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“Go ahead,” he challenged, pointing the gun at me. “Rush me. You’d take a bullet, but you’d still take me down.”
I shook my head and turned my eyes on Damon. “Don’t do this,” I implored. “Will and Kai have never hurt you. Rika’s never hurt you.”
“But hurting them will hurt you,” Damon retorted, planting his foot on Kai’s back and shoving his back to the ground.
Kai grunted, squeezing his eyes shut. From the way he grabbed his side I could guess he had a few broken ribs.
“You’ve never suffered,” Damon snarled. “You’ve never had to lose, and this will change your life forever. You should never have chosen her over us.”
“You’re a fucking coward!” Kai shouted at him.
Damon just scowled at him and then looked up at me again, an ocean separating us. I didn’t even recognize him anymore.
“Tell me you’ll let her go,” he demanded. “Tell me everything can go back to the way it was in high school.”
I steeled my spine, squeezing Rika’s arm behind me.
“She has no place with us, and you give her too much power over you,” he continued. “Tell me she’s nothing. Tell me you’d choose us over her. Or better yet…” He paused, a glint in his eyes. “Tell me you’d trade Rika for Will and Kai.”
My throat tightened, and my heart hammered in my chest.
“Choose,” Trevor pressed. “Rika can take Will’s place, and the four of you can be like none of this ever happened.”
I heard her breathing behind me, shallow and fast, and I knew she was scared.
I could feel her everywhere. On my skin, in my chest, in my hands…
The sweetness of her lips as she panted against my mouth in the steam room….
I love you, Michael.
“Will and Kai will be fine,” Damon assured. “But you have to sacrifice her.”
Sacrifice her. I can’t…
I swallowed the lump in my throat.
She was everywhere. Always everywhere. Years and years, and there was no shaking her. Every time I closed my eyes she was there.
It feels like you.
Sixteen and looking at me like I was God.
You’re in everything.
The moment I knew that heart of hers was mine, and I couldn’t wait to be inside of her.
Yes, it turns me on.
Seeing her go over that edge and trust me to jump with her as I felt her from the inside for the first time and she come apart in my arms. God…
I dropped my eyes to Kai, seeing my friend, and I could hear Will calling us from the water, begging, and what the fuck was I supposed to do?
But Trevor didn’t wait for an answer.
He reached down and hauled up the blocks, sitting them on the edge of the yacht.
“No!” I shouted, letting go of Rika and holding out my hand. “Stop! Just…just wait!”
He tilted the blocks back and forth, toying with me.
“Stop!” I growled. “Just…” I ground my teeth together, my head swimming. “Fuck you!”
If I shot one of them, he would still have time to dump the blocks, and Damon could make short of Kai before I even had a chance. I might be able to get Rika out of here, but I wouldn’t be able to save them.
“Why are you doing this?” I bared my teeth, seething. “Why?”
“For this!” Trevor finally growled, showing his anger. “For this, right here. To see you exactly like this. You’re so fucking desperate, it’s priceless.”
He took his hands off the blocks, leaving them to sit on the ledge, teetering and threatening to fall with the slightest vibration.
“I could say it was all the attention laid on you for your basketball career,” he explained, “the way you always finished things I could never even start, or the way Rika always loved you, not once ever looking at me the way she did you.”
He hung the gun at his side and glared past me to Rika, who had stepped up next to me.
“But really?” He gazed at her. “I think it’s because the great Michael Crist is so fucking helpless right now, and I want to see the look in her eyes when she knows it’s about to end and that you can’t help her.”
I breathed in and out, my lungs getting smaller and smaller.
“Don’t worry,” Trevor soothed. “You’ll join her soon.”
And then Trevor shot out his hand and pushed the blocks off the ledge. I growled, raging as I rushed forward, swinging out my arm, and firing the gun three times, hitting him.
But I didn’t see where.
I threw the gun down and leapt up to the ledge, diving off just as Will’s head disappeared under the surface.
I crashed through the water, my body immediately submerging and going cold with the rush of the icy black October sea.
I opened my eyes, seeing Will just ahead of me, sinking fast, and struggling against his ropes. I kicked and pushed my way through the water, reaching out and grabbing him by the shirt.
But when I tried to pull him up, kicking and fighting my way to the surface, the purple light overhead was only disappearing.
We were sinking.
I dived back down, keeping hold of his clothes as my lungs stretched, growing desperate for air. Reaching his foot, I worked the knot, the fucking weight of the blocks making it hard to get the rope to thread back out.
Will twisted and fought, keeping his eyes on the surface, and I yanked and jerked at the rope, trying to get him free.
But the water was only getting blacker. The lights from the yacht were all but gone, and Rika and Kai were up there alone.
I growled, the sound muffled in the water as I pulled and thrashed.