Ground Rules

Prologue

Two Years Ago

Wellington Prep

Mazey

It was hard to open my eyes. It was almost as if someone had painted my eyelashes with glue the night before. Did I have fake lashes on? My head shook slowly at the thought as I tried to make sense of why it seemed I was sleeping on a concrete floor instead of my comfy bed, which was pushed up against the far window in my room that had the perfect view of Cole’s.

I shifted on my side and nearly whimpered at the pain in my back. My spine was stiff, and every bone in my body felt like it was seconds from snapping. Why was I so sore? I wiggled my toes and tried to sort through my muddy thoughts. My head was groggy, but flashes from the night slowly started to pile in. My heart picked up in speed, and it thumped harder and harder as each second ticked by. Wait. The morning light filtered through the far window of a room I didn’t recognize, and my stomach rolled like the tide on the beach. My joints creaked, and the pounding in my head intensified. When I finally sat up, using my hands as an anchor to the floor, I saw that my shirt was off, and my jeans weren’t covering my legs.

Party. I was at a party the night before.

More flashes of the night came at me, and the memories were like lightning pounding me in the back of the skull. Someone had led me to a room. Touches. Laughter. But I wasn’t the one laughing. Where was Cole? The faceless person in my vision caused chills to race down my arms, and that was when I flipped over onto my knees and began pulling myself up.

Sick.

I was going to be sick.

My watery eyes scanned the floor for my phone. I needed my phone. How was it possible that this had happened? Did this happen? God, please tell me this didn’t happen.

“Stay calm, Mazey.” My voice was weak and raspy as I crawled over the soft carpet, searching for my phone. I was sore in places I shouldn’t have been, but I didn’t even allow the thought to fester. A looming shadow of anxiety cascaded over my back, but it disappeared the second I grasped my phone underneath the bed.

My fingers fumbled with the device like it was a live grenade, and my first thought was to call Cole. I’d always been his little secret. The girl in the servants’ house that sat along his perfectly landscaped backyard. The girl he wouldn’t dare touch in daylight but always at nightfall.

Cole and I were a locked box full of lingering looks and subtle touches on the front. We were like the breeze in the middle of a dark forest, wafting over the cool, dirt floor, heating it up from the inside out. We were a modern-day Romeo and Juliet, and we both knew it. Words were hardly spoken between us in public, but alone? We were on a completely different wavelength. There was an unspoken bond between us that only he and I were aware of.

The second I hit Call on the screen, my anxiety lessened. Cole would help me. Cole would get me back home before anyone even realized where I was and what I’d done.

But what had I done?

Cole and I caught eyes last night.

Far too many times.

Maybe that was why this happened. I was too busy staring at Cole as he wrapped his hands around Victoria’s waist. The jealous surge lit me up right smack dab in the middle of my chest.

It was the first time I’d ever been to a party that he was at, too. Our friends ran in different circles. He was part of the elite, ruling the halls of Wellington Prep, and I was part of the less fortunate—the ones at the bottom of the food chain. His parents had paid my way into Wellington Prep as a bonus to my parents, but I still ran with the scholarship bunch because my parents didn’t even come close to beingwealthy.

The second the phone began to ring, my heart skidded to a complete stop in my chest. I could hear his ringtone inside the bedroom I was tucked away in. My stomach fell an inch, and then another and another as I slowly stood up on shaky legs and began searching the room for him. Why was he in here?

Swallowing back the thought that crept inside my head, I took a step to the left, my bare feet digging into the soft carpet beneath me, and that was when I saw him hidden away in the corner. No.

There he was, in all his beautiful, righteous glory. Perfectly tanned skin from spending his days at the pool in his backyard this summer. Chiseled jaw that made my mouth even drier than it already was. Thick, dark eyelashes. Lush, soft, chestnut hair. Why was he…?

I looked down at my bare legs again, my belly tightening at the faint purple marks on my thighs. My lip wobbled, and I looked back at Cole. Was he in on it? He couldn’t have been. He hated when other guys spared me glances in the hallway. I knew he had something to do with the fact that I always ended up dateless for school dances and football game pep rallies.

My shoulders shook as I slapped my hand over my lips, keeping myself from sobbing. Shit. How was it that the one person I trusted beyond everything was the one person that I was the most fearful of at the moment? Confused. I was confused.

Just then, my phone started to ring in my hand, and I hurriedly pushed Accept, not even knowing who was calling.

“Mazey?” my best friend, Kate, shouted into the phone. “Where the hell are you? Are you okay?”

I took a step away from Cole, and then another, until my back was against the wall. I scanned the room for my underwear and pants, my stomach twisting with nausea every other second. “I…I don’t know,” I whispered, my voice breaking with every word that floated out of my tight throat.

“I will kill them all. I’m in the hall. Are you in a bedroom? Open the door. We need to go right now.”

“Go where?” I asked, swiping a tear away from my cheek. Shit. How did this happen? They warn you about things like this. Girls being alone at parties and someone slipping something into their drink. I was not a stupid girl, but I was distracted. I had glanced at Cole too many times. He was like a luring dream, always pulling me in until the very last second and then pushing me to wake up.