Page 1 of The Promposal

CHAPTER ONE

“Where are we?” I whispered as my boyfriend, Jake Kingston, came to a stop and turned his car’s engine off. He’d mentioned his plan to drive us somewhere in downtown Los Angeles. At night. And there were no functioning streetlights, trash was everywhere, and crumbling walls covered in graffiti. This area did not look particularly safe. Yes, thanks to my rich, famous artist father, my idea of safe consisted of valets and state-of-the-art home security systems, but this really was scary.

“I’ll show you.” Then he opened his door and got out.

What? Seriously? He’d brought me to the corner of Homicide and Assault, and he was intentionally leaving our bubble of safety?

Then he came around and tried to open my door. I locked it. He raised one eyebrow at me and pushed his key fob, making the silver lock pop back up. I pushed it down. Did he really expect me to join him in this madness?

“Tills, you’re being ridiculous. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Open the door.”

Ugh. He had to go and call me Tills. Only Jake called me that—short for Tilly, which was short for my actual name, Matilda. Everybody at school called me Mattie, my family called me Tilly, and Jake called me Tills. Rhymed withchills. Andthrills. Both of which he gave me on a regular basis. Him using his pet nickname for me was kind of my kryptonite.

Which he totally knew.

Glaring, I undid my seat belt and let him open my door. His gentlemanlike behavior also fell in my kryptonite category. (Which included, among other things, every time he would touch or kiss me. Which happened frequently.)

As if to prove my point, Jake took me by the hand to help me onto the sidewalk and then pressed a soft and sweet kiss against my right temple. He shut the car door, and it seriously sounded like a prison cell clanking shut.

He started walking down the street, and I clung to his hand. His grip tightened in response, and he gave me one of his movie star smiles that made my knees feel hollow. There was a man across the street from us muttering to himself and pushing a shopping cart with all his belongings. Honestly, homeless people scared me, too. Probably because I hadn’t had much exposure to them. I hated to think that I might be hobo-phobic.

But I had no problem admitting that I was definitely criminal-phobic, and I was worried this area might have more than its fair share of those. Jake would be totally fine—he was big and athletic. And if he couldn’t fight his way out of something, he’d be able to charm just about anybody into submission.

Me, on the other hand? I’d be screwed.

“Here we are.” We stopped in front of an old, abandoned building covered in spray paint and littered with broken windows. It gave me the bad kind of chills. “Do you recognize this place?” he asked.

“Yep. It’s where we’re going to get murdered.”

He shook his head and let out a chuckle, slipping a key from his pocket.

“How do you have a key?” I asked.

“My dad knows a guy.” Of course his dad knew a guy. “Come on.”

We walked up some stone steps, and Jake unlocked one of the massive front doors. It literally creaked, sending shivers up and down my back. “This is the part of the horror movie where the audience would be screaming at us to not go into that spooky building.”

“You know I’d never let anything happen to you.”

It was a good thing he was so gorgeous. It was the only reason I was following him inside.

That, and I happened to be head over heels in love with him.

Jake closed the creaky door behind us once we were in, making sure to lock it. Trapping us. Then he turned on the flashlight app on his phone. We could see only a couple of feet ahead of us; everything else was plunged into total blackness. And it smelled terrible. Like animals and trash and something else I did not want to identify. I put my free hand over my nose and mouth.

“This is the Alban Havelock Hotel. Back in the day, this was the place to be seen.” His words echoed eerily around us. The ceilings must have been high. “All the big movie stars of the 1920s and 1930s came here to dance and drink illegally and party until dawn.”

“Are they still here? Haunting the place?”

That made him laugh, but I still felt nauseous and light-headed. What if that was a sign I was being possessed and didn’t know it?

It surprised me that I was such a total and complete wuss. I’d actually considered myself somewhat tough before the Hotel of Horrors.

If this was how he was planning on doing his promposal to me, he’d made a bad decision. I might even make him wait a long time before I answered, given how much he was freaking me out with this place. Obviously I would say yes, because, hello—most important moment in a teenage girl’s life, and as I mentioned, I happened to love the guy—but he deserved to sweat it out a little.

It was weird to think that not too long ago I would have assumed that Jake had lured me here so that his friends (and my nemeses) Scott and Mercedes could play some kind ofCarrie-type prank on me. But now Jake just made me feel safe. Or he did until he brought me to the creepy death-murder-kill building.

I heard a distant noise and couldn’t help myself. I shrieked and threw myself into Jake’s arms. Not as a ploy, but because I was legit terrified.

---