Playing Heart Games

Level 67: Meet Him

VIOLET

An hour earlier

"So you're going on a date?" Alissa asked, looking up from her book.

She was sat on my bed, her legs crossed, hair whipped up into a messy bun, a pair of glasses on her face. I hadn't even known she wore glasses. She was reading a contemporary romance—she'd blushed when I'd caught her, until I'd told her I loved that book too.

It was weird: finding out all these things about her that I hadn't known before. It was like she was an entirely different person.

I smiled. "Yeah, at seven."

In exactly seven hours and forty-three minutes, I would see Axel. My boyfriend. It still didn't feel real.

I turned from the mirror to face Alissa. "Do you think I should curl my hair?"

I'd washed it about a hundred times to get the curls back, but the strands still looked way too limp.

Alissa tilted her head. "Why don't you braid it? By the time you remove the braids, it'll be curlier."

"Good idea!"

I'd started on one side when my phone vibrated. I paused, then crossed the carpet and swiped it open.

I frowned.

Meet me at the painting house in an hour.

"What's wrong?" Alissa asked.

"It's a text from Axel," I mumbled.

"And?"

"It's from his second phone." He didn't need to use that phone anymore—not since the blackmail was over.

Besides that, we weren't supposed to meet for seven more hours.

I shrugged. "Maybe he forgot to use his normal phone."

I typed back:

Okay 😊