Nate

Even before I walk back to our seat by the window, I know something’s wrong. I can feel it in my bones. They’re cold. When I round a corner and Prescott is not seated on the sofa overlooking the busy street, cold turns to hot. When I pace over to where we sat, cutting through charged air that seems to lack oxygen, hot turns to sick. There’s a small napkin on the table with an address scribbled on it. I look it up on Google Maps, unsurprised to see that it’s in Marble Arch.

Fucking Camden.

I jog out and signal for a cab, but they’re all busy. It’s early in the afternoon. Suited men and women pour in and out of taxis. Time is wasted, and I hate that I’m running out of it. She needs me now.

Finally, a black cab stops in front of me and I jump into it and rap the divider frantically, giving him the address.

He got to us before we got to him. He conned us into thinking he was out of the country. We were so drunk on being happy once in our fucking lives, we lost focus.

The driver’s trying to strike up a pleasant conversation from the plastic screen, but soon realizes that my current state doesn’t really allow talking. Or breathing, for that matter.

We were so sure Camden would run or hide behind burly, brainless soldiers like the rest of them. We committed the very same sins that made Sebastian and Godfrey’s hourglasses run out of sand. We got comfortable. And cocky.

Pea and I had gotten away with so much during those short few days. Unplanned and uncalculated, we took them down, one by one. It was almost too good to be true. It made us feel invincible. Now, I worry that I might soon find out that we are anything but.

When the cab stops in front of Archer’s building, I bolt out, leaving fuck knows how much money behind me. Maybe more than a fat tip. Maybe not enough to cover the fare. I jog up the stairs to the second floor, taking them three at a time, and throw the door open without knocking. I’m met with a beefy guy in uniform—a waiter or a driver or fuck knows what. He charges from a tuxedo sofa in the living room right in my direction, waving a vaporizer pen in his hand.

High on adrenaline and fury, I let him run all the way to my spot near the door before slamming his head into the nearest wall. But then I feel it. In my stomach.

He digs the pen into my abs on a throaty roar, leaving it inside as he collapses to the floor. The scent of blood comes before the sting of the blade. Then I see it. And when I see it—it’s everywhere.

All the red.

The pen is not a pen. The pen is a fucking knife. A sharp motherfucker, too.

I stagger back, staring down at the hole in my middle. Not too big, but way too deep.

The cocksucker gutted me. I need to get to Prescott before I drop dead from blood loss or fucking Peritonitis.

Maybe it hurts. I believe that it does. Bile shoots up my throat and a blood stain spreads rapidly across my white shirt. I pull the knife out in one go, sighing in relief when it doesn’t come out along with my intestines, roll my attacker on his back and stab him in the throat. The knife slides all the way through until it meets the floor. His limp body comes to life, jerking one more time before he gives in and drops dead.

Pen in hand, I stumble into the corridor, the drip, drip of my blood sounding against the floorboard. I see a door ajar and know what awaits inside. I crack it open. I want to charge through it like a blizzard, but with every step I take, my vision becomes blurrier, my steps wobblier. Am I dying? I might be. But I don’t care.

Prescott.

The bastard’s back is to the door. Who does that? Who gives his rival his back? Someone who wants to die.

Someone who wants to be surprised.

Someone who knows I won’t kill him because he’s got something of mine that I want back.

I sway like a drunk, bumping into the wall and the dresser in his bedroom, until the knife is pressed against his throat. He probably thought I’d never get this far, that I’d be intercepted in the living room by his muscle man. Surprise, scumbag.

“Let her go.”

I’m blinking furiously, trying to regain focus, and I know I’m dripping blood all over him, but when the sight in front of me registers, I have bigger problems than losing consciousness.

Camden Archer is sprawled on a plush recliner in his room, facing a window.

Underneath him, on the floor, sits Prescott, beaten to a pulp.

A gun to her temple. A hand wrapped around her neck that’s bruised in purple and red. I feel my throat tighten. Breathe. Inhale. Don’t lose your shit.

“Diabla was the only disease I couldn’t seem to shake.” His posh English accent sounds so far away right now. He’s stroking her head. Why’s he stroking her head? I want to stop him but can’t. I know that if I don’t kill him soon, I’ll die myself. But I can’t chance pressing the knife to his throat, because he might pull the trigger.

“What is it about Prescott Burlington-Smyth that brings grown men to their knees?” he wonders aloud. My body failing me, I collapse and grab the back of his seat for balance. He doesn’t care that I have the knife pressed to his throat. I have a feeling he doesn’t care about anything anymore.

But I do. I care so much about the girl who’s forced to sit between his legs. And it’s ruining me that I can’t save her.

“It’s okay to fall, Nathaniel. We all fall sometimes.” His gun strokes the hair away from her forehead in a way that’s almost endearing. “You know, I saw you a few years ago when I visited my father in San Dimas. No one came to visit you. You were burning time in the yard. You looked so invisible inside that big body of yours. You think you found something to live for, but she belongs to me. The art of letting go. . .” He snickers. “I was never good at it.”

“Kill us both and walk away, Nate. I want him dead,” my brave girl commands in the background, but I can’t hear very well anymore. Everything becomes white. Voices are muffled. My watch stops ticking.

I’m selfish. I will never let him kill her, even if that’s what she wants.

“Yes, Nathaniel. Kill us both,” I hear him echo through red, searing pain that throbs between my temples. “Our time is up.”

For the first time since Pea and I got together, something dawns on me. I can’t save her. This time, she’s on her own.

It takes me long seconds to realize that I’m down on the floor, my eyes wide in terror. I stare at the legs of the recliner, Pea’s back between Camden’s legs. I want to move. I need to move. To jump out of my skin and be strong for her. A river of blood, my blood, starts streaming toward her.

Struggling to keep my eyes open, I try to talk to her, even though I can barely move my lips. White becomes black, and the wild ride we had together is coming to an end. If there were one last thing I could feel before I die, I’d want it to be her stupid stress ball bouncing off my face. She looked so hopeful and lively the day we rode out of Stockton together. It made me fall for her. All that spirit. She fucking sparkled, a stick of dynamite in the pitch black of my existence. Country Club didn’t give me any choice. She ripped my heart from my chest. Is it a surprise that I can only get hard for one girl, that she is only wet for me? She gives me storm, and I give her peace.

But I can’t give her my peace right now.

Because I’m gone.