When Sinners Play (Sinners of Hawthorne University 1)

“Why did you kiss me?”

His question comes out of nowhere, just like mine did earlier, and I jerk a little, caught off guard.

“Why did you kiss me back?” I demand, covering my surprise by turning it back on him.

He doesn’t answer. His hand comes up, tangling loosely in my hair as he curls a lock of dyed-blue strands around his finger. He gives a light tug, a gentler mirror of the way Gray grabbed my hair earlier, and even though I could easily resist the pull, I don’t.

I let him draw my face closer to his until his breath fans across my lips, sparking more memories of what it felt like to kiss him.

I just got so thoroughly fucked that I feel it in every atom of my body, but that doesn’t stop a new hunger from growing deep in my belly. For so much of my life, I’ve existed in a state of numbness—a neutral stasis that wasn’t exactly comfortable but that hurt a lot less than the alternative.

But now…

It’s like Gray flipped some sort of switch inside me, turning my dead soul back on. And now I don’t know how to turn it off again.

I don’t know how to find the nothingness again, and I wish like fuck I could.

Because everything I’m feeling is dangerous.

Declan’s face is so close to mine that I can see his pupils contracting and expanding, his eyes moving slightly as his gaze tracks over me. He’s so close that our noses brush, our knees pressed together as we lean into each other.

Then he draws back a few inches. Slowly, stiffly, his fingers uncurl, sliding out of my hair, and he rises to his feet.

“I’ll see you around, Soph.”

With that, he heads down the stairs, his footsteps echoing in the stairwell. They grow quieter as he gets farther away, and I sit still until I hear the

faint sound of the stairwell door opening and closing on the first floor.

Just like when Gray left my dorm room earlier, the space suddenly feels too empty, too cold, too big for one person. But even as I wrap my arms around myself to ward off the chill, my chest doesn’t ache in quite the same way it did before.

When Gray left, it felt like he took a piece of me with him.

When Declan walked away, he left of a piece of himself behind.

17

A long corridor stretches out in front of me. It seems to get longer and longer with every lethargic step that I take, and it sounds like I’m under water. Everything is muffled, distorted, and strange.

I don’t know where I am.

Am I at Hawthorne?

Am I back at the McAlisters’ house?

Am I at one of the half-dozen other foster houses I lived in before that?

I can’t tell. Everything around me is familiar and strange at the same time, images processed by my brain and then immediately forgotten. The only thing I know is that I shouldn’t be here. I need to get away.

This corridor…

This windowless, doorless stretch of floor and wall will somehow take me to my salvation, if only I can get to the end before…

Before…

I wake up in a cold sweat. My skin, my clothes, my blankets—everything is drenched. My heart gallops in my chest, and my head aches like it’s being squeezed in a vise. I feel a splitting migraine coming on.

What the fuck was that?