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Only when I pull into the gates of the Everlasting Hart Ranch does my jaw unclench. Only then do I open my mouth and let the screams out.
I howl and curse and rage as I careen up the uneven drive and jerk to a stop in front of the homestead. This place is Dad’s vanity project. Back in Tennessee he always dreamed of owning a ranch. Dad had a lot of dreams everyone called stupid, but he made them all come true – he moved our family to Emerald Beach. He grew the humble funeral home he inherited from his father into a multi-million-dollar death empire, he got on TV, he bought a football team. Dad used the proceeds from the reality show to buy this land – two hundred acres of rolling hills and crumbling outbuildings an hour outside of Emerald Beach. He commissioned an architect to redesign the homestead as luxury accommodation. He’d even been in discussions with the TV executives about a new series following his attempts to do up the ranch and offer overpriced cowboy experiences to Emerald Beach’s ultra-rich.
Since he’s been in prison, the place has gone to ruin. The construction crew left, the network ghosted him, the ranch-hands he hired moved on. The two racehorses he purchased have either died in a paddock somewhere or run off to literal greener pastures. Mom doesn’t care about the ranch, and the land has devalued so much she can’t sell it. The homestead at the top of the driveway is over a hundred years old and slowly returning to the land – roof tiles blown off during the last storm litter the ground, and much of the siding is rotted away. Weeds choke the flowerbeds around the porch, and the unforgiving landscape looms on all sides, harsh and unwelcoming, making me feel impossibly small. This wild place is such a contrast to our perfectly manicured lives in Emerald Beach – that’s probably why I like it so much.
Out here, I don’t have to pretend I’ve got it all together.
I don’t have to be Eli Hart, the Golden Boy of Stonehurst Prep, the son of a celebrity undertaker-turned criminal.
Out here, it’s okay to scream.
I crack the car door and collapse against the steering wheel. My lungs hurt. I suck in breaths until I feel lightheaded, then swing a leg out onto the weed-choked driveway.
The house greets me with a silent smile – twin dormer windows in the attic like friendly eyes seeing me without judgment. There’s no electricity, no amenities. Just me and my thoughts.
As soon as I climb the rotting porch steps and push open the door, Gizmo bounds from the shadows, protesting loudly that I’d abandoned her. She wraps herself around my legs as I prop the front door open with a large rock.
I hold Gizmo against my chest, letting her jet-engine purr calm my shaking limbs. I head into the house and straight to the root cellar underneath the kitchen, where the last tenants stored their cider. Gabriel isn’t the only one who can obliterate his pain with booze.
I grab two demijohns of cider and head back outside, collapsing into the porch swing. It creaks in protest. Gizmo sits next to me and stares reproachfully at the bottle in my hands.
“I saw you eat a dried horse turd out of the grass yesterday. You don’t get to judge,” I growl as I pull off the stopper and take a deep swig. And another. And another.
But the more I drink, the more I see the image of Mackenzie’s neck bent back, her pink lips gasping with ecstasy as Noah plowed into her. Instead of fading into a booze-soaked haze, the memory sharpens into a living nightmare – her face contorting to become a pig, a laughing clown, a tentacled monster, his dick transforming into a giant Viking sword, splattering blood across the walls with every thrust.
Mackenzie isn’t back from the dead. Mackenzie is still missing. The girl I’ve been falling for… everything about her is a lie.
Claudia
We eat dinner in the formal dining hall, in what might be the weirdest meal I’d ever had in Malloy Manor. Gabriel lights candles in silver holders and Antony helps me carry out platters of salmon steaks and couscous and a tossed salad. I sit at the head of the table, in the only chair with a carved back and padded arms. On one side, two bloodthirsty cage fighters who’ve sworn to protect me. On the other side, the rockstar and the bad boy who hold my heart in their hands.
We eat in tense silence, the truth hanging between us a pendulum dropping ever closer.
If Eli were here, he’d be trying to make conversation, to smooth over the tension. But Eli isn’t here, and even though my thighs ache from having Noah’s cock between them twice today, there’s a hole in my chest that only the Golden Boy of Stonehurst Prep can fill.
I know I’m being ridiculous. I have more important things to think about than Eli, like figuring out who wants me dead. But I remember him sitting on the wall outside, watching the house. Watching me. Protecting me.
The only person who’s ever protected me before was Antony. Daddy liked to pretend he was protecting me, but he also knew I needed to be strong. He sharpened my mind but he also cut me off from anyone getting close.
I never knew what it meant to have a friend. When I stepped into Mackenzie’s life, I thought she was like me – that she’d locked herself away from other people to keep her heart safe. And then I met Eli and I saw that even an Ice Queen could be cherished. I hate myself for my weakness, but I wanted some of that. Just for a moment, it was nice to pretend I deserved to be loved.
The moment’s over.
But I can’t undo the last six weeks. I’m new to caring about people. I didn’t realize it would be like this – this crushing weight on my chest at the thought of losing them.
I want Eli back. Back in Malloy Manor, where we can protect him. And back in my life. In my arms. Back believing the sun shines out of my ass.
It’s a pointless, hopeless dream, and that’s why it sticks in my throat. Eli’s safer if he stays away from me, and now he’ll never speak to me again. Mission accomplished. Game over.
I’ve been reckless. And greedy. Eli won’t be the last casualty of my secret heart. I have Gabriel and Noah, and that should be enough. Gabriel’s made it clear he doesn’t care who I sleep with or what I do, except that I see him watching Noah across the table with a new wariness. Gabe thinks he’s been subtle, but he’s had too much to drink and subtle isn’t exactly his middle name. For all his jokes, he’s not happy with what he sees between Noah and me.
I don’t believe it’s possible, but I might’ve stripped back the corner of Gabriel’s mask to reveal the raw, broken flesh beneath.
And Noah… it’s as if my secret has flicked a switch inside him, and all that hate directed at me has exploded outward at the world. Gabe might’ve been the first person to scrub off a layer of my Ice Queen facade, but everything about him is glamorous and celestial. Whereas Noah is my own darkness reflected back at me – bloody and monstrous and real.
He’s been bound by the chains of his grief, his desire to fit into the life laid out for him. But when he whispers my name – my real name – he casts off those pieces of his old life and welcomes my legacy with open arms.
I don’t want that for him, especially not since our whole plan is focused on getting both me and Antony out of the family business. But I can’t stop Noah falling into the void. I could use a little company down here in the dark and cold.
