Violet's POV
The ceiling was unfamiliar.
That was the first thing I noticed. The ceiling was white and smooth and high - the kind of ceiling that belonged to a room that cost money, serious money.
And it was not my ceiling.
My ceiling had dramatic butterfly stickers on it.
This ceiling was perfect.
I stared at it, while my brain began the slow, laborious process of booting up.
Where…
I turned my head. Large bed. Enormously large bed, with cool and soft sheets. The duvet was heavy and white and I was alone in it, which was…
Fine. That was fine. Completely fine.
I closed my eyes.
Then opened them again.
Where am I?
And then, slowly and vaguely, it started coming back.
The club. The mask - red, I'd had a red mask - and the corridor, the dark corridor with the amber light and the velvet and the bartender who had grabbed my arm and then…
Him.
My stomach fluttered.
Him. The man in the black mask with the jaw and the voice and the smile that had turned me to jelly. I had grabbed his jacket, I had grabbed his jacket with both hands and told him Earth was awful to me and offered to do anything…
My eyes closed again. Not from tiredness, but from the memory of his mouth.
Which had been…
God.
It had started there. In that room. The velvet sofa and the amber light and his hands, which had been extremely intense and electrifying. My mask had somehow slipped to the floor and…
A flash. Sharp and vivid.
His mouth on my throat. My fingers in his hair. His hands lifting my dress and sinking deep inside me.
And then.
Then.
I sat up very fast.
The duvet fell.
Then there had been more.
I pressed both hands to my face.
Two more. Two more men, at some point, appearing out of nowhere. But we weren't in the club anymore. We were somewhere else, somewhere with better lighting and no music - and I had not objected. I had not objected at all. I had enthusiastically welcomed them to join in.
"Oh my God," I whispered into my palms.
Silence.
"Oh my God."
Still silence, which was worse. At least if someone had answered I'd know I wasn't alone with this.
"Oh my God."
I lowered my hands and quickly lifted the duvet.
I was naked.
Completely, thoroughly naked.
I dropped the duvet.
"OH MY GOD."
I scrambled upright, standing on the mattress for one unhinged moment before stepping off it, and immediately winced. My body - every single part of it ached. My legs ached. My hips ached. There was a very obvious and sticky soreness between my thighs. My lower back. My…
I looked down at myself.
My nipples.
Both of them had the tenderness of something that had been thoroughly, attended to for several hours.
"Oh my God." I pressed a hand to my sternum and looked around the room with new eyes.
Had I…? Had I actually…? With three men?
Three.
Three!!!
I stood in the middle of this enormous, expensive room, shocked to the bones.
"Violet," I mumbled to myself. "What happened to you."
I looked at my reflection in the mirrored wardrobe door. My hair was destroyed. Mascara smeared. And is that… is that a large hickey on my collarbone?
Oh God.
I was completely and utterly ruined.
And so were my clothes.
Where are my clothes anyway?
I turned around. Checked the floor. Checked the bed - lifted the duvet, checked under the pillows. Nothing. The red dress was simply gone.
"Of course," I said flatly. "Of course it's not here. Because why would it be here. Why would anything be working in my favor.
Oh God. Now I wished I'd listened to Maddy.
Oh my God, Maddy!
I lurched toward the dresser, because that was where my bag was - sitting neatly like someone had placed it there deliberately - and I found my phone buried inside it.
Dead.
Screen black. Not even the little battery icon. Completely, utterly dead.
I held it for a moment and looked at the ceiling.
"Right," I said, to no one. To the universe. To whatever force had decided that I specifically needed to be ground into powder this week. "Right, okay. That's fine. That's completely fine. Everything is fine."
Everything was not fine.
I put the phone down and opened the wardrobe. Not because I had any real hope, but because I had no other options and standing here naked conducting a one-woman crisis wasn't going to solve anything.
The wardrobe was not empty.
I stared.
Folded neatly on the shelf: a pair of grey joggers. A soft black sweatshirt. A pair of white sneakers, boxed. All of it looked new. All of it looked like it might, against all probability, fit me.
I reached out and touched the sweatshirt.
Then, slowly, a smile broke over my face. Not a happy smile, exactly. More the smile of someone who has been through so much that finding a sweatshirt feels like a divine intervention.
"Okay," I said softly. "Okay. We're working with this."
I dressed quickly, stuffed my dead phone and my dignity into my bag, and looked at myself one final time in the mirror.
Grey joggers. Oversized sweatshirt. Box-fresh sneakers. Mascara disaster. Hair of a woman who had survived something.
I looked like I'd gone for a very intense morning run.
Infinitely, I thought, better than doing the walk of shame in a red dress.
I squared my shoulders, picked up my bag, and left.
The room was on the fourteenth floor.
The elevator was mirrored and I spent the ride down avoiding eye contact with myself. The lobby, when the doors opened, was the kind of lobby that made you feel underdressed even in normal circumstances.
I walked to the reception desk with the confidence of someone who knew what she was doing.
The woman behind the desk had a polished, pleasant expression.
"Hi," I said. "Good morning. Quick question - by any chance, did you happen to see who brought me in last night?"
The woman's expression remained pleasant. "I'm afraid I don't have that information."
"Right, but…" I leaned on the desk, "someone must have checked in. Checked out, maybe? Room fourteen-oh-seven, if that helps. Someone booked it, yes? There would be a name, a card, something…"
"I apologize." She folded her hands. "Yesterday was a free day."
I blinked. "Sorry?"
"The hotel owner celebrated his birthday yesterday. As is tradition, he provided complimentary rooms to guests for the evening. No bookings were processed. No payment information was collected."
I stared at her.
"His birthday."
"Yes."
"The hotel owner's birthday was yesterday?"
The same day I was brought to this hotel and put in a room. What are the odds of that.