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“Kai!” I yell, begging for the bullet to miss. To not hit her. To go anywhere but her.
Zeke is standing next to her, I spot Langston holding is own wound on his side, but he will never make it to her in time. But Zeke can and does.
He dives in front of her and pushes her to the ground. The bullet hits him square in the heart.
I knew I loved Zeke, but not until this moment of watching him die, saving my woman did I realize how much. I thought my heart was a cage of metal and stone, only there to hold my monster inside, but it’s a heart all the same. A heart capable of breaking, shattering, and ripping in half. And that’s what I feel. All of it.
No amount of pain my body could experience is greater than losing someone I love. I learned that with my mother, but I thought it was because I was a kid. I was young, but now I know it wasn’t because I was a kid. It’s because this is what love does; it is everything when you have it and then takes everything away when it’s gone and leaves nothing but the dull pain behind.
I don’t have time to go through all the stages of grief in a single moment, but that’s what my body tries to do. I feel denial, reality, bargaining, pain, all of it. And I hate it.
Kai sobs over Zeke’s lifeless body.
She’s alive, and I made a vow to protect her—no matter what. No matter how she fucked up. It’s time to make good on that promise.
All of my anger, rage, and pain take over, and I charge at Milo. This won’t be won with guns. He made this personal, and I’m going to kill him with my bare hands.
My fist connects with his face, bloodying his nose, and making contact with his eyes.
He stumbles backward, but I don’t relent. I attack ruthlessly over and over. My fists flying, my legs kicking. He tries to fight back, but it’s clear he’s not used to fighting hand to hand with someone his own size. So instead, he moves to a defensive stance. His body blocking blow after blow. It will take longer for me to kill him this way, but I don’t care. I have time.
But the world is never on my side.
A storm is coming, and I don’t mean just my fists. The ship begins rocking at an unsafe level as rains pour down upon us.
This needs to end—now.
“This is for Zeke,” I scream, putting everything into my attack, my entire body drives into Milo’s. I don’t care about the consequences of my attack on myself; I just want this motherfucker dead.
My force is too much for either of us, as our bodies collide, we hit the railing that breaks, and then we fall down to the ocean depths.
Our bodies stay connected as we hit the water, and now we both rely on the other for survival. The only way we live is if we both live. If we both surface. But I’d rather us both die, than Milo live.
So I force our bodies lower under the water. Milo fights against my hold on his neck and body, keeping him down. But my hold is tighter. Our oxygen levels deplete more and more with every second that passes. It will happen soon. Death is coming, and it will be sweet.
I look up and see light. This is it—the end.
A light descends further upon us.
Wait, it doesn’t make sense. In death, I shouldn’t be headed for a light. I should be headed to the darkness of hell.
But that doesn’t stop the light from grabbing me. I let go of Milo and watch his body float down, away from me as the light takes me up.
I hit the surface of the water and take a deep breath, my lungs heaving for oxygen but not getting enough. I vomit up the salt water before I can finally take a breath.
“Thank fuck, you’re alive,” Kai cries, holding me to her.
She saved me.
I look behind me, but I don’t see Milo surface.
She kisses me hard as the rain pours down on us, and I know as much as I want to spend my life making out with her here, I can’t. It’s not safe.
“We have to go,” I say.
She nods, and we swim for the ladder on the yacht. When we reach the deck, Langston finds us, gripping his side where a bullet grazed him.
“The men have the yacht ready to go. We need to leave,” Langston says.
