He slaps the ass of the redhead who stands next to him while they both snack on cookies that Austin and Lilly made yesterday.
“Have fun tonight?” I ask.
He nods. “There’s this club downtown. You need to go with me next weekend. It’s badass.”
I’m not really into clubs. I was never really even into parties after the death of our three friends. I would throw them at Liam’s house, but I mostly stayed locked up in the game room. But I say, “Sure.” I feel like I need to spend as much time as I can with him now. He needs me. Just like Becky needs Austin. They’re both hurting for different reasons.
“Bennett is coming down next weekend. He already said he would go.”
“Sounds like a plan.” I slap him on the shoulder and head back upstairs. I enter our bedroom to find it empty. “Austin?” I call out, closing the door behind me.
No response. My fear that something has happened to her rises. The covers are pulled back, but I don’t see my towel anywhere. My heart begins to pound. “Austin?”
I enter our master bath and see her through the stained-glass shower door. Letting out the breath I was holding, I run a hand through my wet hair, then strip out of my shorts and join her. She has her head back, the water falling down over her face before rolling down over her perfect fucking tits and flat stomach. Any sign that Kellan ever laid his hands on her has disappeared except for the scar from her surgery, but even that’s fading.
“Cole …”
Her voice pulls me out of my thoughts, and I wrap my arms around her, pushing her into the wall. She laughs, opening her beautiful eyes, and looks up at me. I cup her warm cheek, and she blinks. Waterdrops fall off her long, dark lashes and run down her face. She licks her wet lips.
“I hope you didn’t think I was done with you tonight.” My voice comes out rough, letting her know what’s on my mind. I hope she thinks it’s lust and not the memory of her death.
I lower my head into her neck, and my right hand grips her thigh and brings it up to wrap around my waist.
“No,” she breathes, her hands digging into my hair. She leans her head to the side, giving me better access to her neck. “I expected more from you.”
I pull back and look down at her. I expected you to fight for me. She didn’t disappoint. I didn’t save her. She saved herself. She did exactly what I told her to do that day I chased her out of her father’s house and up to the cemetery. When I challenged her to fight.
She gives me a playful smile. “After all, I’m still standing.”
I lift my left hand and wrap it around her neck, holding her to the wall. She arches up on her tiptoes. The warm water rains down from the shower head, splashing the sides of our bodies. “You’ll be crawling when I’m done with you.”
There’s a glint in her green eyes when she whispers, “Promise?”
“Oh, I promise you, sweetheart.”
EPILOGUE TWO
BENNETT
I UNLOCK THE door to the clubhouse and step inside. First thing I do is take my shirt off. It smells like her. Then I undo my pants and kick my shoes off followed by my jeans. They, too, smell like her.
It’s too much.
After we made love tonight, she dumped me. It’s better this way, she had cried. I didn’t want to look pathetic, but I begged her to reconsider. To give me a chance to fix whatever she thought was wrong. But I have no fucking clue what that could be.
It fell on deaf ears. She had made up her mind, and that was that. After all this time, the woman I fell in love with no longer wanted me. After all the lies and sneaking around, she just ended it like I was some fling. But I know the truth. I was more than that, and it scared her.
I go to walk up the stairs to the loft so I can go to bed but come to a stop when I see the glass bowl that we have always drawn our dares from sitting on the table to the right. Why is it out? We only get it out of the cabinet when we meet up.
My heart starts to beat faster. It has a folded piece of paper in it.
I look around the silent clubhouse, and an eerie feeling creeps up my spine.
Swallowing, I walk over to the table and pick it up with shaking hands. I unfold the note, and my breath gets stuck in my throat when I read the words typed out on it.
This glass bowl can break just as easily as your promise. What would you do to keep them both intact?
To be continued …
PLAYLIST
Deadset Society – “Like A Nightmare”
Starset – “My Demons”
No Resolve – “What You Deserve”
My Darkest Day – “Nature of The Beast”
Valerie Broussand – “Trouble”
Seven Day Sleep – “Down”
Memory of A Melody – “Things That Make You Scream”
Adelitas Way – “Invincible”
Sin Shake Sin – “Can’t Go to Hell”
Memory of A Melody – “Darkest Hour”
TheUnder – “Ready to Die”
Zero – “Left Alone”
MISSIOS – “I Don’t Even Care About You”
Halsey – “Nightmare”
Nina Nesbitt – “The Best you Had”
Redlight King – “Boneshaker”
The Score – “Legend”
Yungblud & Halsey – “I Will Follow You into the Dark”
PROLOGUE
DEKE
DEATH IS A debt we are all born owing.
It’s something that money can’t buy nor can it be traded.
You can’t bargain for more time. When it’s up, you accept it like a fucking man.
I’ve never been afraid to die. Or to love, for that matter.
Aren’t they the same?
You surrender to a fate you have no control over. You don’t get to choose when or how you die, just as you can’t choose when and who you fall in love with.
Some couples get a happily ever after while others are toxic for one another.
My love was like that.
She lied; I believed every word.
I hurt her; she forgave too easily.
It was a vicious circle of deceit and sex wrapped in a pretty black bow. Neither one of us could quit.
I wrapped my hand around her throat, and she begged me to breathe.
She stabbed me in the heart and demanded I bleed.
She might as well have been fucking poison, but I would have drunk her anyway.
That was the kind of obsession I had for her.
I knew how it would end—total devastation.
A war zone of broken bones and bleeding souls.
I should have hated her, but that’s the funny thing about love—it’s out of your control. And even when it leaves you with two black eyes, you beg for more.
People are afraid of the unknown, but I never feared death, and love was no different.
She was going to destroy me, and I was going to let her.
It was a game that could only end one way—a slow and torturous death.
CHAPTER ONE
DEKE
I dare you
A LITTLE GAME my friends and I have played since we were kids. Every Sunday, we get together and write a dare, and the lucky son of a bitch whose turn it is gets to pluck one from the glass bowl and fulfill it. You have a month to complete it; once your time is up, you must face the consequence if you haven’t. Each dare has one, but none of us has ever refused the dare. Some are harmless. Others illegal. Just depends on whose dare you get and what their mood is at the time.