Page 45 of The Prince of Broken Crowns

“You really want to help me with something else?” My stomach is starting to twist with the burn of lingering whiskery that I drank earlier. “On top of helping me with my running?”

He lifts his shoulders then stuffs his hands into his pockets. “I don’t mind.”

I question why. Why is he being so nice to me?

I’m about to ask him when we arrive at the door to my dorm room. Suddenly, he slams to a halt with his eyes locked on the door.

“What the hell?” In the low lighting of the empty hallway, he looks pale.

I track his gaze, and my stomach churns.

“You shouldn’t have come here,” is written across my door in paint that bleeds down the surface ever so slightly.

“What the hell?” I murmur, and then it hits, vomit burning in my throat. “Shit, I think I’m going to throw up.”

Maddison

My eyelids flutter open, and the first thing I notice is that my head is pounding. The next thing is that my mouth tastes like ass.

“What the hell?” I groan as I move to sit up. The movement makes my stomach muscles throb. That’s when the memories start trickling back to me.

The party.

Whiskey pong.

Getting grabbed.

Leaving with River.

The note on my door.

Getting sick.

Vomiting.

Wanting to die.

River …

River holding my hair …

River telling me that everything will be okay …

I groan again as I recall how he witnessed me puking at least three times. While the memories are hazy, I know he took care of me, holding my hair back while I puked, then he helped me to my room.

I think I passed out after that.

Why did I drink last night?

Better yet, why is River being so nice?

I check the time and hate myself even more. I have class in an hour. How the hell I’m going to make it through it is beyond me, but I have to.

Dragging my butt, I sit up, lower my feet to the floor, and stand up. For a flash of a moment, I think I’m going to puke again, but it’s a false alarm. Taking a deep breath, I collect a pair of torn jeans and a T-shirt before heading out of my room.

Lily is in the sitting area, reading a book, with her hair pulled up, and she has sweatpants on, which is kind of an odd thing to see.

When she spots me, she closes the book. “You’re alive!”

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