A Hurt So Sweet Volume Three (Elite of Eden Falls Prep 3)

I groan out loud.

I will deal with Lily Anna too, when the time is right. She'll pay for sending that text to Audra. She'll pay for everything. But first, I need to find Pandora. I need to find her before it's too late. Before she's left town for good, leaving me behind in the dust.

Racing to the train station, I reach it in a record of twenty minutes. The whole time, I'm stressed as fuck, sweating and cursing out loud. I leave the car running and run off to the platform. I know Pandora left to see her mother. I know she saw that photo circulating and thought the absolutely worst of me. She thought I betrayed her again. Finally, now that I'm coming to terms and accepting my love for her, it's all over.

Again.

There's only one train leaving for North Haven today, and it's leaving in ten minutes.

I reach the platform, scanning the crowd for any sign of her. I rush past people, pushing them aside, looking them up and down. No fucking luck. I run on the train next, pushing past people who curse and yell at me, not giving a shit. I see a brunette from the back, grab her shoulder, startle her. It's not Pandora.

I make it through all the carriages and she's fucking nowhere to be seen.

I have to accept it. She's not on the train.

I manage to get off before the train pulls away, sitting on the platform with my head in my hands, kicking at the ground. She got away. She ran away from me. She left me. I'm alone. Alone again.

What happens next feels like a trance.

Somehow I get out of that train station.

Some-fucking-how, I end up at a house party of one of the rich kids in Eden Falls. Someone I used to compare myself to, my competition - without the status. It's been a long time since then.

I'm greeted with open arms. Invited in. Poured drink after drink. I drink all of them. I get asked too many questions to count. I don't answer any of them.

I drink.

I smoke.

I dance, sweaty bodies grinding against mine. Someone tries to kiss me, and I have to get out, I'm fucking dying from the oppressive heat, the booze, the fucking sensory overloard.

I think about Lily Anna, probably worried out of her mind about what's happened to me.

Let her fucking worry.

After everything she's done to fucking with my life, she fucking deserves it.

I fill my mind with a haze that's as numbing as it is comforting. Because when I'm in this haze, I don't know right from wrong, and nothing can hurt me. So I'll just stay in it until the pain doesn't fucking hurt anymore.

I lose myself in the night and pretend the problems won't be here when I open my eyes, sober again.

At some point, I get sick in the garden of my former rival.

But hours later, I wake up with a start in the backseat of my car with a bottle of tequila clutched in my hand. I groan, feeling a killer hangover coming on. But I'm also stone cold sober, and the thought of Pandora consumes me completely now. I need to find her. I need to get rid of Lily Anna for good.

I get behind the wheel of my car with a clear head.

I drive home with my heart pounding and my mind filled with ideas.

I'll beg Lai to help Lily Anna.

I'll give her to Emilian Oakes, to punish her for what she's done.

I'll fucking push her off that cliff myself.

I shake my head to get the thought out. I can't bear to think about it, but the idea is there now, firmly lodged in my mind, demanding attention.

I could get rid of her.