Page 3 of Boys Who Taint (Spine Ridge University #5)

Aspen

Years ago

“Boo!”

Mavis’s face, appearing underneath a flashlight in the dark, makes me jolt up and down in my seat.

“Ha ha! Gotcha!” She points and laughs like it’s funny I got scared.

We’re not supposed to stay up this late, but our parents are already fast asleep, so there’s no one to check on us. And Mavis sure loves playing games in the middle of the night.

“My turn,” I say, snatching the flashlight away from her.

Darkness surrounds us, with only the glow-in-the-dark stars on the door lighting her bedroom. I get up and roam about, hiding behind my chair while I wait for her to settle in fear. Then I pop up and say, “Boo!”

But she just laughs. “Good one.”

“Aren’t you ever scared?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “Never.”

I roll my eyes. “No fair.”

She shrugs. “I can’t help it. There are far scarier things than your face.”

I snort and smile. “Thanks for the compliment.”

“I mean, I see floaty heads in Mom’s bedroom all the time.”

I grimace. “Floaty heads? What? Like actual ghosts?”

When she nods, my stomach almost turns over, and I lean in to whisper, “You see actual ghosts? Since when?”

“I don’t know. Forever, I guess.”

“That’s insane,” I say.

She shrugs. “You get used to it after a while.”

“Do they talk?”

“Nah, not really. I’ve tried, but nothing works.”

“Maybe you should try a Ouija board.”

Her eyes widen. “Oh … wow, can’t believe I never thought of that. Okay, let’s do it. We’ll get one tomorrow.” She holds out her hand. “Together.”

“Wait, you want me to talk to them too?” I’m getting the creeps. “Do they live in our house? How many are there?”

“Maybe three. I don’t really keep track. There are too many in this city.”

“Wow…”

“Are your flabbers ghasted?” She smirks.

I put my thumb and index finger together. “Just a little.”

She leans in. “So … want me to introduce you?”

I make a face. “Absolutely not.”

“Scaredy-cat.” She chucks a pillow my way and laughs, so I throw it right back, and we end up in a pillow fight.

She giggles. “C’mon, then! I’m not scared of nothing!”

Not scared of nothing.

Not even death itself.

Apollo

Present

I crawl up on the rock, water crashing into me as I waste no time clutching the body and checking for a pulse.

Nothing.

“God-fucking-dammit,” I grunt.

I cross my hands above her chest and begin applying pressure to her heart, trying to pump the life back into her.

She’s bleeding from the ear, and her leg is splayed in a very wrong position, but we can fucking fix that. Right?

I open her lips and give her CPR, but it doesn’t seem to make a difference as her body lies limp on the rocks.

The screaming coming from far above doesn’t help either.

“Goddammit, Mavis!” I yell at her, pushing down even harder into her ribs to make that goddamn heart of hers pump again.

But no matter how many times I push and push and push, her skin slowly begins to turn ashy gray as the blood seeps out into the sea.

“Fuck!” I yell, and I grab her arms and fling them around my neck. “I need help over here!” I yell to the people above.

But all they do is stare at me in complete and utter shock.

So I scream back, “ELLIOT! TALON! COME HERE! NOW!”

After a while, Elliot comes running up to the edge, his face white as a ghost, before he tears off his shirt and jumps down into the water with me.

Fucking finally, someone with a set of functioning balls.

Elliot swims up to the rocks. “What happened?”

“Now’s not the fucking time,” I growl back. “Grab her left arm.” I put her right arm over my shoulder. “Swim.”

He nods and does what I say even though I’m bearing more than eighty percent of her weight with my strong arms, compared to his flimsy sticks. But it’ll fucking do because that other dipshit is too busy staring at a fucking corpse to even come down and help.

Talon jumps in after and swims up to us to support Elliot’s side a little. “Is she still breathing?” he asks. “Keep her head up.”

We swim against the current to the shore, where the rest are already waiting for us.

“Sisi, help!” I yell.

We drag Mavis’s body ashore, and Cecelia is the first to rush to us. She tries to help Mavis breathe and starts giving her chest compressions.

I glare up at the rocks where Levi remains frozen to the ground like a statue.

Aspen scrambles toward us, nearly falling on the loose rocks on the beach as she makes her way to Mavis.

She kneels beside the body and leans in to listen. “No, no, no, no.”

“There’s no heartbeat,” I say. “I already checked. Multiple times.”

Cecelia’s already out of breath from doing CPR.

Aspen takes over, opening Mavis’s mouth and breathing into it, then begins chest compressions too. “C’mon! Don’t give up!”

“Did you hear me?” I say.

But she’s ignoring me as she continues applying more pressure.

“Listen!” I grab her hand to make her stop, but she jerks it loose.

“No! We have to save her!”

“It’s too late,” I say.

“Fuck no, it’s never too late!” Aspen growls, pressing her palms in and out of Mavis’s body, while sweat rolls down her forehead. “C’mon, Mavis, please, please, please! Please don’t die on me.”

Levi finally made his way down toward the beach, his steps shuffling in the sand. “It’s too late,” he mutters.

Cecelia jabs him with her elbow. “Don’t say that.”

“No. He’s right,” I say, trying to make Aspen look at me. “She’s dead.”

Aspen shakes her head. “No. I can’t.” Tears well up in her eyes. “I can’t lose her.” She looks up at everyone. “Someone, do something!”

“She’s bleeding from the head,” Elliot mutters, turning as pale as a ghost.

Aspen’s lip quivers as she turns to gaze at the lifeless body. “Wh-what?”

“Should I call an ambulance?” Talon asks, fishing his phone from his pocket.

I get up and march toward him. “And what do you think they’ll do?” I snatch the phone from his hand. “Ask everyone here how the fuck she died.”

“What?” Cecelia’s face is even whiter than usual.

“We’re suspects,” I say. “Each and every one of us.”

Océane places her hands on her mouth as her curly hair wafts in the wind. “Oh God.”

“How did this happen?” Aspen asks as she slowly gets up from the ground.

We all look at her as she steps forward, the rage quite clearly contorting her face until even I nearly want to take a step back to avoid her anger.

Something I would never, ever do.

Until now.

“She fell,” Levi mutters.

Aspen homes in on him like an arrow that found its target.

So I fish my phone from my pocket and do the only thing a man with a smooth brain like mine can think of. “I’m calling our parents.”

Aspen

“No, no, no!” My mother’s piercing screams as she huddles Mavis close to her heart rip through me like a thunderstorm, and the tears begin to stream down my face.

“Mavis, please, come back to me,” Mom murmurs close to her cheek, tears rolling down her face. “Please. Please, come back to Mommy.”

Mavis’s dad, Felix, towers over them with balled fists, staring at her body like he refuses to believe she’s really dead.

I can’t even believe it myself.

“Aspen …” My dad, Dylan, places his hand on my shoulder. “What happened?”

I wrap my arms around myself, but no amount of touch will take the cold away. “I don’t know.” My voice is squeaky. Unhinged. It’s like I’m not really here, like my body decided to float off together with Mavis into the dark of night.

“Apollo.” Another car door shuts as his father, Ares, steps forward.

“I take it you called her parents?” Apollo asks him.

Ares nods. “I had to.”

“Please … Mavis, I can’t do this without you,” my mom murmurs, and the cries that follow go through marrow and bone.

Alistair, my mother’s other partner, crouches behind her and wraps his arms around her, holding her tight as she begins to wail. I know those sounds will stay with me forever.

We should never have come here.

“Cecelia,” Ares says. “What happened?”

“Mavis … fell. We don’t know how,” she mutters, clutching her hand close to her chest as we all watch my mother break down in front of us, right there on the very beach where Apollo dragged Mavis’s lifeless body to the shore.

Another car comes driving out of the woods, veering left and right before stopping abruptly where the beach meets the grass. The driver, Nathan Reed, peeks out the window, and a very hasty Lana Rivera steps out and waltzes right over to us.

Levi’s mom.

Another door opens up, and Kai, Levi’s dad, chases her.

“Levi!” Lana growls. “What the fuck? I get a call from Ares and learn you’re not even at the goddamn lake like we agreed?”

“Lana!” Kai warns, forcing her to focus.

She stops in her tracks the second she spots my mom cradling Mavis. “Penelope?” Lana mutters. “What happened?”

“Mavis is dead,” her dad, Felix, growls.

“What?” Lana mutters in disbelief.

Felix turns around and looks at his sister Lana. “Because they came here to camp, and you didn’t fucking know.”

“I told Levi not to bring the camping trip here. We agreed on Lake Verity.” She glares at Levi, who keeps backing up until he walks into his father’s chest.

Kai places a hand on his shoulder, his one icy eye with the scar in stark contrast to the other green one. A testament to the rivalry he and my dad fought out with knives. “Levi. Tell me what happened.”

“Mavis died,” Levi mutters, as though he can’t even believe it himself. “We were at the cliff together. She fell.”

“What were you even doing here?” Lana berates him.

“We were cliff diving,” Talon explains. “We were calculating our jumps. We’ve been doing it all day with no issue.”

“Cliff diving?!” Lana raises her brow. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“So you were all here to show off?” Ares states, his face contorting as he glares at his son Apollo.

“Well, it wasn’t my idea.” Apollo shrugs.

“Who fucking cares!” my mother shouts, alerting us all. “Mavis is dead.” She shows everyone the bloodied wound on the back of Mavis’s head, and the gasps that follow make me want to die inside.

Lana taps her finger against Levi’s chest, pushing him further into his dad. “I told you not to come here for a reason! You knew how dangerous this place is. Look at what happened because you didn’t listen to me. Because of you, someone died.”

Levi seems distraught. Completely out of it, in fact.

“Mavis would never do this. Who made her jump?” Mom asks.

No one wants to say a word.

“I heard … Levi say sorry ,” Cecelia mutters.

There’s a shift in the air as though the current has changed.

The silence is deafening.

“Cecelia, go back to the car,” Ares says all of a sudden.

Guess I’m not the only one who felt it.

“Talon, Océane, you too,” Ares adds. “I’ll drop you two off. Please don’t speak with anyone about tonight.”

They both nod and follow Cecelia.

Lana turns around and roars out loud in anger before heading over to my mom, who immediately holds up a hand. “Don’t.”

“Pen …” Lana mutters. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t. Don’t come closer. Don’t even say anything at all.” My mother’s eyes lift with a scornful gaze that could burn down the entire forest behind us if she’d let it take over. “Take him and go.”

“Let me help,” Lana says. “Please.”

“There is nothing you or your family can do,” my mother grits. “Except kill.”

Oh God.

My hand flies to my mouth before I realize it.

Felix turns to glare at Lana, his own sister, like she’s the enemy. “Leave. Now.”

Lana takes a few more glances at both of them before Kai drags her along with Levi away from the scene.

And I can’t help but step away from my dad and hold out a hand. “Wait. Levi?”

But the Levi I know no longer exists.

He’s a broken shell of a man torn asunder.

My feet instinctively step forward, trying to keep the distance from growing. But his eyes are no longer focused on me.

And mine find something else in the dark.

A set of ghost-like eyes flashing behind the trees, disappearing the second I blink.

Grey

I stare at my phone, barely able to believe my own damn eyes.

I press the red button and stop the recording.

My heart beats so fast I can barely keep my hand steady.

Every detail.

Every second.

Every flash of horror.

I have it all recorded.

A smile slowly forms on my face.

This is perfect. Just fucking perfect.

Morbid …

But perfect.

Because this … this is how I’m going to steal her heart.