𝐏𝐈𝐄𝐑𝐂𝐄𝐃 // 𝐇.𝐒.

03.

Chapter 3

I don't think I've ever seen a gun in person. Yet after twenty-one years of being alive, I had one pointed at me last night. Being ruthlessly killed by a person with a gun has always been a fear of mine. Though, it's what attending public school in America does to some. It's one of the few reasons why I've switched my college in-person courses to online courses for my final semester. I thought I'd be safer.

I haven't slept. Though, how could I after being threatened and terrorized?

I was sent home from Zac's bar after I broke not one, but two bottles of expensive hard liquor. My manager noticed I was off and shaken up the moment I had arrived breathlessly and puffy-eyed. He asked if I was alright and I think I might've lied and said I was fine.

I took an uber I couldn't afford home. It left me in deficit, but I thought I simply couldn't risk any more danger that late at night.

The fact that he knows where I live because of August is another reason why I chose not to sleep. Guilt kept me up just as much.

I don't know what the boy looked like. I don't know his age or his race. I just know he was young. He couldn't be older than seventeen, I convinced myself. His voice still had an adolescent tone to it. I couldn't get his cry for help out of my head. I'm horrified with myself to think I ran away and left him there to fend for himself when he could barely talk.

I'm a horrible person.

The jiggle of a doorknob arises a heart-dropping feeling in me. With a hand over my chest, I turn from where I sit on the couch only to see August walking in.

"Hey," she greets with a walk of shame. She stops to kick off her heels. She didn't come home last night. "Whatever you're going to say... save it."

I furrow my eyebrows together. "I called you," I tell her because I did. Several damn times with my new severely cracked phone just to make sure if she was alright.

"My phone died," she answers and she leaves her heels by the door.

"Where were you?" I ask, leaning back against our couch. I cover myself up with a throw blanket I crocheted myself.

She enters the kitchen and opens the fridge. When she bends, she unintentionally flashes me her ass cheeks in the minidress she wears. I quickly look away. She then answers, "I was with Harry. You know, the hot body piercer from the tattoo parlor."

It felt like my soul left my body the moment she said his name. Images of his green eyes and gun flooded through me again. I suck in a breath from the sharp pain in my chest. The fact that she was with Harry, possibly after he threatened he would kill her and then kill me made me physically ill. I get up from the couch after my cheeks tingled.

Suddenly, I'm in the bathroom and kneeled by the damn toilet.

"Woah! Babe, what happened?" I hear August step into the bathroom behind me. As I'm coughing my fucking lungs out, she's reaching for my dark hair to hold back. "Oh, my... You're fucking pregnant, aren't you?"

At this moment in time, I wish. I'd rather be a disappointment to my parents than potentially murdered.

I'm done vomiting little of what I've forced myself to eat. I reach for toilet paper to wipe my mouth then I flush the toilet. "No," I tell her softly. I just got queasy over the fact that you're sleeping with Ted Bundy.

"Oh, right... Matt doesn't fuck you."

She has a smirk on her face, but I don't find what she said funny at all. My cheeks feel as if they are on fire. I might've made the mistake of telling her Matt and I haven't had sex in over three months. I don't need to be reminded. "August-"