Ashlynn's POV:

It’s been four days. Four whole days. Ninety-six fucking hours. Five Thousand, Seven Hundred and Sixty Minutes. Three hundred and Fourty Five Thousand, Six Hundred seconds, do the math. And I had surprisingly not been contacted by Julian— much to my relief.

I guess he finally gave up on me and found another chic to play charades with him.

I was at Kyndall and Dave— her newly wedded husband’s private beach house, with Hailey and Brooke for a fifth wedding after party because according to Kyn, you can throw as many wedding parties as you wanted.

It was beach themed, off course and we were all in our swimwear and bikinis. I was wearing a blue bikini.

Hailey, Broke and I were laid on our tanning beds, tanning at the beachside while Kyndall and Dave were in the beach house. They said they wanted to cook lunch for everyone.

But something told me that they were cooking up something else, because that’s all newly married couples ever did. Leave them alone for just two seconds and their underwears were already flying around.

“My boyfriend and I are thinking of getting matching tattoos when I get back to Cambridge.” That was Hailey proudly speaking, adjusting her sunglasses over the sharp bridge of her nose.

“You guys should get something like matching hearts, or sappy romantics quotes.” Brooke chipped in, suggesting. Hailey wagged her index finger in disapproval.

“Your whole sentence is an embodiment of cringe, Brooke.” Hailey remarked, which made us all to laugh. “I was thinking matching chainsaws, or skulls. Something like that.”

“You can do the skull one, and have like a red heart sticking out of each of it’s eyeball sockets.” I suggested. If that didn’t spell romance in Hailey’s fucked up dictionary, then I didn’t know what else did.

And the approved squeal she gave conformed with what I thought, “Oh my God, yes. That is a brilliant idea. This is why I love you the most Ashlynn.” She giggled, which earned and eye roll from Brooke and Hailey reached for me in a hug.

“He also wants to take me to see his parents. Shit, things are moving to fast but I love it, and I love him.”

“Ugh, you guys are so cute, I’ll puke.” I remarked and faked gagging noises as she and Brooke laughed.

Our laughter sobered down at the sound of Kyndall’s sudden shriek and the next moment, she and her husband ran out of the beach house and advanced towards us.

Did he put it in the wrong hole again?

“Ash, you need to see this.” Kyndall’s demeanor was worrisome, her deeply furrowed brows was a clear indication that something was wrong.

I took off my sunglasses and sat up with my elbows on the tanning bed, “What is that?” I questioned inquisitively.

Kyndall brought her phone to my gaze and Hailey and Brooke leaned in to watch too. It was a video. And my eyes nearly popped out of it’s socket the moment I realized the place in that video and exactly what was going on there.

It was a one minutes, twenty two seconds long video of me tossing Aaralynn's remains into the ocean

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?

My jaw sagged in bewildered shock, I was dumbfound and lost for fucking words. How on earth did Kyndall get this video? And who the hell recorded me?

“Sweet Mother of Jesus! You killed Aaralynn, Ashlynn!” That was Hailey’s terrified screech accompanied with Brooke’s gasps of horror. They immediately sprang off the tanning beds and ran– no, fucking flew away from me.

"Holy Shit! Does that mean you killed Tristan too?" Brooke's eyes widened as she gasped again, having put two and two together. So fucking smart, Brooke. Way to go Albert Einstein.

“How did you get this.” I questioned, ignoring Brooke. My voice lowered in shame and guilt. I couldn’t even look them in the face.

“Someome emailed it to me.” Kyndall answered, fright mixed with disappointment was evident in her tone.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuckity, Fuckity. Fuck. Fuck.

I was doomed!

I’m fucking screwed. This is the dead end. It’s over for me.

“How many people have seen this video other than us?” I asked another question.

My thoughts were spiralling, going a mile for every mili-second and my heart was a palpitating, throbbing mess of fright. What if my mother has seen it, the rest of my relatives, Tristan’s family? Shit, I’m done for.

Kyndall crouched down to my height and held my hand with the most sympathetic look on her face, “Ashlynn listen, we can get you to a psychologist. This isn’t normal. I think you should–“

“How many other people have fucking seen this?” My voice had skyrocketed and it made everyone flinch and Kyndall winced in fear, shielding her face with her palms. She was fucking scared, but she didn’t want to give up on me.

Curse you Kyndall for being such a good friend to me even after finding out everything.

“I haven’t shown anyone else Ash, no one. Just us. I swear it. You have to calm down.” She rambled panickly and tried to pacify me by softly stroking my back. She was very scared, but she still cared. Why? Why did she care!

“Take your hands off me.” I screamed, hopping off the bed and they all shrieked in fright again, and stepped further away from me.

It was then I noticed something red blinking in Dave’s hands. Was that— Jesus Christ, he was with a fucking recorder! That son of a bitch was recording everything.

So he and Kyndall were conniving bitches huh, they want to hand me over to the fucking police? To think I actually thought she cared about me.

I was raging with fury, my arms clenched tightly and I was breathing heavily overcome with so much anger! I was so pissed at Kyndall, for lying to me. She wanted to fucking sell me to the cops, alongside that wanker of a husband. I trusted her, why would she do this to me, I was her friend.

They had noticed my rising anger, and slowly backed away from me more and more. Kyndall kept telling me to calm down but I wish I could just shut her stupid mouth up, permanently.

And that was when my eyes noticed it,

The beautiful knife that was pierced into the celebration cake that had half of it already eaten by us.

I stared at their horrified and frightened faces then stared back at the idle knife and my lips quirked into a wicked smirk.

I guess we humans never learn from other’s mistakes, do we?

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The next moment, I was back at home frantically shoving my clothes into a suitcase in a fit of a panicked frenzy as hot tears streamed down my eyes.

In the spirit of platonic friendship and in a quite athletic manner, I had just slit Hailey, Brooke and Kyndall’s throats and rolled their lifeless bodies into the water.

It was easy though. I took self-defense classes all through my senior year.

Kyndall’s husband wasn’t left out of the generous gesture because after I had slit his throat, I had taken the time to cut off his stupid fingers for bringing down a recorder in a bid to put me in jail, then I dragged him into the depths of the water as well.

Then I smashed the stupid recorder and Kyndall’s phone before dumping their intangible pieces in the water too.

And that brought my kill count to six; seven, if you’d like to count the innocent recorder who was just a victim of unfavourable circumstances.

Six was an awful number of dead bodies etched to my name, but I had no choice. I needed to keep my secret safe. But I was fucking crying, I just killed my best friends and it’s all Tristan’s fault for cheating on me. If he never did, none of this would have happened.

I pray he rots in hell.

I was very scared, there was still someone out there who had that video and the thought of it churned my insides. I needed to leave the state, maybe the country or the continent. I just needed to be far away from this bullshitty mess.

But to where? I was low on cash, I hadn’t gotten a job yet. Fuck, I couldn’t afford to go anywhere.

In the middle of raving out unladylike profanities as I tried to shut the very full suitcase, my eyes wandered to my phone.

And then it dawned on me. Him.

He was the perfect escape. Fuck, I hated him more than anything but he was my only resort and I was desperate. So I did something I swore I’d never do. I prayed he hadn’t left the state yet as I frenziedly searched my phone for his number and dialed it.

The awfully long ten seconds it took before he answered the phone call seemed like all of eternity, “Hello, Ashlynn.” I was caught off guard by his silver-tongue, the way his words were so articulated and calming, like the soothing waves on the beach.

Beach. Deadbodies in the water. Fuck. Focus Ashlynn!

I sighed, mentally preparing myself, “I accept the marriage proposal.” I divulged in a blurt.