Sparkling Hope (The Eastburgh Devils Series Book 1)

I was out for revenge on Weston Sinclair.

My revenge plan still needed to be finished, but with every step I took towards the stairs leading to the terrace in front of Weston’s and my room, I got closer to my revenge plan.

What did I have in my bag with me right now to kill him as painfully and slowly as I could?

My notebook? Too blunt.

A pair of compasses? Too much blood.

My cell phone charging cord? In the top three.

The Keys.

Camilla had made up keys for Mom and me, but instead of giving us only the key for the front door, she made up all of them.

I didn’t even know what the other keys were supposed to unlock, let alone why she gave us all of them in the first place.

One thing was for sure.

I desperately need to mark the front door’s key with nail polish.

At first, I thought I was stupid and incompetent, but after trying all the keys again, I was sure the front door key was missing from the bunch.

I rang the doorbell like a madwoman because there were several cars in the driveway and lights on in the house.

Maybe the keys wouldn’t be completely useless because I could slip one of the keys along his dark green Jeep purely by accident and very slowly.

What pissed me so much was that none of the guys, including Weston moved their asses to open the door for me.

I guessed I had no choice but to be under the same roof with his asshole friends and himself as the biggest asshole.

I had rung the doorbell a few times, knocked, and even messaged him because Camilla gave me his number in case something was up.

I swore to myself to never take the piece of paper with his cell phone number out of my pocket, but it was an emergency.

LUNA

Can you open the door for me?

WESTON

Sorry, but my Dad always says not to open the door to strangers. See how you get along.

LUNA

Are you fucking serious right now?

WESTON

Of course.

LUNA

I hate you.

WESTON

No, you don’t.

I couldn’t go through the garden either, because it was also closed off with a gate.

The only place where I had some hope was the terrace in front of my and Weston’s room. Which could be reached by a staircase.

 I paused my revenge plan in my mind as I walked up the stairs and looked to see if any windows were open.

My windows were locked, which would have surprised me if I had lived in my room with the windows open at the end of October.

I kept walking and stopped before Weston’s room, where the  door was unlocked.

Carefully, I pushed the door open, stepped over the threshold, and entered Weston’s freezing cold room.

The place was as cold as an ice rink.

A mixture of strong men’s perfume mixed with cool air drifted through my nose. Goosebumps formed on my skin despite several layers of clothing.

 The low temperature in the room perfectly reflected Westons icy-cold character.

I left the light off in his room because the string of lights around the terrace’s railing let me see enough.

Two of his room walls were painted dark blue, and dark brown pine furniture adorned every corner of the room. A small corner served as a living area, as a leather sofa and matching armchair decorated the area in front of the TV, which hung on a white wall.

Throughout his room, he adorned the floor with crumpled or freshly folded clothes.

Half-dead plants stood sporadically in pots on his nightstand, next to the TV, or on the windowsill above the heater.

His room was rustic and untidy.

My curiosity grew the longer I stayed in his room, and somehow I liked knowing that Weston had absolutely no idea I was looking around his room. In fact, I didn’t think he would care either, but deep down, I really hoped it would bother him.

I left Weston’s room and walked through the bathroom that connected our two rooms to get to the guest room.

The loud, deep male voices talking grew louder as I ran down the stairs to the kitchen.

‘Hey, Luna,’ Henry greeted me, standing behind the kitchen counter and opening two beer bottles.

Carter and I had some classes together, making seeing Weston’s friends in the living room more comfortable.

While Henry is also in my semester, I only knew him through Aria because they were now having this fuck relationship with each other.

I smiled at the guys sitting on the sofa and ran into the hallway where the coat rack was so I could take off my shoes and jacket.

I noticed that the sofa in the living room was the same sofa in Weston’s room. The only difference was that the sofa in the living room looked a little newer and fresher than Weston’s.

I put my boots away in the shoe closet and hung my jacket on one of the hooks.

I could have done that more than twenty minutes ago if Weston and his friends hadn’t thought it would be funny not to let me in.

‘You’re finally here,’ said Weston with so much irony I thought it was leaking out of his pores.

‘Save your fucking words, asshole.’ Inside me, I was seething with anger because after all that unnecessary shit, especially from him, I just wanted to be left alone.

‘Should I ask you how you got in?’

‘Don’t always leave your patio door open, Weston.’

I walked past him, through the living room where his friends were sitting, looking for the money they left us here to go shopping.

Thirty dollars from Mom and the same amount from Camilla and Mr. Sinclair.

But I didn’t feel like going shopping today and had the idea to order something from the Asian restaurant with the thirty dollars from Mom.

I didn’t find anything, but I found a bunch of keys in the kitchen next to the sink and realized I had reached for the wrong one when I went to the coffee shop today.

This day couldn’t end any worse.

There wasn’t anything left that could top all this.

My stomach was screaming for spring rolls and a Lava Cake, so I stopped looking for the money and texted my Mom where she put the money before calling the Asian restaurant and heading for the shower.

After I got out of the shower, Mom answered me and told me that the sixty dollars were in the little bowl on the dresser.

The moment I was about to go downstairs to take some of the money, the doorbell rang.

Weston’s friends, except Carter, had all gone home by the time I got out of the shower. Carter was now the one who occupied the bathroom and went to shower after I was done.

Weston was cleaning up whatever trash had accumulated during that time.

Surprisingly, the sixty dollars were not where Mom said it should be.

‘Where are the sixty dollars?’

‘Spent,’ he replied to my question as he cleared the beer bottles from the dining room table.

‘Are you kidding me?’

‘Do I look like I’m kidding? Spent is spent, Luna. Get over it.’

Get over it.

I thought my bad mood couldn’t get any worse, but Weston was a living proof that it worked. I apologized to the gentleman standing outside the door, waiting with a small paper bag for too long. I sprinted upstairs to my room and searched for gather change, which was tricky since I usually always paid with my debit card.

When I found enough money and was about to head back to the front door, my order was already on the kitchen island, and the delivery guy was already gone.

Weston put his wallet in his pocket and continued to clean up.

I thought I wasn’t seeing correctly. For a moment, I stood there and reviewed what was happening for several seconds in front of my naked eye.

Was my thought of Weston paying for my meal a reality, or was I just imagining what it would be like if he was nice?

‘Thanks,’ I mumbled as I grabbed a plate and silverware from the kitchen and headed up the stairs.