Page 146 of Fight or Flight
And I still have no idea what the fuck happened last night or what any of the videos mean. I had a brief chat with Paxton when he came by my room about an hour after Jace left, but he’s just as confused as I am and doesn’t even remember taking or sending me the videos thanks to the tequila shots he ended up doing after I left, so he has no clue what happened either.
The only thing he was able to tell me for sure was that I got into a verbal confrontation with Mason, and that Jace pulled out his knife-spinning skills to defuse the situation, but he has no idea what happened after I ended up outside. His theory is that Jace literally carried me back to the house and got my ass into bed, but he doesn’t remember who those three guys were and if Jace was fighting them because of something I did, or because of something he did.
Is that why he was so nice to me this morning? Because he saw how fucked up I was and felt sorry for me? With anyone else, I’d consider that a possibility, but that doesn’t track with Jace. He’s not the type to alter his behavior to make people feel better.
Scrubbing one hand through my hair, I stand and lift my arms above my head to stretch out my stiff back. I’m reading way too far into things that aren’t even there.
It doesn’t matter that we’ve slept together or that I spilled my deepest, darkest secrets to him. Jace is either fucking with me, or he’s messing with me. There are no deeper meanings to anything he’s doing, and I need to get the fuck over whatever is making me think otherwise.
Resolved, I drop my arms and scoop up my phone.
Might as well put in some face time with the guys and see where the night takes me.
“Are you sure you’re not going to change your mind?” Dan asks.
“Not tonight.” I shoot him a rueful smile. “Still recovering from last night.”
He laughs. “Yeah, you were fucked up, bro. I don’t remember much, but I remember that.”
“I was.” I toss him, and the rest of the guys in the room, a quick wave. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
“And don’t do anything you would,” Paxton quips.
“That too.” I shoot him some cheesy finger guns. “Have fun being young and fancy-free.”
The guys laugh and chorus their goodbyes, and I quickly make my escape.
The last few hours were more exhausting than I’ll ever admit to anyone, and it feels like I can finally pull in a deep breath as I head down the hall to my room.
As much as I want to get fucked up again so I can stop feeling things and shut my brain down for a few hours instead of obsessing about Jace and what happened last night, I also know that’s a colossally bad idea right now.
I’m too volatile, and there’s a very real chance that I’ll turn into a drunken menace who just wants to fight and causetrouble, and I really don’t have the bandwidth to deal with the fallout if I do something I can’t just laugh off or easily take back.
It looks like tonight is the perfect night to dip into my personal stash and stay the fuck away from everyone while I enjoy the bliss that comes with getting high off my ass.
The folded-up piece of white paper taped to my door as I approach it isn’t a surprise, since they put one on everyone’s door a few hours ago, and I pull it down without reading the short missive.
I already know it’s a notice that they need to shut down the new key log system on our room doors for thirty minutes so they can update it, and we’ll have to use our keys instead of our IDs while they do. But the scheduled time was hours ago, so it’s not like this is pressing news anymore.
Balling the paper up, I unlock my door and shove it open.
My heart drops into my feet as I look around my ransacked room.
Every one of my drawers is open, with most of the contents strewn about my floor. My bed has been torn apart and stripped, and my wardrobe is hanging open while everything that was inside it is now on the floor.
Even my textbooks have been pulled off the shelves and are lying open on the floor, but what immediately catches my attention is that my laptop is gone.
Snapping out of my shock, I close the door behind me and hurry over to my desk. The charging cord is still plugged into the wall, and my keyboard and mouse are still there, but the laptop is gone.
My eyes fall on the open bottom drawer of my desk. My tablet and old cell phone I kept after I upgraded to my current one are also gone.
What the actual fuck?
I jerk the top drawer of my desk all the way open and look inside. The flash drives I kept in there are gone, but the wad of cash held together by a money clip is still in there, along with my handheld gaming system, the case of games I have for it, and a $500 gift card I got from a giveaway at the start of the year but haven’t used yet. Even my watch is still in there.
Who the hell would sneak into my room and steal my devices but leave everything else of value behind?
A wave of cold washes over me as I drop my gaze back to the drawer that used to house my flash drives. They didn’t just take my personal ones; they got the drive Jace gave me that’s full of the incriminating blackmail files the Kings have compiled on me.
