Liquid Feels - Book 3 - DP Series - Complete

36. Don't Follow Your Heart

There's no knock on my door before it swings open, announcing Shonice's arrival as she struts into the room and throws herself over my bed. She's here to find out every detail about our previous night. Plus, I really need someone to talk to about Cassandra. Normally that'd be Seth, but since he seems to think he's actually friends with her, it's hard to know if he'd really hear my concern.

After our date last night, we'd finally been able to escape the monster and that's when the questioning began. Seth could obviously see that something was wrong. It's hard to act normal after someone's walloped you across the face. So, he asked if I wanted to go home and I'd agreed. The look on his face when I'd said goodbye was shattering. He thought he was responsible. He thought he'd screwed up. He thought the date was a flop.

"You just gonna stand there, or you gonna start spilling details?"

Shonice is sitting cross-legged on the bed now, one brow raised impatiently as she watches me.

And so I do. I recount everything that happened all the way up to Cassandra shoving her way into our date.

"...and then she slapped me."

Shonice had been smiling, but slowly, as my words sink in, her smile slips off her face and rage fills her features.

"Wait," she recoils, sitting up straighter, "You're telling me that she physically slapped you?"

"Yes." I nod once, definitively.

"Mercy!" she gasps, scooting to the edge of the bed and pinning me into Emma's desk chair with a wild look of horror. "She assaulted you and you said nothing? You did nothing?"

"Well, I don't plan to stay quiet about it," I justify. "I just need to get over this shock first."

"Yeah." Shonice nods. "I just can't believe people like this exist. Someone so evil that they'd physically harm a person out of jealousy. Like, I knew the girl was a mess, but this!" She shakes her head. "You think you'll go to the cops?"

I shrug, unsure about anything at the moment.

"She's a narcissist," Shonice tells me, "The type who will stop at nothing to get what they want. Apparently, Seth is the ego boost that Cassandra needs. She's desperate to feel good about herself and Seth's affection would do that. But, if he doesn't want her back, I'm a little worried that things will get really ugly. I mean, they already did... but it could get worse."

Shonice and I spend the next twenty minutes talking about the incident before she has to leave for class. I've still got an hour to spare, but I'm not much in the mood to go to class. Watching an action movie might help remove me from reality for a little bit, but when I flip through the options, nothing looks appealing.

Flopping onto my bed, I stare up at the ceiling, waiting for an idea to pop into my head. An idea about what to do about Cassandra, or how to spend the rest of my day. I'm so bored.

And then there's a pounding on my door.

"Come—"

It opens before I can even tell them to come in. Seth steps into the room, his eyes finding mine before he turns to shut the door. There's no greeting or delighted smile. Instead, he silently settles into Emma's chair and then rotates to face me.

"I can't believe you." There's a dark, accusatory tone to his voice, a tone I'm not accustomed to hearing from his lips. I watch his eyes nail me in place, slices of green melding with the faintest honey brown. How can such beautiful eyes carry such sharpness?

"Are you mad at me?" I ask, baffled. I don't think I did anything wrong, did I? Was there something I said or did that pissed him off that I'm completely unaware of?