Better Than Revenge [Unedited - 2012 Version]

Chapter Seven

Note: Better Than Revenge was written before Kidnap My Heart. Kidnap My Heart wasn't supposed to be a real book but I decided to make it one after writing Better Than Revenge. The Kidnap My Heart scenes in this book are NOT the same as the ones in the real version of Kidnap My Heart. Nicknames are different, dialogue is different, even some of the plot is different. This is an extremely rough draft of what would later become Kidnap My Heart as you know it. So if you've read Kidnap My Heart, just keep this in mind! 

Better Than Revenge

Chapter Seven

“Soph, calm the hell down!” Tori snapped, shaking me violently. “You’re not going in there freaking out like this! Calm down!” 

“I can’t!” I wailed, wiggling out of her grip. “I’m so nervous!” 

“You can’t let them see you’re nervous, though!” she reasoned with me. “Just take a deep breath and breathe… in and out, Soph, in and out.” 

“That sounds so wrong, Tori,” I said between my deep breaths. “So, so wrong…” 

She rolled her eyes at me. “Shut up and breathe! In… out…” 

I followed her advice and steadied my breathing, which in turn calmed me down considerably.

“Better?” she asked me. 

“Much,” I replied, nodding my head. 

“Good.” She looked very proud of herself. “Now, are you ready to go knock their socks off?”

“I was born ready,” I told her with a grin. 

“That’s what I like to hear!” She grinned widely. “Now go! Don’t forget to be your charming self!”

“Who else would I be?” I asked her, shaking my head as I exited her car. 

“I don’t know,” she replied in exasperation. “Just go!” 

I chuckled and shut the car door, turning away from her. I looked up at the huge building and took a deep breath. 

Here goes nothing, I thought, walking towards the building. I stopped at the entrance, nervously biting my lip. I was momentarily lost in my own little world, a little world that was domineered by “what if’s” and fears. Tori honked her horn at me all of a sudden, snapping me out of my thoughts. 

I was thankful for this. That little world wasn’t a place I wanted to be at that moment. I turned around to give Tori the thumbs up sign. She stuck her own thumb out the window and I laughed, turning back around. Clutching the door handle in my hand, I faced my fears and opened the door. Walking inside, I glanced around. 

I followed my instincts as I made my way around the building, somehow managing to find the audition room. It was marked with a sign for the clueless folk like me. 

“Whew,” I muttered to myself, glad I hadn't gotten lost. I opened the door to the audition room and ran right smack into something hard. “Oof. Shit.” 

A cup of something, coffee, it seemed, fell to the floor and splashed all over my legs. 

“Watch where you’re going!” a voice snapped angrily. 

I looked up in annoyance and realized the thing I had run into wasn’t a thing; it was a person. And of course, with my luck, it was the one person I couldn’t stand. 

“Why don’t you?” I snapped right back. 

“You’re the one who ran into me,” Christian Ryder said, looking down at his spilled coffee scornfully.