1
WHIP
Ifucking hated heights.
Not in the way Levi hated small spaces; he had a real reason for being claustrophobic after being locked in a prison cell for six years.
I just hated them because staring over the edge of the Saint View bluffs churned my stomach and tightened my chest.
So jumping off them wasn’t exactly on my bucket list.
Then again, watching X plummet off the edge, into the inky blackness of the swirling sea below, hadn’t been on my to-do either.
The explosion that had disintegrated the edge of the cliff face still rang painfully in my ears. The rain from the storm pelted my face in sharp, stinging bites, drenching my skin and clothes.
But it was Violet’s screams that X couldn’t swim that drowned out all of it.
And the entire reason I threw myself off the edge after him.
I hit water as hard as concrete, the force slamming up through my feet and legs, vibrating through the rest of my body in a bone-jarring thud I would be feeling for days.
But then the waves rushed over my head.
Freezing cold.
Pitch-black.
Utterly terrifying.
Panic threatened to rush in but was quickly shoved away by the thought X was down here somewhere too, and unlike me, he couldn’t fucking swim.
So instead of succumbing to the cold shock and sinking deeper, I kicked out hard, and then again, over and over until I broke the surface.
I gasped, sucking in air, fighting the choppy waves threatening to smack me in the face.
“X!” Levi shouted from somewhere beside me.
I hadn’t even realized he’d jumped as well.
“Levi!” I shouted. “Violet—”
“She didn’t jump!”
Relief flooded me, but it was short-lived.
Because even if Violet wasn’t down here, X was. “X!”
My clothes weighed me down, the pull of the sea threatening with every wave.
But no way was I giving in to it.
I kicked off my shoes, instantly losing them to the bottom of the ocean, and pushed myself in circles, scanning the water for any sight of him.
Guilt clutched at me. I’d been so fucking mad at him. He’d left Levi and me stranded out in the middle of nowhere, with a pile of dead bodies, when Violet had needed us.
But now it was his stupid ass that needed saving.
If the idiot drowned and broke Violet’s heart, I would seriously kill him all over again. She’d already lost enough people.
