Heart racing.
Sheets wet from panicking, not other things, and tangled around my legs.
Too scared to see what comes next.
It’s stupid, because I don’t even remember anything like that actually happening at the party.
No masked man chasing me.
No horror movie moments.
No reason I should be dreaming about this.
Or my tall, hot, masked tormentor.
So it’s probably just my fucked-up brain stitching fears together.
Or maybe… a part of me wants it.
Maybe it’s the mask kink that I realised I have a couple of months ago.
Or maybe it’s the fact that I’m a walking psychological hazard.
But there’s something – wrong or right, I don’t know – that makes my pulse quicken, my body wet from fear, and mycock rock fucking hard at the idea of a tall, hot, muscular stranger sprinting after me in the dark, dragging me down into the dirt, pinning me with his weight—
No.
Stop.
Enough.
Enough fantasies.
Enough nightmares.
Enough dreaming about hot men in masks.
Enough Lex Rothwell invading my head like he pays rent there.
I sit up, exhaling hard.
I have an art assignment due tomorrow. A painting I haven’t finished. A grade I can’t afford to fail. A life I’m supposed to be holding together by the thinnest thread.
So I grab my headphones, shove them on, and press play on the new Charli XCX album – because if anyone can slap me back into focus, it’s her.
Neon pop floods my brain, drowning out the darkness.
I dip my brush into the midnight blue.
And I paint.
Because sometimes, that’s the only way to stop myself from falling apart completely.
CHAPTER ONE
JAMIE
Six months had passed since… well, since everything.
