Page 111 of Prime Time Romance

34

Brynn

There’s nothing but darkness when I open my eyes.

I can’t breathe.

My legs. I can’t move them.

Am I injured? Am I paralyzed?

Am I…bundled up like a burrito?

I roll my head to the left out of habit, expecting to see the view of the beach from Sloan’s bedroom window. But I’m not looking at the beach.

I’m staring at bright-red block letters that spell…Netflix?

I blink. Shake my head to clear the brain fog.

I’m wrapped in my fuzzy blue blanket.

On my couch.

My couch back home in Toronto.

“What the actual fuck?”

I can swear.

“Fuck!

“Shit!

“Damn!”

I can voice all my profanities as loudly and as filthily as I want.

And I utter them with abandon as I maneuver my arms out of the fuzzy blue straitjacket, but by the time I am completely free, I’m 100 percent certain I am in my living room and on my couch back in Toronto.

But how did I get here?

My last memories are of my conversation on the roof with Spencer. Then climbing into Fletch’s bed.

I run to the full-length mirror next to the front door. I’m still wearing my black lululemon leggings and tank. The ones I went to sleep in on my thirtieth birthday.

Could I have been sleeping? This entire time?

My face is marked with indentations from the cable-knit pattern on my throw pillow.

I sink down, my back pressed to the wall, until I crumble to the floor. I feel like I’ve been hit. My soul is battered and bruised because everything I felt, everything I went through, was fake? A hallucination? I don’t even know.

My eyes flick to the first room down the hall.

Josh’s room.

If Carson’s Cove never happened, then we didn’t either.

My heart clenches. The pain is so sharp that I wonder if I’ve just felt it break—as if the term heartbreak isn’t just something made up by Hollywood romantic comedies. It’s a real medical condition, and I just experienced it.