” she rasps, her voice laced with anger and bitterness.
I frown as I step closer, confused. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I went to my sister’s room to find remnants of her diary that she tore out.” She holds up a piece of paper with Eve’s handwriting on it, written in the same style as the entire diary. “You broke up with her.”
PENELOPE
I stare down into the vast emptiness of space, wondering how deep the fall must’ve been. If she felt at peace with her decision. If it hurt.
“It didn’t happen like that.”
I take in a deep breath and turn to look at Felix. “Stop lying to me.”
His gaze fixates on the piece of paper from the diary in my hands. “What’s on that paper?”
I read the words out loud.
“I wasn’t given a choice in the matter.
It was either do what I’m told, or quit and leave.
I cried when I said the words.
And they did nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing at all.
I begged them with my eyes, my tears to fight for me.
Instead, we broke up.
And my heart broke into a million little pieces.
303.”
My teeth grind against each other as I can almost hear her scared voice pleading for help. They ignored her. Betrayed her. Made her feel worthless.
“Quit and leave? That’s not—”
“Don’t call my sister a liar!” I yell.
Alistair and Dylan come running out of the forest. “Oh fuck,” Dylan mutters.
“Penelope? Why are you on that ledge?” Alistair asks, approaching us. “You’re not planning to—”
