Total pages in book: 56
Estimated words: 54196 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 271(@200wpm)___ 217(@250wpm)___ 181(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 54196 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 271(@200wpm)___ 217(@250wpm)___ 181(@300wpm)
Carson chuckles. “I like where your mind went with that. I think you’re going to fit in perfectly with the band.”
“Thanks,” I say with a grin before suddenly my brow furrows. “Wait, how the hell did you get in here, anyway?”
He just grins. “Follow me.”
He turns and gestures with a nod of his head as he walks down a small little hallway towards a single, rusty, ancient looking metal door. He swings it open, and the light from the hallway pours into what looks like a forgotten storage room filled with metal folding chairs from the fifties and a bunch of old piping pieces.
I stop cold, my brows arched sharply. Carson turns and frowns.
“What’s up?”
“You want me to follow you into the creepy-ass, dark storage room?”
Carson chuckles. “You that worried about trust fund kids at prep schools?”
“Have you read American Psycho?”
He laughs. “Fair enough. You do realize your last name is Bateman though, right? Fuck, I’m the one that should be worried here, you maniac.”
I snort and roll my eyes.
“Watch out, I’ll chop you up.”
He grins. “Come on.”
He steps in, and I swallow before I step in after him into the pitch black, junk-filled room.
“Are you guys seriously going to practice in h—”
Carson reaches the back wall and grabs ahold of the big, heavy-looking metal shelving unit. He gives it a hard yank, and I wince at the screeching sound of rusty metal on cement floor. But my jaw drops as I watch the big shelving unit swing out. And there behind it is an old metal door that looks even older than the one we stepped through to get into this room.
“What the hell?” I whisper as Carson turns the knob on that one and swings it open, revealing a dark hallway. He flips a switch and a row of what look like string garden lights flickers on, stretching on down the hallway.
“Okay, what’s going on.”
Carson glances back at me and grins.
“It’s from way back, from when Winchester had servants and butlers and maids and shit. Leads straight back to Lorne Hall, our dorm.”
“Is it safe?”
He shrugs. “Probably?”
I make a face as I follow him into the passageway.
“So, what, you use this to come screw girls over here?”
Carson yanks the shelf back into place before he closes the door too. He turns back to me with a hard look.
“You’ve got a really low opinion of football guys, don’t you?”
I shrug. “Yeah?”
“Well, no, I don’t use this passage to come over here and screw girls. None of us do, and if you knew us, you’d know that’s not really our thing.”
“Having sex with girls?” I grin. “Something you want to tell me about the nature of your and Griff and Anders’s relationship?”
“Heeeeey, she’s got jokes,” he grins with a roll of his eyes. “This guy who graduated when we were sophomores showed it to us. Yeah, he used it for coming over to sneak into his girlfriend’s place, but we just use it to get around curfew. There are a few of these tunnels actually. You just gotta know where they are. There’s another one that leads to the basement under the maintenance building near the back gate to campus, for instance.”
“Okay, that’s sneaky as hell.”
He grins. “Thanks. Here, this way.”
I start to follow Carson down the narrow brick passageway, when he glances over his shoulder at me and then stops.
“Look, I’m, uh…” he frowns. “I was an asshole yesterday.”
I smile. “Kind of.”
“Well, I’m sorry. Honestly.”
I nod. “Accepted. I was, uh…” I blush. “Maybe I was kind of a bitch.”
Carson grins. “How about we call it even.”
“Deal.”
I shake his outstretched hand, and I shiver a little when the handshake persists, our hands still touching after the shake.
“Anders apologized for you anyways.” I say with a nonchalant shrug.
“So I heard.”
The fire in Carson’s eyes take away any doubt I might have about whether he knows about last night with Anders, and I blush furiously as I slip my hand out of his.
“I—I mean…”
He grins.
“We don’t really keep much from each other, the three of us.”
Oh.
The hallway goes quiet but for the beating of my heart, and the blush roaring in my cheeks.
“Zara.”
I swallow and glance up to see him looking at me like this is nothing.
“Does it look like I care?”
I frown. “Do you?”
“No.” He starts to turn to keep walking, when he stops. I watch his broad shoulders rise and fall with a breath before he glances back at me.
“Maybe just a little jealous,” he growls quietly before he keeps walking. My heart skips a beat as I follow, my face still blazing with heat as we walk the rest of the way down the passageway in silence.
At the end, he swings the door open and grunts as he swings another metal shelving unit just like the one on my side open. We step through, and I gasp at the difference in rooms—this one’s dimly lit with soft-bulbs in lamps, and the floor is covered in an oriental rug. A couch sits to one side, and the room is filled with musical equipment.