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He reaches out slowly through the water for me, inviting me in. I hesitate a moment, trying to see if I can make out his face, but still, it’s covered by his drenched hair. Glancing around me, I don’t see anyone, and my mom will probably be mad that I’ll get wet, but . . . I want to. I can’t hold back the smile as I reach out and clutch his chilled fingers, lifting my leg and stepping into the fountain.
It was the last day I was me as I knew it and the first day of a new reality that could never be undone. I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t rewind and not go into that maze. I couldn’t undo stepping into that fountain. Because, God, I wished I never did. Some mistakes you never heal from.
I fought not to recoil or remember how, for one brief, beautiful moment, that fountain all those years ago was indeed a heavenly hiding place. And how I wished I was there now, if only to be away from here.
I needed air. I needed to run. But my mother’s and sister’s voices moved away from me. And the same chilled fingers I reached for in that fountain all those years ago now brushed mine. “Now . . .” my sister’s new husband whispered in my ear. “Now you belong to me.”
I froze, fisting my hand and feeling him sitting across from me in the limo after the service. Damon Torrance. The boy in the fountain.
How could she still want him? And they were going to bring kids into this madness? What he did when we were children wasn’t enough to convince her how bad he was, and neither was what he did to me in high school. She knew he couldn’t stand her, but still, she wanted him anyway. She’d always wanted him.
He made himself the cure, which wouldn’t have been necessary if he hadn’t also created the disease.
The cool, oblong bag had been hidden in my closet since I sent Damon to jail five years ago, always ready for flight, because I knew I would lose in the inevitable fight.
“He only married Arion because she was easy. She said yes,” Ethan warned. “It’s you he wants.”
“They knew what happened to me when we were kids. And what he did to me five years ago,” I pointed out. “And they still brought him back into our lives. They put me back in his path because of the money. Not only did they not protect me, but they put us all in danger again. Damon’s family is bad.”
the problem was me. She was mine. She was the only person who knew everything, but we were growing up, and I knew she was going to leave me eventually.
Six years ago, his little girl and I changed each other, and while I couldn’t change her back, I could certainly give her some new memories of me.
“The queen is the most powerful piece on the board,” I told Mr. Garin, keeping my eyes locked on Rika’s. “Why not use her?”
“Do you know how much Will bled in prison?” I asked her. “Do you know how hard Kai had to fight to hold down any food because his gut raged with nerves and fear from constantly having to look over his shoulder?”
“Do you know that no matter what Michael paid or who he bribed, there were people paying more to see the rich, entitled sons of the Thunder Bay elite suffer in prison?” I kept going. “Do you have any idea how sick they both got from lack of food and sleep to balance the fucking excess of fear and pain?”
She dropped her gaze for a moment, uncomfortable, but she stayed quiet. “Yeah, well, neither do I,” I told her. “Because I wasn’t there.”
“Three levels below cell block six, in the basement, down a dank corridor, below five feet of concrete, is where I was.” I fisted my hands, the anger returning almost immediately. “For three years. You didn’t know that, did you?”
“Banks thought she was doing me a favor,” I said. “And Gabriel agreed with her. He had too many enemies and those enemies had soldiers on the inside. I was more at risk than Kai and Will, so I was put in solitary confinement.” I drew in a deep breath, the blood under my skin growing hot. “Twenty-three hours a day, seven days a week, all day, every day, for one hundred sixty weeks. That’s one thousand one hundred twenty days. Twenty-six thousand eight hundred eighty hours, Rika.”
“Because pain in the body quiets the pain in the head. It feels good, like a kill switch for your brain.
“I was Winter’s first kiss, ladies,” he told everyone, though we had another guy at our table. “I was eleven. She was eight.” I felt him nudge closer, and his voice dropped a hair. “I wonder how many guys have kissed you since. But then, I guess I don’t really care, because I was first, and that’s all that matters.”
“Jesus, you’re still here?” I blurted out, cutting her off. “Well, make yourself useful, then, and open this.” I reached for the bottle of OJ on the edge of the table where I’d left it, found it, and handed it to her over my shoulder. Juice splashed out from where the cap wasn’t tightened properly, and I heard her gasp. “Ugh, Winter!” she yelled. I winced. “Oh, it was already open? Sorry. I’m so blind.”
I thought back to the boy in the fountain, bloody, with a silent tear streaming down his face, because something—or many things—happened to him that he didn’t want to talk about, and
now he was nearly a man who would never cry again and only made other people bleed. I hated him, and I would never forgive him, but maybe we had that one thing in common. We had to change to survive.
You’ll hate me. I’ll love you. We have to stop. Make me stop. I can’t. I won’t.
And pressure hit down low, between my legs, making my stomach dip. I opened my mouth, filling it with the same silent cry I made on that morning he was arrested, as I twirled and twirled, tears stinging my eyes, hoping to spin the world so fast I’d lose sight of him in my head.
“I know why she’d do this, but you’re supposed to protect me,” I told my mom. “He raped me!” “He didn’t rape you,” my sister snapped back, pushing out of her chair. “We all saw the video. The whole world saw the video! You wanted him. You were in love with him.” I shook my head. “Not him.” I had never been in love with him. Not with Damon. That damn video.
And someone”—his tone turned darker as he stopped right in front of me—“who’s not going to question too hard when not all of his children look like him.”
“Whisper it,” he said, his breathing turning ragged. “Whisper it like I did your name the morning they found me in your bed and arrested me, Winter. That’s all I want to hear. A little whisper.”
How I’d never hated anyone as much as I hated him, but how I loved what I felt with him more than I loved anything I felt with anyone else, either. I was so stupid.
Yeah, there was an accident when we were kids, and Ashby had clearly poisoned his daughter over the years to warp her memory of exactly how that all went down, but I hadn’t meant to hurt her. It was a fucking fluke, and kids have accidents.
It has music. I like it. I didn’t know if I felt responsible for the fact that she now only had four senses with which to experience the world, but it was
a strange feeling to want to protect someone from others when I knew I’d be worse for her health than anyone else.
Kai and I weren’t friends. We were brothers. In every way except biologically. Whether we liked each other or not, we were family, and we had each other’s backs. But that didn’t mean we liked each other, either.
“Your parents are bad,” he explained. “Your sister lacks any depth to be interesting, and I hate my house. It’s so dark there.” He paused, then continued. “It all fucking disappeared when you were dancing, though. It made the world prettier. I liked it.”
and the light caught the small ruby encrusted with diamonds on her left hand. Kai must’ve gotten her a proper ring after their quick nuptials. Fucking Kai. He’d clearly treated her how she deserved. But was she his now? Truly?
Sensou. The dojo Kai, Rika, Will, and Michael owned together. Not with me.
“I like who I am,” she told me. “I don’t hate you for anything.”
I liked that Will was here. I wanted him here. I wanted him with me. But he was not her fucking lifeline. Period.
In that moment, I wanted to grab him and her and Banks and put us all on an island, because they would never not belong to me.
and I shook my head as Winter made her way in my direction. Walking right past me, she paused, turning her head my way, and I looked down at her, knowing she knew I was here, mere inches away. My eyes fell down her face, neck, and shoulders, touching her the only way I’d allow myself just yet.
My smile froze, remembering the beating I let him give me last year because I knew I deserved it. I’d knelt there, letting him hit me again and again, because I wanted to feel worse on the outside than I did on the inside, and for so many moments, I just wanted him to kill me. Just kill me, because I can’t take it back, and I can’t move on.
I’d almost killed him. And I wanted him to hate me so hard he would fucking murder me, and then maybe, after his anger was spent, he’d love me again.
“Oh, I remember this,” I taunted in his ear, every inch of my chest pressed against his back and both us very aware of my groin on his ass. “This is what you really missed, isn’t it?” He jerked his head back, trying to head butt me. “Don’t fucking talk about that,” he growled. “I was drunk.” “All three times?” I teased, smiling. “Michael and Kai don’t know how close we got, do they?”
“I never really knew why you were drawn to Winter. Michael and Kai thought she was just a one-night stand to you, but I knew better.” He raised his eyes, meeting mine. “They didn’t see the way you would look at her at school, during lunch and in passing in the hallways. And how no one—no one,” he reemphasized the words, “fucked with her behind her back after what you did to any guy who disrespected her, like making an obscene gesture right next to her that she couldn’t see.”
“I can’t stop going down this road I’m on,” he nearly whispered, his eyes watering. “My family is done with me. Michael has Rika. Kai has Banks. You were a lie.” He faltered, dropping his gaze. “She was a lie.” She. She was next. After I was done with Winter, I’d do it for him.
But he shoved at me again. “I’ll take her from you.” “Don’t,” I choked out. The walls were closing in. I couldn’t breathe. But he pushed me again, and I winced, my chest now aching. “And she’ll take me away from you, and then you’ll be all alone. Like you always should’ve been.”
He grabbed me by the collar, screaming, “Do it!” And I grabbed his neck in my hands, ramming him into the wall of the pool house. “I can’t!”
I wanted to tell him that I never would’ve hurt him. That I didn’t know what Trevor was doing, and it wasn’t supposed to go down like that, because out of all three of my friends, Will was the one I would always save first. That my pride and anger wouldn’t let me retreat, and that if he had been pulled to the ocean’s bottom, out of my reach, I would’ve followed him. I would’ve fucking followed him and rotted down there, close to wherever he was, because nothing I would’ve acquired after that—my inheritance or my vengeance on Winter—would’ve been worthwhile without him.
“All I need is me. One person willing to do what none of you will.” I paused and added, “You don’t have the stomach for this, Will. Don’t doubt that I will do whatever I have to, to keep what’s mine. That little girl belongs to me.” He hesitated, looking me up and down and then meeting my eyes with resolution. “She doesn’t want to belong to you, Damon.”
What did Winter feel when she thought about me? Was the anger so thick that was all there was? He asked her to dance for him. He asked her to dance like I’d asked Winter to dance for me. He watched my mother as I watched Winter. Was that it, then? Did I do to Winter in high school what my father did to my mother? Did I groom her?
