63. Aurora
I t’s been almost an hour and we still haven’t heard from them, and I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
Griffin paced back and forth for about thirty-minutes, before he finally relented and knocked back the whiskey that Bishop brought him.
He offered me one but I declined, too on edge to even think about anything else but the guys right now, and now he’s sitting at the counter writing away.
“What’s taking them so long?” I ask into the silence, Griffin still glaring at his phone from his spot beside me on the sofa.
“I don’t know, but it gives me a bad feeling,” Griffin grunts in reply, finally closing his phone and tossing it to the table, after all his messages have gone unanswered.
“Your room was a real mess, maybe they are just cleaning it up,” Bishop offers, not making me feel better in the slightest.
“I just feel sick,” I sigh, shaking my head, my arms wrapping around my middle, and Griffin leans into me.
“Let me make you some coffee and heat up some of the breakfast, you need to eat,” he grumbles, pushing to his feet, before he stumbles slightly, knocking into the table. “Woah,” he groans, shuffling a few more steps, before he leans on the wall, using it to hold himself up.
“Griffin,” I cry, jumping to my feet. “What’s wrong?” He looks at me and I note his pupils are a little dilated, but his eyelids are drooping like he’s tired.
Shaking his head, his words slur, as he replies, “I don’t feel so good.”
Then he collapses to the floor.
I try to grab him, but his body hits mine like dead weight, taking us both down, as I slip to my knees beside him.
“Griffin! Griffin, wake up!” I shake his body, as Bishop runs toward me, pushing me aside and checking his pulse, his face unreadable.
“What’s wrong with him, Bishop?” My voice shaking, tears already blurring my eyes, as that panic I thought would never come floods my system.
“We need to call an ambulance,” I sob, pushing back toward him, shaking him roughly, as Bishop moves aside, before his strong arms scoop me off the floor.
“Fuck,” he curses, his hands rubbing my shoulders, as he starts to move us back toward the sofa. “I thought he’d never pass out.” My eyes are still locked on Griffin, and I think his friend is just getting me out of the way so he can help him, until his words jolt through me.
“Bishop?” I say his name in confused question, my bleary stare meeting his, as he cocks his head at me, dropping me back onto the sofa with a careless thud.
“Yes, trouble?”
Something about the way he says those two words has my defenses rising, his face completely unreadable, as he watches me with a flat stare.
“I don’t understand,” I choke out, pushing upright, nothing is making sense to me right now, but all I can worry about is Griffin. “We need to help him.” I jump back to my feet, ready to run back to Griffin, but Bishop captures me again, tossing me more forcefully back onto the sofa this time.
“Don’t worry about him, he’s just taking a little nap,” he grunts, reaching down and plucking Griffin’s phone from the table, slipping it into his back pocket. The movement has me wondering where my phone is, before I remember I left it in the kitchen so it could charge.
There is a calmness I have never seen from him before, and the way he is staring at me tells me I should be anything but. There is no concern or emotion for his best friend, no panic, just a peaceful acceptance, as his words from a moment ago finally fully penetrate my mind.
I thought he’d never pass out.
“What did you do?” I gasp, my mind replaying the last hour, the drinks he poured for him, the lingering stares that filtered over us every few seconds, shaking my head in denial, but at my question he finally smirks wide.
“Oh no, trouble, this isn’t about what I did, it’s about what you did.”
A million thoughts filter through my mind, as he watches me coldly.
“It’s you, you’re the one who has been following me,” I whisper, the pieces of the puzzle finally slotting into place, as I rise to my feet on shaking legs, taking a step away from both him and Griffin.
“You sent me the letters, the gifts, the flowers, it was all you.” Bile burns up the back of my throat as I recall every word, every present, every time I thought he was my friend.
“Look who finally decides to notice me,” he grunts, taking a slow, measured step toward me, and I stumble back again.
My eyes flick between him and Griffin, realizing he must have put something in his drink to make him pass out, but then I realize it goes deeper than that.
“You trashed my room.” It’s not a question, just me realizing out loud that I don’t know one of my oldest friends.
“The letters started after you left for college, you were no longer able to see me.” I pluck on every memory I have, all of them free-falling through my mind, so fast that I can barely keep up.
“You thought with the guys out of the way that you could have your chance.”
It was no secret back at Vander that I was off limits, the whole school knew it, Everest and the guys made sure of it.
His smile is feral now, his steps slow, as he keeps progressing toward me. “You always were too smart for them.”
I’m shaking my head, still not willing to believe this is actually happening. “And now what? You think you can get rid of them and have me?” I laugh in disbelief, as dread takes over my body.
My eyes flick back to Griffin again, trailing over his unmoving body, as Bishop laughs.
“You think I want you after the way you let them defile you?” His tone is angry now, as he storms toward me, using my distraction to slam me into the wall before I can escape.
“How could you let them do that to you? You were so perfect and I was doing everything fucking right!” I can feel the heat of his words against my face now, as I try to get my heart rate under control.
“You fucking disgust me. Do you have any idea how many fucking blondes I have fucked pretending they were you? How many cunts I have used and abused, to try and fucking imagine the feel of yours around me?”
I pull on the memory of every girl I have seen him with since I arrived at Fairfield, all of them so similar to me that it makes me sick.
I remember the night we played beer pong, how happy he was, how he kept plying me with cocktails and still I felt drunker than usual.
How every time we landed the ball in one of the cups, his hands would sink around my waist and pull me against him.
I thought we were having fun, I thought he was my friend. I was a fucking idiot.
I need a plan, a way to get both Griffin and myself out of this.
I don’t know where Everest and Harden are, or how long they will be, so it all comes down to me.
My phone is in the kitchen, if I can get to that, then I can call for help, but then what about Griffin?
I try to flick my eyes over to him again, but Bishop smashes his fist into the wall beside my head.
“Stop fucking looking at him!” he screams, making me jolt, as tears start to track down my face, but then his hands are there, gently brushing them away.
“Everest was doing so good at keeping them away from you, but I saw the way they looked at you, how he looked at you, and you fucking loved it, didn’t you?
” His body presses into mine, as gasped breaths fall from my lips, my entire body reacting to his proximity.
“Bishop, please,” I beg. “You’re my friend.” I say the words in an attempt to appeal to our history, to remind him, but all it does is make him angrier.
His hand whips out before I can process it, backhanding me across the face, sending me flying to the floor. Pain shoots through my head, but I don’t linger, I move instantly, scrambling to my feet, but then his hand is in my hair and he is dragging me back against the wall.
“I knew about the letters from Harden,” he starts again, as if the last sixty seconds didn’t happen.
“I saw you read them, cherish them, write him letters back, and when his stopped coming and they all decided to leave you behind, I thought this is it, this is my chance.” He swipes more tears from my cheeks in a sensual caress, sickness and iron now coating my tongue.
“I poured my heart into that first letter, but you never responded, so I sent another and another, but I never fucking got anything in return, did I?”
I’m shaking my head violently now, desperate not just to get his touch off me, but to think of something to say in response. “I didn’t know they were from you, if I did…” I trail off, but he scoffs.
“Don’t fucking lie to me, Aurora!” He roars in my face, making me cry out in panic, before he once again starts soothing me.
“We both know you’re a terrible liar.” Horror claws its way up the back of my throat, not seeing a way out of this, not without him thinking I didn’t betray him.
“You never fucking looked at me, it was always them. I used to think if I could just get through to you, that you would see me, but then you showed up here, throwing yourself at them like another desperate whore, letting them fuck you until your cunt was gaping for them.”
His back and forth is giving me whiplash, but I’m just desperate enough to try anything, as an idea begins to form in my head. My hands shake as I bring them up to rest on his chest, his arms caging me in on either side, in a way that has me very aware of how easily he can overpower me.
“What? You’re gonna throw yourself at me now?” he sneers, but still he leans into my touch, grunting at the feel of my hands against him. “You think I want some used up pussy?” His words are cold, cruel, but I feel the way his heart starts racing beneath my hands.