Page 55

Seconds felt like hours. Knox’s chest was heaving with heavy, panicked breaths. He was losing it already. Angry, desperate, hurt. His arm was still braced against my neck. I struggled to swallow.
“Nate.”
The haunted, glazed look in his eyes narrowed to jarringly present clarity. We stared at each other like we were the only ones on the planet. Then he noticed he was damn near choking me.
Horrified, Knox released me, stumbling back. He looked like he wanted to chuck his gun far out of reach as if he’d threatened me with it.
Click, click, click.
Mason snarled, “Fuck!” as his gun emptied. He really did chuck his gun. He slammed his fist against the tree. “Fuck.”
His voice cracked. My throat tightened with tears. The backs of my eyes burned.
Bullets suddenly stopped firing.
Heel chuckled in the near distance. “You Devils are shit shots! We’ll wait you out. We may be Wolverines, but we like to play with our prey like kitty cats. We got claws and teeth. What do you Devil bastards got?”
Humanity, I wanted to shout back. But I didn’t because Knox was hurting and only I could bring him back.
“Survive this first, Nate,” I told him softly, a tone I’d never used before. The only time I spoke softly to a man was when I was threatening him with death. It had never been used to soothe before. How weird. But it still had bite. “Then you can mourn. Take a page out of my book, and be selfish for once.”
Knox’s eyes flashed defiantly. “Not with you, Caroline.”
“Right now you can. I’m a survivor, remember?” I reminded him of his earlier words that I had bristled at. “Acting restless will get us killed.”
I nodded toward Mason, who was looking murderous as he slumped against the tree. I knew he was reliving William Black’s death. I knew he was replaying the moment Gabriel fell. I knew he was thinking of Suzie Black. He had a lot to lose.
Knox and I? We didn’t have much.
But now we had each other.
He was a survivor, too. We’d gone through too many layers of hell to die now.
Suddenly, Knox bent his head forward to rest his forehead against mine. “Caroline.”
His voice was barely a whisper, yet it felt like an arrow to the heart. I closed my eyes—a dumb idea, but fuck it—and breathed in the sharp, acrid scent of gunfire coating him like cologne. It was far from a pleasant smell, but it was familiar to me, and that was pathetic, but who gave a fuck? As long as this fucker was alive, I couldn’t care less what he smelled like.
“I hate to break this up,” Mason snapped, jerking us out of our little world, “but we’re kind of about to die.”
I looked sharply at him. “No, the hell we’re not. I’ll handle this.”
“The fuck?” Knox barked, grabbing my arm and yanking me close. “You’re not going out there. You’re crazy if you think I’m letting you leave the cover of this stupid tree.”
I pulled free, not unkindly, but firmly. “You don’t need to let me do anything, Nate?—”
“Nate?” Mason questioned.
“—because I’m going to fix this. It’s my responsibility to deal with the consequences of my defying my father.”
Knox was furious again. “You think this is heroic, Caroline? That this will redeem you or some shit? Don’t lie. Jackson?—”
“Jackson was right!”
His eyebrows knitted together. “What?”
“‘You destroy everything you touch, Bates’s bitch,’” I quoted stonily. “I fucked over so many people. I’ve been selfish my whole life. This is my chance to be selfless for once. For myself. For you. For you,” I said, looking at Mason, who stared in shock. “If I need to turn myself in to save the Devils, then so fucking be it.”
“Caroline,” Knox growled. “Don’t do this.”