The next time I managed to break the surface was just in time to see Levi grappling with X. They wrestled, Levi swinging punches at X in an attempt to get him to let go of me, but none of them landing well because he couldn’t get any momentum while treading water. His shouts rang in my ears, but I was too waterlogged to make sense of them while I fought to save my own damn life.
I wassofucking glad I’d jumped off that cliff. Drowning wassucha pleasant way to go out.
Water poured into my mouth again as Levi fisted X’s shirt and slammed his forehead into X’s face.
There was a groan of pain, and X finally went limp.
“Holy shit,” I gasped, finally able to kick away enough that X couldn’t try drowning me again. “Did you just headbutt him?”
“Yeah.”
X floated between us now, heavy and limp, water lapping at his slack jaw.
I squinted at him, wary. “Did you knock him out?”
Levi shook his head, hooking his arm around X’s and keeping his head out of the water. “I don’t know. But that was my intention.”
I grabbed X’s other arm.
We both kicked for the shore, dragging a limp and bleeding X along with us.
“Next time,” Levi muttered, “he’s wearing floaties.”
“Next time”—I shook my head, straining my way through the water, coughing up lungs full of liquid—“we let the fish have him.”
2
VIOLET
In the darkness, the rocky path that led down to the beach was treacherous.
I slipped and stumbled on loose, wet rocks, praying the entire time the explosion hadn’t weakened this part of the cliff face as well. I knew hikers used this path, but I never had, preferring to take in the beach by hopping off the bus in the parking lot and setting up my towel by the lifeguard’s tower. Getting a drink from the café. Applying some sunscreen and lying out on the sand to read my smutty book…
Like a normal freaking person.
This path from the bluffs felt like a surefire way to fall and break my neck. I’d watched people walk it from my vantage point on the sand, a cold drink in hand, and wondered why on earth they picked that option when they could have just…not.
Because this hiking business was not fun. Not in the least.
But I supposed most people didn’t try it in the dark. In a storm. And most people weren’t running down the barely visible track as fast as they could because the three men they loved were drowning in the ocean at the bottom of it.
The physical act of keeping myself from tripping and snowballing down the cliff face was the only thing stopping me from screaming. The terror inside me built with every step, only eased by the sharp breaths my lungs forced me to take.
My ankles twisted.
I fell more than once but hauled myself back up and kept going, knowing that whatever pain I was in, those three men were in a lot more.
Tears streamed down my face and I silently begged them all to live.
It felt like a lifetime before the ground beneath my feet changed from rocky dirt and gravel to sand.
I dragged myself along it, hair and clothes soaked and plastered to my face and body. Hot and sweaty, despite the rain that still came down in sheets.
I ran to the edge of the water, scanning it desperately for any sign of life.
“X!” The dark waves smashed against the edge of the sand, black and inky as the night. “Levi! Whip!”
“Here, sweetheart,” Whip’s voice came back through the darkness.
