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“I’m what?” Monty smirks. “Dead? Not quite.”
Each breath comes out heavy. “I saw you! There was so much blood. You were—”
“Passed out from the shock of being shot in the fucking stomach,” he clarifies. “Though I have to say, having my friends dump my body instead of taking me for help? That hurt much worse.”
This has to be a dream. A twisted nightmare feeding off the trauma left over from that night. But as I struggle against the rope and feel it cut into my skin, I realize that this is just as real and fucked up as it seems.
“I went to your funeral,” I say, trying to make sense of it all.
He hums, swinging Cam’s gun around. “Yeah. Touching little thing that was.”
He fucking knew.I was self-destructing over the loss of him, and he was alive this entire goddamn time. “I fucking mourned you!”
“Hey!” he says, squatting down in front of me and digging fingertips of his free hand into my thigh. “Don’t act so innocent! You left me there to die!”
“I thought you were already dead,” I cry. “I wanted to get help.”
“And yet, you let him drag you away while I was bleeding out.”
He stands up, taking a few steps away. I turn to my left to find Cam and Mali in the same position that Hayes and I are. Mali looks just as terrified as I am, while Cam is seething with rage. Riley is standing in the corner, watching all of this go down with a devilish grin on her face.
“When I heard someone coming back, I thought you came to your senses,” he admits. “I thought they came to get me and were going to take me to get help. But then I heard them—talking about how they were going to dump me and let the sharks take care of it. And I realized they weren’t back to get me. They were back to getridof me.
“Thankfully, being submerged in water activated fight or flight. The only fucking thing that was going to save me was myself. It was rough, but I managed to swim to the buoy and pull myself up onto it. And that was where a kind, old fisherman found me.” He looks up from the floor, and his eyes are so dark. “It’s too bad I had to kill him, but he was the only one who knew I was still alive. And if I was going to get my revenge, I had to be dead.”
I shake my head, feeling the pain of that night all over again. “If I had known you were still alive, I—”
“You what?” he sneers. “You would have covered up your brother’s crimes again? Oh, wait. No, you thoughtHayeswas the one that shot me.”
“Fuck you,” H growls, as if poking the bear is a good idea.
But Monty just lets out a sinister laugh. “That was the best part, if I’m honest. Hayes taking the fall for Cam gave me the perfect opportunity to make you leave him. It was just too easy.”
My gaze meets Hayes’s, and I can tell he’s struggling against the ropes, but they’re tied so fucking tight. All it’s doing is cutting through his skin. There’s no hope of getting free.
“It was an accident!” I yell. “No one wastryingto kill you. Why are you doing this?”
“Because you came the fuck back!” he roars. “If you had stayed away from him, it wouldn’t have had to come to this. But you just had to run to his side to make sure he was all right.”
Riley looks like she’s getting the utmost enjoyment out of this. “I’m so tired of the Hayes and Laiken show, aren’t you?”
Monty chuckles darkly. “It’s sickening, the way he can do no wrong in her eyes.”
Pushing off the wall, Riley walks past Monty and over to Hayes. “Let’s see how she likes this.”
She throws a leg over Hayes’s lap, straddling him and draping her arms over his shoulders. As she moves in to kiss him, I can feel my heart breaking. We’re going to die, and I won’t have been the last person to kiss him. My lips won’t be the last ones to touch his. And even as he struggles to turn away, I’m terrified she’s going to succeed.
Until he rears back and slams his head into her face.
Riley grabs her nose as she falls onto the floor, in complete shock that he hurt her. Blood gushes from her very obviously broken nose, and when she touches it with her hand, her rage turns to me.
“This is allyourfault!” she screams.
Jumping up, she rushes toward me and wraps her hands around my throat. Once again, I struggle to breathe, but this time, it’s because she’s strangling the life out of me. Everyone is screaming and trying to fight their way free, but all I can focus on is the look in Riley’s eyes.
“He won’t love me because he thinks he’s in love with you!” she shrieks as she cuts off my air supply.
I can feel myself starting to give in. My vision tunnels and everything is fading, until a loud bang pierces my eardrums, making them ring. Riley’s grip loosens and she falls limp onto my lap as I sputter and cough while trying to suck in air.
