Point Of No Return

Chapter 13: Unraveled

"Locker girl?" Finn's eyebrows shot up like he'd just stumbled onto buried treasure.

"Okay, that's enough," Alex cut in, his tone sharp enough to end the subject.

I smirked. "Guess I missed more than I thought."

Finn turned to me then, grin widening. "Speaking of—where did you disappear to, anyway? You've been gone forever."

I hesitated just a beat too long. "Uh... bathroom. Then I ran into some people from our school."

Alex tilted his head slightly, like he could smell a lie. I couldn't blame him—there weren't exactly many people from our school here. Tessa didn't say anything, but I could feel her eyes on me, sharp and unblinking.

Finn took another shot from the tray, his expression easy but his tone just light enough to pass as teasing. "Huh. You happen to see my brother while you were on your little adventure?"

My chest tightened. "Hudson?"

"Yeah." Finn downed his own shot. "He also disappeared. Milo was looking for him before."

"Oh." I took my shot, the tequila burning even before it hit my throat. "No. Didn't see him."

To my relief, someone in the other room started the countdown to midnight, voices echoing through the house. People scrambled for drinks, for friends, for whoever they wanted to be next to when the ball dropped.

We all joined in. I shouted along with everyone else, but my voice felt strange in my own ears—thin, distant, like it belonged to someone else.

For the rest of the night, I kept myself busy with Finn, Alex, and Tessa, letting the noise fill the space where my thoughts wanted to spiral. Eventually Finn and Alex got pulled away by some of Finn's football buddies, and Tessa and I decided to call it a night.

But even after all that, the only thing on my mind was him.

It had been bad before—how easily he crept into my thoughts—but now? Now he was everywhere. Now that I knew what it felt like to be that close to him, to feel his hands and the way he kissed like he was both terrified and desperate...

There was no way to push him out.

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The knock on my bedroom door came mid-morning, too early for anyone who had been out late to be awake unless they were possessed or, in this case, named Tessa.

"I know you're in there," she called through the door. "And unless you're dead or concussed, I have zero patience for silence right now."

I groaned and dragged myself out of bed, unlocking the door. Tessa swept in like a gust of wind with an agenda.

She took one look at me, and her eyebrows flew up. "Wow. You look like something that crawled out of a Jane Austen fever dream. The tragic, half-dead heroine kind. Also, since when do you lock your bedroom door?"

"Good morning and happy New Year to you too," I muttered, crawling back into bed and pulling the blanket up like armor.

Tessa stayed standing, blocking the foot of my bed like a prison guard. "Yeah, yeah, we rang it in together, the year's officially started—now, out with it."

"Out with what?"

She tilted her head. "Amara. I gave you a night to pretend everything was fine. But I need to know what happened."

I didn't answer.

She crossed her arms, her tone sharpening. "You came back from wherever you disappeared to at the party looking like someone had personally delivered you devastating news. Then you avoided my eyes for the rest of the night. And now you look like this." She gestured at me in all my blanket-swaddled glory.