Misery Loves Company Read Online Free PDF Page B

didn’t make it any easier to swallow. Death seemed to be the most unnatural thing a human could experience. What was this life for if not loving and living andchanging and breathing? What was the point of it all if death took it away?
    Her wrists were sore. Why? She briefly closed her eyes again, trying to summon Jason back. She had also had a nightmare, but it was far away now, its sounds swallowed by other memories and thoughts. She remembered nothing but emotion: terror followed by a strange, overwhelming comfort.
    Then she noticed them again. The curtains. When did she put up curtains? The light, bright and spraying around their edges, hurt her eyes. It was like she had a hangover. Since when did morning light hurt her eyes?
    She turned to look at the bedside clock, which was not there. Her gaze caught something red written on the white ceiling. Her vision was still blurry and a throbbing headache required extra effort to focus.
    DON’T TELL ME IT’S TERRIFYING. TERRIFY ME.
    Jules gasped, scrambling back toward the headboard, reading and rereading the large red letters. Those were her words . . . the words she’d written on her blog. She glanced around the room, her mind barely able to translate what she was seeing. There was nothing familiar. This was not her bedroom. She looked down at herself. She was in soft, cotton, button-up pajamas. She didn’t own a pair of pajamas like this. She always slept in a T-shirt and shorts.
    Her limbs starting to tremble, she stared at the ceilingagain, trying to reason out what was going on. But her mind was so foggy. It felt like every thought had to be pushed through a wall of mud.
    Then she heard footsteps at a door she’d hardly noticed. The grain was clearly visible in the wood. It looked sturdy, heavy, thick. Below the door, where more light seeped through, a shadow appeared and the footsteps stopped. She wanted to run to the window, try to escape, but she wasn’t sure what she was escaping from. Maybe there had been an accident. Maybe . . . maybe this was all a bad dream. She rubbed her wrists, noticing again that they were sore. Red marks wound around both of them.
    “Jason,” she whispered. “Jason, I need you.”
    The knob turned slowly, and then the door opened. A man stood at the threshold for a moment, observing her. The fact that he looked familiar comforted her a little. But she couldn’t place him. Balled at the top of the bed, squeezing her knees to her chest, she watched him carefully. He held a tray with a bowl and a glass of water.
    “You’re awake,” he said, so low and deep, like wisdom had just found its voice. He stepped toward her. “I brought you some food. You really must eat. Your stomach is going to feel ill if you don’t.”
    “Am I sick?”
    “Not yet. Thus, the food.” He set the tray down at the end of the bed. The smell of a cream soup streamed toward her.
    She looked at him. His eyes, hazel and heavily hooded, were round and perceptive, stunning against the filteringlight. His features seemed chiseled from the finest, smoothest stone. He had deep creases on either side of his mouth yet didn’t seem prone to smiling.
    “Do I know you?”
    “Not really,” he said mildly, opening a packet of crackers for her. “You probably believe you do, but you don’t. You simply do not.”
    “Do you know me?”
    Those wise eyes studied something in front of her that she couldn’t see. “I shouldn’t know as much as I do,” he finally said, then focused on opening another packet of crackers.
    She glanced up at the ceiling, at those horrible words scribbled in dark red.
    “Your words,” he said.
    “I wrote them on my blog this morning.” A deep, heavy pain crushed her chest.
    “Not this morning. Tuesday morning. Stay calm.” His voice purred the command, his words echoing against all her thoughts.
    “I don’t understand what is happening.” Tears dropped down her cheeks and she wiped each eye with the back of her hand.
    “You