Chapters (39)
- Cover
- Dedication
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- What’s next onyour reading list?
This isn’t how this is supposed to work. In movies, once you realize you’re in love, you just hop in a taxi and race through traffic and get to the airport right in time—the power of true love and all that. I’m not supposed to be held up by a concierge. What if I don’t get ahold of him at all? Or worse, what if I find him and it doesn’t go the way I’m hoping, praying, that it does? I know he might love Danielle, that he might still want to be with her and I could be interrupting. But our friendship has already been ruined. If there’s any chance at all he might feel the same way that I do, I have to tell him. It’s what a Gryffindor would do.
I spin away, heading back in the direction of the elevators. Fine. If no one will tell me any of the information I need, I’ll just have to find him myself.
The elevator doors ding open in front of me. There are twelve floors—twelve shiny gold buttons taunting me. He could be on any of them. I curse myself for not checking ahead of time where they were staying, for trying to act like I didn’t care, as if asking any questions might give away my feelings. The elevator gets impatient with me and the doors close again and then reopen, reminding me I’m supposed to push a button or get the hell out. I sigh and go back into the hallway. If only there were some way to get him to leave the room—to force him to come back downstairs and away from Danielle. But there’s not really anything that could possibly pull any teenage boy away from sex, especially sex with Danielle Oliver; probably only threat of death or fire.
And then it hits me, the idea so absurd I almost choke.
I look up at the wall in front of me, the beautiful filigreed wallpaper, the dark wooden beams crisscrossing just below the ceiling, and there it is, a little red box above my head with a white lever, black words printed across it: PULL DOWN IN CASE OF EMERGENCY. In case of emergency. Probably not what they had in mind, but an emergency all the same.
So I pull down.
The air around me shifts and stills, and I stop breathing, listening only to the steady beating of my heart in my chest—and then like a sleeping dragon roused from its slumber, the building roars to life. All around me alarms start wailing, high pitched and screeching, and when I run back into the lobby, everything is chaos.
“Everyone outside!” the concierge is shouting. “This is not a drill.”