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He slumped back in his seat. “That’s the last fucking thing we need right now.”

“Tell me about it.”

There was a long stretch of silence before he spoke again. “Pregnancy scare aside, what was it Sanj did?”

“It’s what she said.” I hesitated. “She gave me the Brooke pitch again.”

Cade made a face.

“She said she’s beautiful. Kind. Said she makes sense. That she looks good beside me, and I’d have a safer life with her.”

“You’re not aiming to be a goddamn politician.”

“Definitely am not,” I agreed with a bitter laugh. “It comes back to me, perfecting the act I have to put on day after day.”

He turned to look at me again. “You mean the golden boy thing?”

I nodded once. “That’s the version of me the world can tolerate. Brooke fits into that image. Polished. Palatable. Someone you can bring home to your parents.”

“Our parents love Sanj. I’m pretty sure they’d off Brooke themselves if you changed your mind and made it official-official with her. You know Mom’s crazy ass would. Fuck, I would help.”

I laughed under my breath.

We were almost at the quarry, a checkpoint on a twisted game board.

The road ahead stretched quiet and dark.

My brother leaned his head back and stared out the windshield with a sigh.

“I wish she believed she was worth it more. What you two have isn’t going anywhere.

She’s perfect for you.” He paused, then more certain.

“Actually, I think she does know. She’s just scared. ”

“Like you keep telling me, everything will be worked out soon.”

He grinned. “I can already see you being ten times worse than you are now when she finally stops running from it.” His smile faded, and he shot me a look, dry and half-dreading. “The day you finally get her in your bed, I’m booking a hotel for a week. Maybe a month.”

“After I’ve had to listen to you and Nick for the past two years? You’ll live.”

“We haven’t exactly been celibate soldiers yearning on the battlefield, Romeo.”

He hadn’t been starving for one person his whole existence either.

I hoped they all found what I had one day.

I wanted that for them. He’d had a Melody once.

For a short time, we all thought she’d be what Sanjana was to me, but by the end, she’d messed him up so badly, she was fucking loathed by our entire circle.

After our conversation slipped into silence, he popped open the center console and grabbed my pack of car wipes.

He set Angela across his lap like a sacred relic and started wiping her down, murmuring something about her needing sanitized and shined.

The quarry stretched out beneath us, jagged stone walls swallowing the moonlight.

From up here, the world felt hollowed out.

Quiet in an eerie. I parked near the old watermill that resembled a rotting relic from another century.

Its wood was warped and eaten by time, the wheel frozen mid-turn, forgotten by everyone but the wind.

Ivy choked its sides, and the grass around it had long given up, dead in patches where early frost had already started creeping in.

Leaves scraped across the dirt as I stepped out, the crunch of them sharp under my boots.

A light breeze caused ripples in the dark water below, and the old timber behind me groaned.

This was exactly the kind of place where things could disappear, secrets stayed buried, and screams would never carry far enough.

Rook was nowhere in sight. He’d disappeared into the trees with Lindsey long before we pulled up. Nick stood near the crumbling ledge where the land dropped off, hands buried in his pockets. He turned at the sound of our footsteps.

“Look who finally decided to join the party.”

“We weren’t that far behind you.” I passed him, heading straight for the Genesis’ trunk.

The second I popped the latch, a weak groan spilled out. DeAndre looked halfway to dead already, sunken eyes barely tracking movement, mouth slack and crusted with blood. I grabbed him by the collar and yanked his ass out. He hit the ground, grunting as his shoulder slammed against the gravel.

“Damn,” Cade muttered, stepping up beside me. “He looks worse than the last time we saw him.” He turned to Nick. “Your handiwork?”

“I had to.”

DeAndre didn’t even try to get away. He had no fight left, nothing but a broken body waiting to see how long it could hold on. Cade and I each took an arm and dragged him toward the edge. Nick flicked on his phone’s flashlight, casting the beam down the steep, jagged slope.

“Same plan as usual?” he asked.

“Same plan,” I confirmed.

We hauled DeAndre upright. He trembled like a leaf, teeth chattering, tears cutting through the dried blood and grime on his face.

“Please,” he rasped, voice barely more than a breath.

Cade and I locked eyes.

Then we let go

His hoarse scream echoed as his body went over the edge, bouncing off rocks on the way down. A distant splash followed, the sound of him hitting the lake at the bottom. The same lake locals warned their kids to stay away from because it was essentially a sinkhole full of water.

Just like that, he was gone.

Nick let out a deep sigh, still holding the flashlight toward the now-still water. “Man, if he could swim before, he sure as shit can’t now.”

Cade chuckled. “Not with that leg.”

“You think he screamed loud enough for Kyle to hear him in hell?” Nick asked jokingly.

“If he didn’t hear him, he heard Lindsey,” Rook’s voice carried to us as he emerged from the trees.

He was shirtless, wearing the gloves I’d given him, a pair of sweats, boots, and nothing else.

Blood streaked across his arms and chest, half-dried and blending into the ink carved into his skin.

Without breaking stride, he launched something over the quarry’s edge.

Too small to see or hear when it landed.

Cade arched a brow. “Feel better?”

Rook stretched his neck and let out a breath. “Feel like I need a shower.”

Nick peered around with his flashlight. “What’d you just throw?”

“Ear,” Rook said simply.

Nick nodded. “Oh. Of course.”

I couldn’t help it, I laughed. My brother held out a hand, and Rook bumped his knuckles without hesitation.

“So he’s down there?” Rook asked, glancing out at the water.

“Somewhere,” Cade answered with a shrug. “Drowning, if he hasn’t already.”

Rook tilted his head, thoughtful. “If we keep dumping bodies in this lake, Hemlock’s gonna turn into that town from Cabin Fever .”

Nick turned, squinting at him. “What the hell was in that joint you smoked?”

“Just think about how many ghosts are down there now, how still the water stays, no matter how much we feed it.”

Cade laughed . “Okay, Poe.” He clapped Rook on the shoulder. “You paint one hell of a picture.”

I let them talk, slipping my hand into my pocket for my phone so that I could check the time. When I unlocked the screen, a few unread messages waited. Only one mattered right then.

Sass

Goodnight.

My thumb hovered over the word, brushing the screen like I could reach through it and feel her on the other side.

I texted her back and then looked out at the water.

It was a fitting end in the same place she kissed me all those months ago.

One kiss turned into many soft and sudden, born from some stupid online challenge.

She hadn’t expected me to kiss her back.

She definitely hadn’t expected me to take control.

I remembered the way her breath hitched when my hand slid to her jaw. The way her lips parted like she was about to say my name, then didn’t.

Fuck, how I wanted her.

I wanted to drag her over the console, press her down until the only thing she could feel was me, and she forgot the world outside my truck. She had wound up on my lap instead.

I could’ve done whatever I wanted to her, but it always came down to knowing the timing wasn’t right, and I refused to risk her even attempting to mistake what we were because of that moment.

I let her pull away, laughing it off and pretending I didn’t see her trying not to panic like it wasn’t gutting me.

I’d replayed that moment more times than I’d ever admit.

Sometimes I drove out here late at night just to sit where it happened, thinking and remembering.

I could see why she loved this place, the way the sky made everything else feel small, and starlight danced across the lake below.

When she was with me, I didn’t watch the stars. I watched her. Always her.

“We’re really doing The Hunt this year,” Nick’s voice broke through my reverie with a grim edge of amusement as he stared out across the quarry with the rest of us.

“Yep,” Cade replied simply.

“We’ve been ready for this,” Rook added.

That was true. We’d known about The Hunt for years.

You couldn’t grow up in Hemlock Heights and not hear about it.

Most people didn’t pay attention to the stories buried in its bones, the rules, the whispers, the names that disappeared without a trace.

It was never meant to get bloody, at least not in the open.

And this year, we were in it.

So were the girls we loved, thrown into a gauntlet meant to break the weak and test the rest. It was hyped as some big tradition, but at the end of the day, it was still a game. We might as well enjoy ourselves while we played.

I glanced back at the Genesis and jerked my chin toward it. “Let’s clean this up and head home. I’m ready to get some sleep.”

We turned and moved as one, the night stretching wide and silent around us.