I move past her and into the house, pausing briefly beside Parrish. We look at each other for a breath, but then Tess is following me, so I’m forced to keep going.
I make it to my room just before her, close it, and then lock it before she can open it. I’m convinced she’s going to pick the lock from the outside and let herself in, but she doesn’t.
I flop down on my bed, leaving the lights off and wondering when my furniture is going to get here. I’m still staring at the ceiling when someone knocks a few hours later, sitting up and heading over to crack it open. Somehow, I think I already know who it is.
“Here,” Parrish says quietly, handing my phone over to me. “Chas gave it to me before he left.” He pauses and his eyes flick to the side for the briefest instant before coming back to me. It feels like he’s looking right past all the bullshit for the first time since I got here.
Opposites attract. Sometimes you start falling for the person you hate. Sometimes, you’re not even sure they are your opposite. Maybe they’re just so much like you that you can’t tell the difference anymore?
I go to take the phone, but Parrish whips it out of my grip for a moment.
“Don’t fall for Chasm,” he tells me, and it takes me nearly a minute to process that he’s just said that.
“Why not?” I ask, but he just shakes his head and pushes my phone against my hand. “Parrish?”
But he turns and disappears into his room without answering me.
Dick.
But I am grateful to have my phone. And I thankful for him distracting Tess all day.
I bite my lip and throw my phone on the charger—but without turning it on. I won’t risk it, not tonight.
That is, until the memory of waking up in the woods, alone and cold and scared, hits me like a freight train. Never mind. I’d rather risk Tess finding—and subsequently stealing—my phone than waking up outside with a needle mark in my neck.
I turn my phone on, doing my best to ignore the barrage of messages flooding through on every channel. Comments, tags, DMs, emails, texts, voice mail. Just thinking about it makes my stomach flip with nausea, so I don’t bother looking. I set the phone up on the tripod and then do my best to disguise it with random junk like a half-empty bottle of lotion and some paperback books.
Only then do I let myself relax, curling into a ball in an unfamiliar room in an unfamiliar state of mind and doing my best to fall asleep.
One sentence keeps repeating itself in my mind, loud and clear—and so do the unspoken implications that followed it.
Don’t fall for Chasm—fall for me instead.
The first thing I do when I get up is check the footage.
Not only am I super curious to get to the bottom of the mystery—like, am I sleepwalking?—but it also gives me something to do that isn’t checking my messages, looking at social media, or leaving this room. I pause with my phone in my hand and then lay my forehead against the edge of the dresser with a groan.
“Why did I say those things yesterday?” I breathe, second-guessing myself as I stand there and sulk. I feel trapped, both physically and online. Where can I go that I won’t be bothered? I end up running myself a bath as I replay last night’s interaction with Tess in my head. “I’m not. I’m not sorry …”
Cringe.
Internally and externally.
I just fucked that up, didn’t I?
My skin gets prune-y before I get out, and I’m dragging my feet like crazy. Leaving this room means all sorts of things that I don’t want to think about right now. Tess. My grandparents. Being kidnapped. Parrish.
I grit my teeth.
Fucking Parrish.
I scrub my hands over my face, thinking about Chasm and how comfortable I felt being around him last night. In reality, the last thing in the world I need or want is a romantic interest. Why do I have to be meeting all these people at once? I feel cursed.
“Okay, Dakota, let’s just get this over with.” I drop my arms to my sides, shaking out my hands and taking several deep breaths to make sure that I’m calm. Either Tess grounds me or she doesn’t. Either Parrish admits to the implications in his words last night or he doesn’t.
Parrish’s door is closed when I open my own, and a quick check down the hall shows me that Tess isn’t in her office. Fantastic. I head downstairs to the main area of the house, and there they all are, dressed and awake on a Sunday the same way they are on Mondays. Every single one of them—but me. Because, of course, I belong here like a fish belongs out of water.
