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Frankly, both sound like fun.

“Um…” Her gaze darts to the door and back again. “I don’t know. I’ve got an assignment that I need to finish. Three assignments, actually.”

It’s sweet how she thinks I’ll let her refuse me.

I give her my friendliest smile. “One hour, I promise. We can chat about the club, and then you can go home. Or….” I pause for effect. “Or, I can tell your father that his little girl has been cutting herself in the bathroom at college.”

This time the flush that storms through her cheeks is bright red, sparks of anger leaping in her eyes. “Don’t you fucking dare.”

I shrug. “Take it or leave it.”

“He’d never believe you.”

“Oh, he wouldn’t hear it from me. He’d hear it from the student counsellor that you’ve been talking to for the past few weeks.”

“But I haven’t been talking to a counsellor.”

“Haven’t you? That’s a shame. Seems like you need to.”

She’s breathing faster now, her colour mounting. “Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what? Asking you out for a drink?”

“You’ve been following me, haven’t you? Bumping into me outside the bathroom a few days ago wasn’t an accident, was it?”

She’s smart, this girl. If I’m not careful she might stumble into guessing more about me than I want her to know.

“A drink,” I say easily. “I’ll answer your questions if you answer mine.”

Chapter Seven

ASTRID

I must be crazy. I must have gone straight past the deep end and sailed directly into the Mariana Trench.

I’m in Love Bite, the student bar on Main, actually having a drink with the psychopath who choked me.

I insisted on us meeting there, because I didn’t want to get into his car by myself. It’s crowded as per usual. There are a few other bars in Blackwater, but one is a fancy wine bar with overpriced drinks, and the other is Rusty’s Place, the biker bar where the Hellhounds hang out.

The mood is raucous inside, with people sitting around large tables lit by low pendants, or in booths along one wall. There’s a pool table and dartboard down the back, and a TV over the bar, though no one’s watching it.

I shouldn’t be here, I really shouldn’t, but he didn’t give me much of a choice. He saw my cuts, and I don’t know how, but he knew what they meant, and he used them to make me come out with him.

If I was braver, I would have told him to fuck off, that he could tell Dad, I didn’t care. I’m not seeing a goddamn counsellor, either. But the fact is that I do care. I don’t want Dad to know I cut myself. I don’t want him to know that I’m struggling and lonely and afraid. I don’t want him to know that part of my fear is for him, because he doesn’t go out and he doesn’t socialise. He spends all his time watching TV or working, and I’m worried he’s depressed, and I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to have that conversation with him.

God, I don’t know how to have any kind of conversation with my father.

Anyway, idiot that I am, I agreed to come for this drink, even though all my threat senses are telling me it’s a mistake. That Lucien’s story about his sister and how he wanted to apologise to me are lies. I mean, they have to be, right?

No one goes from choking you one minute, to smiling and inviting you out for a drink the next. Definitely psychopath material. Especially when that smile of his didn’t reach his eyes. It didn’t look natural, more like … practised. It gave me chills, and not the good kind.

I’m sitting in a booth along one wall, and I glance at the bar where Lucien is ordering us a drink. He’s a head taller than everyone else and dressed in the same black clothing he wore at the beach. People are giving him a wide berth, as if they can subconsciously sense that he’s dangerous, and are trying to put distance between him and them. Though, every now and then, I see women glance at him as if they can’t take their eyes off him. Women drawn to the bad guy, to the villain.

They’re idiots. They’re idiots just like me.

Lucien turns from the bar at last and the pressure begins to build inside me again. A clock slowly ticking the seconds and minutes away, time I could be using to redo Professor Bright’s assignment.

I try to breathe through it. It’s just one drink, that’s all. One drink, then I’ll go.