Page 94 of The Ruse

But maybe she didn’t care. Maybe spending some extra time with her crush was worth risking getting in trouble with Heather and the headmistress.

Unless she was staying at her dad’s house. I’d heard Ava telling Scarlett that she was hanging out there tonight.

I hoped that wasn’t the case, because I couldn’t wait all the way until tomorrow to see her. I’d already been in my head all afternoon, trying to figure out how to bring up the debutante ball and how to offer to be her escort in just the right way.

I couldn’t wait another eight hours or more to see her.

There was an explosion on the TV screen that broke me from my spiraling thoughts. I tried to focus on the movie again. Surely there was something about this movie that was more interesting than my worries about what Nash and Elyse might be doing together right now.

The camera panned in closer to the woman on the screen covered in smoke and ash. She was leaning over the man she was supposed to be falling in love with, tears streaming down her cheeks because she thought he might be dead.

I looked at the clock again.

How in the world had it only been a minute since I last checked?

I was just pulling out my phone to distract myself with mindless social media scrolling when one of the big doors pushed open.

I held my breath as I waited for someone to step through.

But it was only Addison and Evan.

My chest fell and I went back to reaching for my phone, but then another person walked through the door behind them. A beautiful girl wearing a white wool coat and a black dress, her cheeks flushed from the cold.

Elyse.

She shut the door behind her and started tiptoeing toward the stairs like she was worried she was disrupting our movie.

As she started up the staircase that led to the girls’ dorms, I quickly grabbed the script she’d left in my room from where I’d stowed it on the floor and then hurried to follow her.

She used her ID card to unlock the door, not seeming to notice that I was following her, and I managed to slip through the door behind her just before it clicked shut.

Usually, guys were supposed to check in with Heather so she would know they were in the land of the forbidden, but I didn’t see her anywhere.

I’d just be a few minutes anyway, so instead of knocking on Heather’s room and waiting for her to give me the go-ahead, I just followed Elyse down the first hall.

“Hey, Elyse,” I said quietly, so no one in the surrounding dorm rooms would hear me. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

She jumped a little, like she hadn’t expected anyone to be so close behind her. She turned around and said, “Asher?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Sorry to startle you. I just wanted to talk to you about something real quick.”

She looked down the hall, like she was worried Heather might come around the corner to find me. And then she said, “Here, just come to my room and we can talk.”

If I’d been more myself right now, I probably would have teased her about breaking the rules and letting her bad-girl side come out. But since I was a ball of nerves, I kept my mouth shut and quietly followed her down the hall.

As we walked past the doors, I realized that I had no idea which room was hers. I looked at the various doors and the different things the occupants had put on them to make them their own. One had a Christmas wreath. Another had strings of purple beads hanging down from the top of the door frame.

We kept walking down the long corridor, and only once we made it to the very end of the hall did she stop.

And when I looked at the number seven in the center of her door, a sense of déjà vu mixed with dread filled my stomach.

Because I’d been to this exact room many times before.

Because it was Bailee’s room.

27

ASHER

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