All Chapters of His Ruin: Chapter 1 - Chapter 5

DRISANA The elevator was taking too long. I shifted my weight and checked my phone again, still nothing from Carter. No be there soon, no running late, no anything. Just two blue ticks that told me he had read both texts and decided I wasn’t worth a reply. It was Sloane who convinced me to come tonight. “Just show up,” she had said this morning, site cross-legged on my bed while I did my makeup. “Surprise him. Carter needs to see you make an effort, Dri. You’re always waiting for him to come to you.” I told her she was right. What I didn’t say was that I had been waiting on purpose. Waiting was a form of control: you let people come to you, and you never had to reveal how much you needed them. Sloane had never figured that out about me. She thought my distance from Carter was indifference. I let her think that because it was useful. Four years of friendship. She was the one who sat with me the night my father announced the engagement, who held my hand while I cried, who said, "

DRISANA Carter was calling again.I watched his name light up my screen and let it go dark without touching it. Seventeen missed calls since last night. I had lain in the dark with my phone face up on the pillow, staring at that unanswered text until the light outside my window changed color. The alarm went off. I got up and got dressed like a person who had her life together.Someone who has been watching you long enough to know that what happened tonight wasn’t an accident.I had turned that sentence over in my head approximately four hundred times between midnight and six a.m. and I was no closer to knowing what to do with it than I had been the first time I read it.I turned my phone face down.Professor Smith’s voice moved through the lecture hall somewhere behind my thoughts. Groups. Project. Thirty percent of final grade. This was the one class I genuinely couldn’t afford to fail, which was the only reason I had dragged myself here with my eyes dry and my jaw tight and absolu

DRISANAHe was already smirking when our eyes met. Chills ran down my spine.“Mr Stalker?” I didn’t mean to say it, but that was the first thing that came out of my mouth. The smirk vanished as soon as I turned to face him. “W—What? I wasn’t stalking—” he began.“How do you know about the takeout?” I cut in.He looked at me. Something fast moved behind his eyes. “You—You looked upset yesterday,” he said, immediately looking away. “Not that I was paying attention or anything. People just… forget stuff when they’re stressed.”“You are avoiding the question.” I stared at him. “How do you know about the takeout?”“I saw you at the restaurant…yesterday,” he said quickly, pressing his lips together as he avoided my gaze. “I didn’t want you to think I was following you or anything.”Who does he think he’s fooling. His tone changed when he made those comments. Even when I turned to look at him, his expression was different. He looked like another person. “Right,” I said. As if I was goin