Unwritten Rules (Rules 1)

I peek through the keyhole, looking at what seems to be a reception room. It’s big, spacious, but it looks dirty and neglected. No sign of Owen anywhere. Haze peeks, too.

“This is the abandoned hotel on Route 9,” he says quietly.

I know exactly what he’s talking about. This is where it all began. I remember the shadow passing through the window when Will locked me in his car days ago. I never would’ve thought that I’d end up here when my phone first chimed. Things would have been so different if I had just found the courage to tell the guys about the messages.

“You got about fifteen seconds to escape. You run to the door, and you never look back, do you understand me?”

“What? No,” I whisper. “I’m not leaving you.”

“If you get a chance to escape, you take it. I can take care of myself in here. You, not so much.”

I can’t bring myself to answer, and I know he doesn’t find the reassurance he seeks in my eyes.

“Winter, no matter what happens once we open that door, you can’t look back. Promise me. Even if he shoots me, even if I die, you run.”

The painful pit in my throat grows harder to ignore. Raising an eyebrow in expectation, he stubbornly refuses to look away until I tell him what he wants to hear. I look down. This results in him delicately lifting my chin up with his finger and staring deeply into my eyes. His touch is like a drug. A simple yet unforgettable high that disconnects you from reality.

“Winter, please.”

It takes everything I have to say it. “I promise.”

He smiles sadly.

“On three.”

That’s when it hits me.

After all this—after all this guy and I have been through since the day I met him in the hallway—I never let myself like him.

Like really like him.

I never found peace in my feelings, incessantly scolding myself over the way he crept into my mind every time I closed my eyes, the way his touch lingered on my skin long after he’d left me.

I even beat myself up over the way he made me laugh. I shouldn’t find him funny. It’s wrong, I constantly told myself.

I shouldn’t be thinking about that in a moment like this, but now that we aren’t sure whether or not we’ll live past this day, my priorities are different. I think about what’s going to happen if Haze doesn’t make it out and I do. I’ll regret not telling him that I was wrong about him. It wasn’t right before, but it is now.

Haze Adams is the right guy… and I have to tell him.

“Wait.” I clasp my fingers around his arm before he begins the countdown.

His blue eyes lock with mine the way they did so many times before.

“I need to tell you—”

He cuts me off. “Don’t.” He tucks a strand of my hair behind my ear. “Whatever it is you have to say, it can wait until we’re out of here.”

“But—”

He interrupts me again. “Do you trust me?”

“I…” My eyes shift to his. “Yes.”

“Then trust me on this. I am not done annoying you just yet, Kingston. Not even close.”

He leans in slowly, and I see the hesitation in his face when his eyes land on my lips. He exhales and presses his lips to my cheeks instead. When he pulls away, we know…

It’s time.