Page 1 of Nightmare

CHAPTER 1

ATTICUS

I’m going to kill her.

I mean, I won’t actually kill her, because I’m not the type of crazy who likes to fuck dead girls, but I’ll still wrap my hand around her little throat and squeeze until she admits she belongs to me.

It’s been seven months, for fuck’s sake.

For seven months, she wouldn’t take my calls, reply to my letters, or come visit me. I was in prison, and she was out here doing fuck knows what. Without me.

Does she not know how crazy that made me? How I paced my cell every day and night and tore my fucking hair out, wondering who she was with and what she was doing while I was locked up in there?

Of course she fucking knows.

She knows me better than anyone.

Maybe that’s why she left me.

Fuck that. It’s definitely why she left me. But too bad for her; I don’t give a shit whether she never wants to see my face again or not. I’m out now, and I’ll do whatever it takes to make her mine again.

“Where to?” the cab driver at the train station asks, meeting my eyes in the rearview.

I give him the address and tip my chin at his center console. “Can I use your phone?”

“Something wrong with yours?” he asks, passing it back as he pulls away.

“I lost it,” I tell him as I dial the number I memorized, pressing it to my ear once I hit the call button.

Technically, that’s not a lie. I did lose it, along with my freedom the night I beat the shit out of Violet’s study partner and set his dorm room on fire.

Fucking prick.

“Hello?”

“It’s me.”

“Atticus? What are you—” He stops talking, probably looking at his phone to check the number on the screen. “Wait, whose phone is this?”

“My cab driver’s.”

“You’re in a cab?” He sounds baffled. “Dude, please tell me you didn’t just break outta jail.”

“I didn’t just break outta jail,” I say just to placate him, giving the driver my best smile when his eyes widen. “They let me out four hours ago.”

“What? Why the fuck didn’t you tell me that? I could have been there to pick you up.”

“Because you would have told her I’m coming.”

A short pause, and then he sighs, not even bothering to deny it.

I know he loves me like a brother, but he loves her like a sister and he’s never tried to hide the fact that he thinks she’s better off without me. He’s a fucker for it, but I can’t say I blame him. I’d probably tell her that too, if I was a better person.

“I take it you need a place to stay?”

I grin at that, shaking my head even though he can’t see me.

I lived with Violet in an apartment off campus before I was locked up, and it’s kind of cute that he thinks I want to live with him now. Like I won’t be back in my own bed by Monday morning.

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