Page 120 of Ruthless Game

I wasn’t even aware if I’d screamed it out loud or only in my head.

Forcing myself to fight, despite my depleted energy and the blood still dripping down my neck, I swam the rest of the way to her and heaved her up, barely able to keep my head above water myself. Jeffrey, who must have clawed his way onto her, came up, too.

“You fucking asshole, always playing with other people’s toys,” I taunted.

He looked up at me in the water.

“This toy’s broken,” he said, so sure he’d have the last word.

“Fuck you, Jeffrey,” Emma yelled above the water, teeth chattering.

I had to get her out of here before she died of hypothermia.

Jeffrey was about to pull her under again. I saw it in his eyes. He wasn’t going to stop until she died.

There was a displaced rock on the boulder near me. With depleting strength, I picked it up and swung it down on his head.

With a horrible scream and sickening crunch, Emma’s brother went silent, his body sinking under the water and disappearing for good.

Emma was free from his hold.

Then I felt myself sinking, too.

“Max!” Emma was sobbing, shaking, that goddamn weight dragging her down.

But that boulder was big enough for the two of us. Calling up whatever I had left in me—strength, or love, or maybe just adrenaline—I told her, “I’m not letting you die, Emma. I’m not losing you, Starburst. Not after I finally got you back. I’m never letting you go.”

It was a lie, because as I managed to half haul her, half push her up onto the rock, until she lay flat, stomach down, but safe, I felt myself slip back under.

“I love you,” I said.

They were my last words before I sank down, her face disappearing from my sight until there was nothing but dark, cold silence.

And this time, I didn’t come back up.

46

Emma

Drowning had been better than this.

Better than sobbing, broken, weighed down by water and a literal weight, on a rock in a dark gorge, unable to move, unable to see, just knowing that Max was drowning in the depths. I couldn’t save him, couldn’t see him, could only hear his final I love you and then nothing.

Without him, there was no reason to live.

Without him, there was nothing, period.

I loved him. I loved him, and I’d lost him.

So I let myself sink into the darkness of my mind, the way he sank under water.

Maybe if I was lucky I’d never come up for air again.

47

Lawson

Dying fucking hurt.