girl’s mounting panic, it took Rose a minute to realize she had no fucking idea where she was. Her own anxiety began to mount.
“Where am I?” she whispered.
The clock fell from the ceiling and smashed into pieces.
“El tiempo ha terminado!” a female proctor shouted from the other end of the hall. “Entregue sus papeles, por favor!”
“No, no he terminado, no he terminado,” the familiar girl murmured frantically as she stood, blank paper crumpled in her hand.
What the hell was going on? And why was everyone speaking Spanish? Rose glanced around, trying to piece this weirdness together. Hadn’t she just been on the train to Barcelona with Fionn?
The stressed girl hurried toward the front of the room, and that’s when Rose realized the girl had a glow of light around her that no one else did. It was like a full-body halo. Instincts told her to follow the girl. Perhaps she knew why Rose was here … wherever here was.
However, as she took a step to follow the girl who was talking to the proctor, the room shifted.
It grew smaller, and Rose braced herself against the swift, strange change as it shrunk around her. Her heart pounded with fear; sweat coated her skin. What the hell was going on?
Attention fixed on the girl, Rose watched as the woman she was talking to disappeared and in her place was a handsome young man with dark hair and stubbled cheeks.
Rose spun around, taking in the dorm room they now stood in.
What the ever-loving fuck?
“Vas a estar bien,” the young man said, patting the girl’s shoulder.
“He’s right.” Another young woman appeared in the room, as if from thin air. She sat up from a sprawl. Her blond hair fell over her shoulders as she swung long, slender legs off a bed. “You’ll be fine.”
Rose frowned. The new addition was American.
The girl with the glow scowled, and Rose instinctually knew she hated the American. “I won’t get into the program now,” the girl said in accented English. “You don’t understand. You have no ambición.”
The American seemed affronted as she stood from the bed and put her arm around the young man. “Are you going to let her speak to me like that?”
“No,” he replied emotionlessly. “You should leave, Alejandra.”
Hurt pierced Rose as the girl, Alejandra, stepped away from him and immediately collided into a guy who had appeared out of nowhere too.
What. The. Fuck.
Rose swayed as the room changed again and Alejandra turned to face the man. His features were slightly blurred. The room they were in was pitch-black, except for the three of them. The boy and his American had disappeared.
“¿Qué haces aquí?” Alejandra asked the man with the blurry face.
“Me necesitas,” his deep voice rumbled into the dark.
“No.”
“Sí.” His hand slipped under Alejandra’s dress and she moaned, swaying into him.
Arousal instantly flooded Rose. What the— “Okay, get me out of here.”
Her discomfort grew as the sounds of sex filled the room, her pulse escalating as her body reacted to the desire pulsating between the two strangers. It was unsettling to say the very least. “Uh, someone get me out of here!” she yelled into the dark.
Then she heard a gasp and spun back toward the couple.
She froze when her eyes connected with Alejandra’s as she clung to her blurry-faced man. “¿Quién es usted?”
Rose shook her head at the accusatory question. “What? I don’t understand. Why am I here?”
“Who are you?” The blurry faced man vanished and Rose faced Alejandra alone in the dark. “Who are you?” she repeated in her accented English. “How did you get here?”
“I don’t know.”
Fear suffused Alejandra, and Rose felt that keenly too. “¿Cómo has llegado hasta aquí?” she demanded.
Rose shook her head, stumbling away from the girl.
“How did you get here? HOW DID YOU GET HERE!”
Rose jerked awake in her seat.
The low light from the train carriage stung her eyes as she tried to catch her breath. The sounds of the train moving through the dark reminded her where she was. On a train to Barcelona with Fionn. She’d fallen asleep.
What a weird dream.
She raised a hand to her forehead, finding it slick with sweat.
Where was Fionn? His seat was empty.
A gasp from across the aisle brought Rose’s sleep-fogged gaze toward its owner, and shocked gripped her.
The girl who’d been asleep across the aisle from her was staring at her in abject disbelief.
The girl from her dream.
Alejandra.
Except when Rose saw the confusion and alarm on the girl’s face, she realized it hadn’t been her own dream.
She’d been inside