In the aftermath of her twin sister's tragic death, Reagan Sinclair finds herself in a never-ending battle against paralyzing panic attacks and drowning in grief. Desperate to just survive each day, Reagan's world is turned upside down when Paris un...
Samara: Hush! It's forbidden to say the Dark One's name, Ray. Besides, I'd much rather talk about you and Daddy Paris.
Reagan: And I'd much rather not, but let's talk about both of them anyway. TBB tomorrow?
Samara: I'm in like Finn.
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THE ACHING IN MY skull wakes me up, think of those banjos you hear in a church service, except on the inside my skull. It feels like my head is an anvil that's being stuck by a hammer over and over. I peel my eyes open to find myself lying in bed, tangled up in my sheets. I try to remember walking to my room, but the pounding In my head makes thinking impossible. I sit up tentatively and the room swirls around me before coming back into focus, and my stomach threatens to lose its contents. I blink a few times to clear the fog from my brain and my eyes land on the glass of water sitting on my table. I'm suddenly aware that my mouth feels like the inside of a fur boot. I lay back down after guzzling the glass of water, and I'm positive that water has never tasted that good before.
Vague memories from last night slowly start filtering through the murk in my brain. Getting drunk at Acid with Samara, dancing until my feet hurt, drunk texting Paris. “Oh God!” I'm sitting up again, ignoring the way the world dips around me as I finally remember just how I got back to my room. Paris carried me. While I clung to him like a baby Koala..... and acted like a horned-up kitten. Oh. God. “No no no, no no, no no,” I'm scrambling off my bed and fluttering around my room, frantically looking for my phone. Under my pillows, below my bed, inside my purse. I need to know everything I said to him, I need to know just how big of a hole I have to dig for myself. A few minutes later, when I find my phone tangled up in the blankets on my bed, I decide that I'm moving to Indonesia, and I'm adopting a fucking Babirusa.
Paris is in the kitchen frying up some eggs when I finally work up the courage to walk out of my room. I pull out a stool at the kitchen counter and sit as quietly as I can. I feel scandalized, humiliated, so turned on I can't breathe properly. If I close my eyes, I can still feel his big hands on my waist, at my thighs. Hear his low murmur of dirty words in my ear. He looks at me then, eyes flickering briefly to my lips before dropping back to the frying pan. “How's the headache?”
“Manageable,” I mutter, who knew that realizing you made a complete fool of yourself in front of your hot older roommate was a great cure for hangovers? He hums, taking the eggs off the stove and washing his hands.
“Avocado toast?” He asks, already getting an avocado from the fruit bowl and cutting it open. There's a smile on his face as he asks the question and I vaguely remember asking him to make me one last night.
“Sure,” I say, staring at the veins in his tattooed hand as he mashes the avocado in a bowl and smears it on a slice of toasted bread. I have a sudden, sharp memory of the way that hand gripped my chin. His head bent, his breath in my ear as he told me all the filthy things he would do to me if I weren't drunk.
