All Chapters of Off Limits, Reyes: Chapter 1 - Chapter 4

Amara's PoVThe vending machine at the end of the hall buzzed the same broken note it had for six days straight, and I'd started timing my breathing to it just to have something to hold on to. My phone glowed against my knee three missed calls from a number I still hadn't deleted, a voicemail I hadn't let myself play. Down the corridor, a door opened and closed on a laugh that didn't belong here, and I flinched like it had been aimed at me.I wrapped my fingers around the bracelet in my pocket until the little hockey sticks bit into my palm, an old habit I couldn't seem to break even now. "You should go home and sleep, hon," a passing nurse said, gentle in that way reserved for people who look like they might shatter. I only shook my head, because home didn't feel like anywhere anymore, and some nights the hardest part wasn't the waiting it was remembering who I used to be before I'd learned to wait like this.I used to stand by the idea that every girl dreamed of a perfect boyfriend.

Amara's PoVI didn't sleep. I lay on top of the covers with my uniform still smelling like bleach and something warmer underneath it, replaying the five minutes before Pierce started pounding on that door — the way his hands had felt like they belonged there, the way I'd let them. By morning I'd built a whole speech in my head about how it was a one-time thing, an aberration, grief doing something stupid with my judgment. I almost believed it.Then my phone buzzed at 11:58 p.m. with a text from a number I hadn't saved. You're late. I sat up so fast the room tilted. I didn't reply. I didn't need to — my feet were already finding my boots, and somewhere underneath the part of me that knew better, a smaller, more honest part was already counting the minutes until that door.I had to admit, he must have read my filthy mind, because Templeton's golden boy seemed to have a strange obsession for the dark.For three dreadful nights following the incident, I'd sneaked into the locker room, sti