“If you think I don’t know what you’re up to,” he murmured, his voice smooth and venomous all at once, “you’re wrong.”
My heart plummeted.
“I’m smarter than you are,” he continued, his mouth curving into a cruel little smile. “You’re not going to get me by sending some stupid idiot to try to trap me. And the way you’ve been acting tonight?” His eyes flicked briefly toward Shane, then back to me. “I’d bet you think you can just catch me in something and waltz away into the night. Run off with your college sweetheart. That right? That your big plan?”
The grin he gave me then was wicked and satisfied, especially when all the blood rushed from my face at his acknowledgment of me and Shane.
“Oh, trust me,” he said softly. “I know about you and precious little Coach McCabe. I know about your past. I know you spent a day gallivanting around with him when I was out of town. I knoweverything, Ariana,” he seethed. “Just like I know you thought Carter could get me to say something incriminating. Just like I know you tried to bribe Ben into playing your little game. But Ben’s not betraying me. Not if he wants his dad to live.”
My blood ran cold.
“And Shane’s little attempt to get the league involved?” Nathan went on, squeezing my arm harder even as his voice softened a click, like we were just discussing when we should cut my birthday cake. “That’s a wash, too. I’ve got everyone in my pocket, sweetheart. Most of all you.”
He leaned back just enough to look at my face, his thumb brushing my jaw in a gesture that made my skin crawl.
“So smile,” he whispered. “And give me a kiss. Or I’ll make you give me much more later.”
The room spun, the lights suddenly too bright, the music too loud. I could feel Shane somewhere behind me, the tension rolling off him in waves, but in that moment, Nathan was all I could see.
And for the first time all night, real fear took hold.
The Cost of Victory
Shane
Present
I’d been here before.
I could remember the sensation — lungs aching, throat closing in, brain shutting down. It’d happened to me once before. I was eight years old, grieving my parents, grieving the life I’d lived before, grieving what could have been. I jumped into an icy cold lake in the dead of winter just to feel something.
Shock came first. It always does. No matter how prepared you think you are, you’re never ready for the way cold slices straight through you, how it steals your breath and your thoughts all at once. I was lucky it wasn’t cold enough to make me inhale water, lucky I remembered to hold my breath. But I didn’t last long. I surfaced, gasping, crying out, clawing my way toward shore while my body screamed at me for being so goddamn stupid.
And then — clarity.
That was the part people never talked about — the moment after panic burns itself out, when fear stops being useful and your brain snaps into something sharper. It’s like survival flipping a switch.
And that’s how I felt now, watching Nathan steer Ariana away, his hand around her waist, fingers digging into her hip bone.
She looked over her shoulder, and the panic in her eyes did me all the way in.
It was imploding.
Our perfectly laid plan was blowing up right in front of our faces.
“Fuck, man, I tried. I tried to get him to—” Carter zipped his lips shut before saying more than that, his fingers dragging back through his hair as he shook his head and watched Ariana go. “I’m sorry, man. I really thought I had him, and then he just looked at me and chuckled and walked away. He knew. He read right through me.”
“What’s going on?” Georgie asked. He followed my gaze to his sister, and when he turned back to me, his brows were bent. “Is Ariana in trouble?”
Carter and I exchanged glances. How the fuck was I supposed to answerthat?
I took the deepest breath I could manage and decided to start with the truth.
“No,” I said, squeezing Georgie’s shoulder. “No, I don’t think she is. But she will be. I need you to trust me, okay? I promise I’ll tell you everything, but right now, I need you to just believe me when I tell you I have it under control.”
Georgie didn’t like that. I knew by the way his jaw tightened. He clocked his sister again and then turned back to me with a curt nod that I knew he didn’t want to give me.
I felt honored that he did.
