Chapter 1
I wake up feeling disoriented and cold.
Why is my bed so hard? Hangover?
I feel around for the covers … I don’t feel it. It feels like … a floor.
I force my eyes open, my head really hurts.
Its dark, where am I ? I try to sit up but my entire body aches.
Think dammit, what is the last thing I remember ?
Room 204, art history with professor hottie. Professor Black, damn that man is sex on legs. He is at least 6.5, blue eyes, brown hair, a jawline that can cut glass. Daydreaming for a moment about the hot moody professor. My mate. Ryder, also my mate. His hands, his mouth. His huge …
Shit, not now, think you horny bitch. What happened?
6 Months ago
Let me introduce myself. I am Haven Green, 19, fresh in college and loving every minute. Art major, my parents think I’m wasting my time. Well, it’s not their life now is it.
Newly single since I caught my boyfriend, now ex, Silas, in bed with my sister Tarryn. She is 21 and thinks the world owes her. She is my parents’ favorite child. In my opinion she is an entitled bitch. But she is following in my fathers’ footsteps to be a lawyer so he is proud.
Proud – I hate that word. That bitch looked proud when I caught her bent over the couch with Silas fucking her from behind. She still had the nerve to say it’s because I don’t put out. So what if I’m not a slut. To me being a virgin is something I am quite proud of. My future husband who ever he may be will surely be happy I wasn’t some slut.
But lets be real, I’m a virgin, not a prude. I do watch porn like any normal teenager. I have had an orgasm, nothing has just ever been …. inside me.
My best friend, Chloe Monroe, doesn’t care. She says college is an experience and she will screw anything that looks worth it. That’s how I ended up here, at this stupid ass party sitting in a corner watching her flirt with like six guys. I wonder if she wants them all. What would that be like. Damn Haven, down girl. Act like a virgin, because you are one.
The bass from the living room speakers vibrates right through the soles of my sneakers, a dull, heavy thump that matches the frantic rhythm of my heartbeat. Red plastic cups litter every available surface—the coffee table, the arms of a sagging floral sofa, even stacked precariously on top of a microwave in the kitchen. The air smells like cheap vodka, stale beer, cheap body spray, and the unmistakable, skunky tang of weed.
“Earth to Haven! Are you breathing in there, or just calculating the atomic weight of wall paint?”
I blink, snapping out of my daze as Chloe drops down beside me on the worn-out armchair. Her mascara is slightly smudged, her cheeks flushed a bright, feverish pink, and her crop top looks like it survived a wrestling match. She’s grinning like a Cheshire cat, clutching a red cup filled with something radioactive-looking.
“I’m breathing,” I mutter, pulling my knees closer to my chest and trying to make myself as small as possible in the corner. “Just watching the circus.”
“It’s not a circus, babe, it’s a biological wonderland,” Chloe laughs, elbowing me playfully. “Look at the kitchen island. Total feeding frenzy.”
I glance over. A couple of sophomores are aggressively making out against the granite counter, completely oblivious to the crowd of cheering, slurring spectators banging on the cupboards around them. Someone spills a funnel of beer down the front of a guy’s fraternity shirt, and half the room erupts into howling laughter. Everywhere you look, people are loud, uncoordinated, and slipping past their inhibitions. A guy in a backward baseball cap is trying to regale an empty hallway with a passionate monologue about cryptocurrency, while two girls in the corner are sobbing dramatically over a lost lip gloss.
It’s sensory overload. The kind of chaotic, reckless freedom that makes my skin prickle with a mix of judgment and morbid fascination.
“See?” Chloe nudges me again, her eyes darting across the crowded room before locking onto someone near the front door. “Case in point. Look who just walked in. If that isn’t a sign from the universe to stop brooding over Silas, I don’t know what is.”
I follow her gaze, expecting some generic frat god, but my breath catches in my throat.
