Page 42 of Darkest Obsession

“Hey.”

“Sylvia, where are you?”

“Um… my room.”

It’s a stupid lie. I’m a ½ mile away from my room on foot and Clover’s fifteen steps away.

“No you’re not…”

Shit.

Chapter Nineteen

Thomas

We meet on the tennis courts at 9:30 p.m. I don’t know why the bloody tennis courts. There’s no one here, so they’re private, but they’re also brightly lit. I suppose after what happened last time, she wants to make sure there’s no way I can turn the lights off and have at her again.

I wasn’t thinking. I should have controlled myself better. She got close enough to me to know the truth and… where the fuck is she?

I pull out my phone to send her another email, but before I can open my messages, the lights in the tennis courts shut off. I didn’t see switches on the walls. Maybe the janitor popped by and shut them off.

“Hello?”

There’s nothing.

“Hello?”

Nothing again.

I hear footsteps and then there’s pain searing through my body as something hard slams into my torso with incredible force. The wind knocks out of me and I grunt before swearing loudly. “Fuck’s sake!”

It’s a bat. I think it’s a fucking cricket bat. Someone in the dark swings a cricket bat at my torso and nearly knocks me over. I can’t breathe. My body aches from the point of contact. I stumble forward, grabbing desperately. It’s too dark for me to see. I hear footsteps, heavy breathing, and then there’s another swing. I duck, which saves my head but not my arm.

I cry out in pain again and run backward a few steps. There’s a faint red EXIT sign in the distance but I don’t have enough light to make it there without running into something. My attacker hits me with the bat again and I scream. Fuck it, I’ve got to get out of here.

“Who the fuck are you?” I scream.

My heart races as my body hurts. If I had a weapon, or if I could get my hands on them, I would do something. But I’m powerless against my attacker. All I have is my words, or this fuck could beat me to death on the Fox Academy tennis courts. Dad would be so angry with me for dying at school. He’d call it a déclassé scandal.

“I SAID WHO ARE YOU?”

My breathing gets heavier as I wait for a response or another hard knock from the cricket bat.

“You know who I am.”

Are you fucking kidding me?

“Clover?”

Why the fuck is she hitting me with a cricket bat in the dark?

“Don’t move,” she snaps. “Don’t move or I swear, I’ll get your big ass head.”

Fuck. Okay, I have to be calm. I can’t move. She might be beating the fuck out of me, but she won’t kill me.

“How can you see in the bloody dark,” I snap, still gasping for breath, still expecting another hard thump in my torso.

“I can’t,” she says. “I just have damned good instincts.”