Page 4 of Beautiful Nightmare
Kellan grimaces, grunting, “What’s wrong with your face, pretty boy?” He doesn’t pause long enough for my answer as he picks up a box and hauls it into his room.
“Nothing. Just waiting for you fuckers to finish unpacking.” He knows me well enough to know my irritation has nothing to do with them. He’s always able to tell when he can fuck with me and when he can’t. He gets me in a way not many people do.
He eyes me warily as he comes back into the room. “Calm down, football boy. We’re almost done. Right, Mad?”
Maddox simply grunts from his crouched position. He’s been fiddling with his gaming system for the last thirty minutes.
As freshmen, Kellan, Maddox, and I had been assigned to live together by the university. Those two poor assholes hadn’t known what they were in for when they got stuck with me. Fortunately, though, we clicked in a way I hadn’t seen coming. They’ve become the two people I’m closest to in the whole world.
I’d been in such a bad place then, even after having taken a full year off to get my head screwed on straight. If a person could be declared a fucked-up mess not of their own making, someone who’d been ruined by a force they hadn’t seen coming—like a natural disaster—that would have been me when I moved in.
Yet, Kellan had been able to talk me down, even if he didn’t completely understand what the issue was. I hadn’t clued him or Maddox in to the source of my unsettled anguish until much, much later.
Maddox has been an invaluable friend as well and had been more than willing to go along with whatever I wanted to do to quell the anger I had brewing inside me. If I wanted to hit the rec center across campus and punch a bag a million times? He was down with it. Or if I wanted to drink an entire bottle of booze in one sitting? Sure thing. He’d be right by my side with his own bottle. Even stupid shit like jumping into the river off Royal Bridge in the middle of winter—yep. When I needed someone to let off steam with, Maddox had been there for me. I think part of it is that he relates to me since he has his own issues. That crazy dude does wild shit all on his own, so my brand of rage-fueled chaos was nothing to him, didn’t even cause him to blink.
Crossing to the cabinets in the kitchen area with yet another box in hand, Kellan mumbles, “Do you care if I store some art supplies in here? I’ve got nowhere to put them in my room.”
I shrug. “Whatever. Don’t care.”
Kellan eyes me with interest, tucking the entire box of his art crap inside one of the cabinets under the sink. “What’s with thedon’t carebullshit?” His head turns toward our open door, and he gazes across the hall to where the commotion had come from. When he swivels back to face me, his eyes narrow.
I shake my head, unsure what I intend to do, so no sense in bringing anything up yet. “Nothing. Not a damn thing.” Pinching my lips together, I lace my hands on top of my head and try my damnedest to breathe steadily. After a minute or so, I sit down on the arm of the couch. “That dorm meeting tonight, is that everyone or just freshmen?”
Ignoring my question, Maddox sits in the chair across from me, flipping on the TV. “Cool. I’ve got the PlayStation all hooked up.”
I stare coldly at him.
“What?” It takes him a second, but he nods. “Oh. Right. I think it’s just the freshmen. Why?”
Heart hammering in my chest, I growl, “Those girls across the hall… anyone seen them around before?”
Kellan stops in his tracks, his shrewd eyes studying me again. “Um. No.”
A surge of inspiration strikes. “I need to get into their suite after they clear out. Who wants to help?”
“What the hell? Why?” Maddox frowns as he glances over his shoulder and, in typical fashion, before I even explain myself, he shrugs. “Fuck. Fine. I’ll help you get in. No problem.”
A dark smirk teases at my lips. “I’ll explain once I confirm something.”
Kellan snorts. “You’re fucked up and bonkers all in one pretty package. Looks like we’re going to have a repeat of last year. This has to do with the girl, right?”
I know he sees it in my eyes. Ofcourseit has to do with her.
If Lux Hart thinks she can walk onto my campus—live in the same dorm—without me making her life a living hell, she’s absolutely mistaken. She never should have come here. She has no right interfering with my life any more than she already has. I hate her for how badly she’s fucked me up.
I drop my head into my hands, fingers pulling at my shower-dampened hair. I intend to make her pay for what she’s done. And I’m going to have the most insane fucking good time doing it, too, because she doesn’t deserve to get off easy. She deserves to know pain and suffering and heartache.
THREE
LUX
Curled into a ball on the floor of my bathroom, I wait for the prescription meds to kick in. To calm me. To make my mind stop racing with terrifying thoughts. But it’s hard. The anxiety stops me in my tracks. The panic attacks send me reeling. And the nightmare I’ve been living has been unending. Without knowing what else to do, I sit here, a shaking, bewildered mess.
How can this be happening? I force myself to try a grounding technique I was taught by my psychiatrist, a countdown of my senses—five things I can see, four things I can touch, three things I can hear, two things I can smell, one thing I can taste… taking time to really think about each.
By the time I finish and can breathe again, embarrassment over my fragile mental state rushes through me. And on top of that, somehow my crazy brain thinks it saw Hawk right across the hall. My face heats, and I know it must be reddening. What if I freak the fuck out in front of the strangers I’m now living with? Why had I thought I could come here and live a normal life when it’s immensely clear already that it’s too much for me to handle? I’m already seeing things. This isn’t good at all.
Fuck.I cringe, thinking about the kitchen utensils I’d dropped and left all over the floor out in the communal area of the suite. I’m sure that the combination of the horrific clanging noises and slamming of the suite door has already caught Raven and Star’s attention.
