Chapter 3

Adina’s POV

Lucia walked into the room and took in the sitting arrangement. Her hands hooked daintily around her waist as her eyes fell on me.

"You are in my spot."

Her tone felt like claws aimed in my direction, and I knew that there was nothing anyone in the room could do to save me from her. Best to just do whatever she wants.

"Lucia," Giovanni began to say, but I got on my feet at once, moving towards the other side of the couch.

Another pair of hands grabbed mine, and suddenly, I found myself plastered between two guys. I recognised one of them. Alessandro. Aurora’s ex-boyfriend.

I’d always known that he was friends with this circle. It was the reason I kept asking Aurora why she was going out with him in the first place, but Aurora never listened to me—until she returned with her heart shattered into one million pieces.

Alessandro smiled at me, and I rolled my eyes, pulling my gaze away. I needed to find a way to get out of this circle. I had an assignment due tomorrow that I hadn’t gotten around to. I blame Aurora for putting me in this situation.

“Who’s going first?” Lucia drawled as she took her seat next to Giovanni. “Adora.”

“You mean Adina,” Giovanni corrected.

“Whatever. Adina.”

“What?”

“You are the newbie,” she muttered, crossing one leg over the other and leaning into the couch. “Truth or dare.”

"That's not how it works, Lucia," Giovanni interrupted. He grabbed the bottle on the table in the centre of the group and spun it.

As luck would have it, the cover part fell on me.

“Great!” Lucia hit her palms together in glee. She was the one asking the question.

“Truth or dare, Adina.”

I looked around me, asking myself for the umpteenth time what I was doing here. I hated games where there were no rules, and I had a huge feeling that this was one of those.

Lucia had this smug expression directed at me, and I wondered if it was too late to just get up and leave.

Instead, I found myself answering. “Truth.”

“Ouuu!” Alessandro whined beside me. “Are you sure about that? I heard dares are always the easiest option.”

“Truth.”

“Leave the girl,” Lucia purred, leaning away from the couch. “Truth it is.”

Her lips slammed shut for a dramatic silence before she pushed her hair behind her ears.

“Adina, are you a virgin?”

My eyes shot wide open. That wasn’t the kind of question I was expecting, but then again, I had no idea what I was expecting.

The ten pairs of eyes watched me, and I squirmed under their gaze. My lips parted and slammed shut in rapid succession. The temperature in the room increased a notch, almost like someone had turned up the heater.

“It is a simple question, Adina.” Lucia angled her head. “You should be able to know if you are a virgin or not, right?”

“Can’t you see how she looks?” Another girl in the group laughed. “That skirt… how will anyone think about getting under there? And is that a scarf?”

I wrapped the scarf tighter around my shoulders, shifting far from their reach. “There is nothing wrong with being a virgin,” I muttered.

A mischievous glint appeared in Lucia’s eyes. “Are you telling us you are a virgin, Adina?”

“Can you let her be?” Giovanni interrupted suddenly, a frown working its way to his face. “She obviously feels uncomfortable with your line of questions.”

“But there is a rule,” Lucia shrugged. “And we are not bending it because of her. We didn’t force her to join the game.”

“But we….”

“Yes,” I snapped. “I am a virgin. Satisfied?”

Lucia chuckled and pushed back into her seat. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

Giovanni moved the bottle again, and I heaved a sigh of relief when it landed far from me.

“My turn.” I recognised his face from campus since he was in the same group as Giovanni. But I didn’t know his name. “Giovanni, truth or dare.”

“Truth.” His tone was clipped and certain.

“Urghhh!” The boy groaned. “You are making this game boring.”

“Truth, Dario.”

"You are thinking about kissing someone before the end of the night," Dario began. "And maybe having a heated make-out session just because it is you."

A knowing chuckle spread across the room.

“Who is it?”

In that split second, our eyes met, and it felt like the wind had been knocked out of me. His intense blue eyes caressed my features, but it was gone in a second—so fast that it might as well have been a figment of my imagination.

And then, Giovanni shook his head. “No.”

I felt a sharp pain in my chest suddenly, and my hands reached out to touch it. The games had continued around me, but I wasn’t concentrating. It made no sense that I was disappointed in his response.

Why was I?

“…Adina?”

I looked up to find the group watching me.

“What?”

“It’s your turn.”

I shook my head and got on my feet. "I'd better get going. I have an assignment due tomorrow."

Without waiting for their response, I walked out of the room. It was hard to breathe, and my hands held on to the wall by my side, using it as a guide until I got out of the hallway and into the first living room.

Blindly, I reached for the main door and spilt out into the dark. My pulse raced under my skin, and it felt like the darkness was closing in on me.

I had nothing to drink in there, so what could the issue be?

Reaching the curb was one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do in my life, and that included writing exams.

I fished for my phone in my purse. Aurora asked me to give her a call when I was ready to head back to the dorm.

But my fingers were weak and I couldn’t reach my phone.

I felt my limbs give up beneath me. The last thing I saw before the darkness swallowed me was a pair of blue eyes staring down at me.