121 Degrees

The Heat builds, along with Feelings

Joshua's POV:

How the hell was I going to get out of this?

 I'd been stuck here for an hour now, trying to think of ways to get out of my predicament. Nothing had come up, and Melissa was running out of time! My brain worked frantically, but no new ideas came to me. I was still stuck here, and I had no idea how much longer the others could hold on.

I saw a flash out of the corner of my eye and turned towards it, but nothing was there. I thought, for a shining moment, that help had come. But no, I was still trapped. Just like Ryan, Samantha and Melissa. I looked in the direction I'd come from and whispered, as though the words would reach her "Hold on, Melissa..."

Melissa's POV:

Ryan finished telling us about the Dragon's Fang, the gang behind this plot to kill us. We were starting to panic though. Our skin had started to burn, which meant the sauna had reached 83 degrees. We were running out of time. I thought that maybe Josh had been caught by the Dragon's Fang, but I didnt dare voice the thought. Samantha was losing hope as it was.

I had already told her it was useless shouting for help-nobody would hear us. She wanted to give up-I could tell. She didn't give up, I knew, because Ryan was still here. She not only loved Ryan, she looked up to him in times of crisis. Since he wasn't panicking, she saw no reason to lose hope. But slowly, the minutes ticked by, and the temperature trickled up.

I kept looking at the window every so often, hoping to see help, to see Joshua. I desperately wanted to tell him I was sorry for reporting him to the police. It was only now I understood how deep he loved me. It wasn't just a crush-it was actual love, the kind that you'd expect to read about in fairytales or kids stories.

As the heat slowly but surely climbed upwards in that box, I realized just how much me and Joshua had in common, and how much I should have paid attention to him. He was always at the bottom of my list of people to go out with. I always seemed to ignore him, like someone might ignore a common houseplant. It suddenly hit me that that was the reason Joshua had stalked me-I never gave him a normal chance.

The moment I realized it, my heart sank.