The Bully’s Dare: A Why Choose Enemies-to-Lovers Romance (The Truth or Dare Series Book 1)

I can’t sleep. I lay awake, staring at the ceiling.

Every now and then, I glance at the window. I think part of me keeps hoping Jason will climb through it again. That I’ll run off with him and Donovan to someplace where no one will ever find us. We could take Donovan’s boat. Leave and never come back.

Wishful thinking. But when I touch my belly, tracing the place where there’s a seed of something springing to life, I know that they’re just that. Wishes.

I climb out of bed. I shuffle down the hall to where Pearl and Four share a room. When I open the door a crack, I can see them in bed together, washed in nighttime blue. Four is snoring loudly. Pearl—somehow—is fast asleep in her nightie beside him.

Which, on closer inspection, probably has something to do with the earplugs in her ears, the eye mask covering her eyes, and the sound machine going beside her bed. Not to mention whatever sleeping aid she took with a wine chaser.

There’s a good chance a herd of elephants wouldn’t wake her up, but it’s worth a shot.

I stand about a foot from her bed, holding my arm awkwardly like an injured animal, and gently try: “Mom?”

Maybe it’s the rarely used M-O-M word that activates some primitive response in her brain, overriding all else. Immediately, she stirs, peeling up her sleep mask and peaking at me with one bleary eye.

“Kenzi? What’s wrong, darling?”

“It’s…um. I have something to tell you.”

“What is it?”

But the words are stuck. A lump in the back of my throat.

Pearl sits up and pats the mattress beside her. “Come. Sit.”

I do. She winds her arms around me and I crawl into her. I curl up in her lap and sniffle. I don’t want to be eighteen. I want to be eight. No, younger. I want to be a fetus, curled up inside my mother’s womb.

“Oh, darling,” she murmurs, “whatever it is, we’ll figure it out. I promise.”

That breaks the dam. I tell her.

Everything.