“You’re kissing him?!” Luca yells.
Liam holds out his hand. “Luca, stop. You’ll wake Dad.”
“I don’t fucking care!” he yells. “I hope he beats your ass like he did mine.” He spits on the ground. “Come the fuck down and face me, you fucking coward.”
“Jesus, calm down,” Liam says. “It was just a kiss.”
“Just a kiss?!” Luca growls, and then he suddenly looks at me. “You … Out of all the things you could’ve done, this is what you chose?”
He tears off his wet shirt, showing off all the abs underneath and the v-line leading into his pants, and I find it hard not to stare. He fishes his knife from his pocket and draws a heart on his chest, puncturing it right on the spot where he punctured mine, letting the blood roll.
I know what it means … and I know this is a warning only meant for me.
And it makes my heart drop into my shoes.
I know he saw us kissing, but I’m not sorry. I needed to know the truth.
Why does he even care?
Luca’s lips barely part as he sneers at me, “I fucking hate you to death.”
“Oh fuck you, Luca. Now you’ve gone too far.” Liam suddenly gets up and jumps down out of the tree house without ever touching the steps. Still, he lands without a scratch, and when he broadens his shoulders, he looks menacingly strong.
The rain begins to pour again as I watch the two having a standoff. Luca clutches his knife while Liam shows off his muscles, and it terrifies me beyond belief to know these two are about to fight.
“All this time, I’ve tried to keep you from destroying your own goddamn life, and for what?” Liam shouts. “So you can go around and bully girls into hating your guts?”
Luca approaches menacingly with a darkness in his face I’ve never seen before. “You’ve got it all wrong, Liam,” he hisses, pulling out his knife. “You betrayed me.”
“You betrayed yourself by behaving like this. And our parents,” Liam replies.
“Fuck Mom and Dad,” Luca spits. “They chose you, not me.”
“So what are you going to do? Cut me?” Liam asks. When Liam opens his arms, my eyes widen. “Go ahead.”
“No!” I yell, climbing down the stairs as fast as I can even though it’s pouring outside. I run in front of Liam and block him with my arms. “Don’t. Please stop, Luca.”
His whole face contorts like he can’t stand the sight of me, and it hurts. “You choose him? Over me?”
I shake my head, droplets running over my cheeks as I stare at Luca with disbelief, pleading with my eyes to make him stop. “Can’t we talk this out?”
His lips twitch as droplets pitter-patter down his chin. “No. Every word from your mouth is poison.”
He might as well jam that knife into my heart.
“Get out of my way,” he says through gritted teeth.
“No,” I reply in a moment of pure, insane courage. “He’s your brother, Luca.”
“I don’t care,” he growls, and he suddenly marches straight at me with the knife firmly clutched in his hand.
In a single move, Liam pushes me aside, swooping me out of harm’s way, and I fall onto the grass. The harsh landing knocks the air out of my lungs, but when I turn around and see Luca attacking Liam, I still manage to release a squeal.
“Stop, Luca!” Liam yells, trying to fend off Luca, who keeps swiping the knife around like it’s a damn sword. “We’re brothers!”
“You’re not my fucking brother anymore!” Luca yells back, shoving Liam so hard that he has a hard time fighting him off.
Liam might have the physical upper hand, but Luca’s knife puts them on the same level of strength, and I don’t know who’s going to win. I don’t want to choose. I don’t want them to fight.
It’s all my fucking fault.
If I hadn’t come here, none of this would’ve happened.
Tears well up in my eyes, but I push them back and crawl up from the ground. Without thinking, I tear Liam away from Luca’s grasp, tugging him with me.
“Let me go,” Liam growls at me.
“No. You’re coming with me,” I reply. “Now.”
“Where are you going, Liam?” Luca jests. “Scared I might give you a little cut?”
“This isn’t over yet!” Liam barks back.
“C’mon then, fight me, coward,” Luca yells back.
Liam tries to shake me off, but I refuse to let him ditch me. Not this fucking time. I stand right in front of him and slap him in the face. “Stop. Now. He could kill you.”
“I don’t fucking care,” Liam says in a fit of rage.
I grab his chin. “But I do.”
I look into his eyes, and then it slowly begins to dawn on him.
We’re supposed to get married. Our parents expect us to.
But right now … I want nothing more than to run away.
Together.
So I grab his hand and coil my fingers through his and run toward my father’s car.
“Jump in,” I tell him, and he gets into the passenger’s seat while I hop behind the wheel.
“Where are we going?” Liam asks as he straps himself in.
“JILL!” Luca’s voice echoes through the streets. “DON’T YOU FUCKING RUN AWAY FROM ME!”
He’s right there in my rearview mirror. Fuck.
I don’t even answer before I hit the gas and swerve onto the street.
I don’t know where I’m going. All I know is that we need to get out of here. Now.
So I ignore the red light in front of me and drive as fast as I can through the city, all along the outer banks until we’re far away enough that I can breathe again.
“What are you doing, Jill?” Liam asks.
“I don’t know,” I say, clutching the steering wheel so hard I feel like I might break it. “But he was about to kill you, and I had to do something.”
“I won’t let that punk kill me,” Liam says, swiping away some of the rain off his forehead. “Jill, you gotta go back.”
“What?” I scoff, looking his way. “No, no way am I going back to that lunatic.”
“He’s not a lunatic. He’s my brother,” Liam says.
Even though Luca just threatened him with a knife, he still means something to Liam. How can Liam be so kind after all of that?
“He tried to hurt us both,” I retort.
“Yeah, well … we hurt him first,” Liam says, licking his lips. “He saw us.”
A blush creeps onto my cheeks, so I hide my face behind my hair, afraid he’ll see. That kiss … should’ve meant the world. Instead, it did nothing for my heart and ruined everything else.
Fuck.
What do we do now? Where do we go from here?
Luca is surely waiting for us to come back.
And if not … his parents will find out in no time, along with mine.
Either way, we’re fucked.
I look out at the boulevard we’re driving on, wishing I could just drive off into the sunset with him.
“We should go back,” Liam says. “Maybe he’s cooled down a little.”
The rain still slams down onto the roof, the sky only darkening further. Thunder is encroaching us from all sides, and the silence before the lightning strikes brings goose bumps to my arms.
“Jill,” Liam says with a stern voice.
I bite my lip and frown as I look ahead at the swaying palm trees along the boulevard. “No.”
“Jill,” he growls, his voice almost as loud as the thunderstorm outside. “Turn around.”
“It’s not safe.”
“That’s fucking life,” he replies.
“So?” I look at him. “I’m just supposed to let him knife you?”
“You think he’s the first to have tried?” He raises his shirt, showing a part of his delectable muscles but also the scars that cover them, and my eyes are glued to his skin.
“Oh my …”
God.
“How did that …?”
“Business. You know the type our parents do,” he responds.
And something about that makes my skin crawl.
“I’ll fight it out with him, brother to brother,” Liam says.
“But what if you lose?” I ask, barely paying attention to the road anymore.
“Then I’ll lose, and he gets what he wants …”
The way he looks at me with those beautiful eyes of his undoes me.
There is no darkness to be found.
Until he says the word, “You.”
My skin erupts into goose bumps.
Suddenly, lightning strikes right in front of us, and it disorients me so much that I shriek and turn the wheel away from the blast. Off the road. Into the railing.
The car flies up and tumbles in the air several times.
I see stars all around me as the sound of twisting metal and thunder in the sky mingle into complete and utter destruction.
One. Two. Three seconds.
SPLASH!
I don’t even see the water before we hit it, the harsh landing knocking me forward and then backward against my seat, knocking me out for a few seconds.
When I come to again, the car is filling up with water … and Liam is still right beside me, out cold.
Oh fuck. Oh fuck. Oh fuck!
I frantically try to undo my belt as the water begins to rise. The car is sinking into the river, and I can’t fucking get out. I jerk the door, but the lock is sealed tight from the water trying to get in.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” I shove Liam and slap him a few times, but he doesn’t wake up. “Liam!”
There’s a bloody wound on the back of his head.
Panic swirls in my veins.
“Liam, wake up!” I pull back his belt buckle and try to get him to wake up, but nothing I do is working.
The water is rising so quickly that I’m shivering like crazy.
Still, I gather all my strength and kick at the window, trying to get it to break, but nothing seems to work.
“Goddammit!” I squeal.
This can’t be how we die. It just can’t be.
I have so much life left in me. So much to do, so much to see.
I wanted to travel the world. Feel free as a bird.
And now the water threatens to take that all away.
It’s almost up to my neck now, and I’m freaking out, not knowing what to do. I look behind me, but I don’t see anything, nor beneath me. So I inhale a deep breath and go under, searching for something I can use to break the glass.
Finally, I find the emergency hammer.
The water has gotten to the roof. There’s no more air to breathe.
The car is sinking so fast that all the light from the surface is disappearing fast.
I have to hurry.
I hold out the hammer, and ram it as hard as I can at the window. It breaks, and I kick it one last time to move the shards out of the way.
I try to push Liam up, but it’s no use. He’s far too heavy for me.
My lungs constrict with the need to breathe, but there is no air.
Fuck!
I swim away from him, hoping I can go get him from the other side.
But I’m running out of oxygen.
Energy.
Life.
No!
I can’t stop my body from sucking in water through my mouth and it feels like shards in my lungs.
I keep swimming, fighting against the water, but it’s no use.
The more I struggle, the more I lose.
The more I feel myself fading away …
Into oblivion.
