ONE
Dying was simple. The wick of life burned until there was nothing left and then...lights out. Poof. The soul got sucked somewhere else. I would know. I’d drowned when I was nineteen at my brother’s twenty-first birthday party. Sure, it put a damper on Hunter’s big day, but in retrospect, I was drunk, and who would’ve thought I’d pass out in the swimming hole?
My heart had stopped for a couple of minutes—and yet, it was the first time I’d felt alive.
I’d woken up in a dark, barren void that reeked of sulfur. Hell wasn’t as scary as everyone made it seem. It was familiar—comfortable—and somehow, I knew I belonged there. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that a deep voice had reverberated from the darkness, telling me that I wasdestined for more.
Then my heart started beating again, thanks to my brother’s CPR, and I sucked a choking breath in before coughing a shit ton of water out of my lungs. My soul had been ripped away from Hell and stuffed back into my frail body.
That was the first time I’d died.
Now, as I gazed up through hazy eyes, the stars twinkled against the velvety night sky, and I was about to die again. Shards of shattered glass, metal, and who-knew-what-else littered the asphalt and dug into my back as I lay broken against it.
I’d been driving on a back road with little to no traffic, and I should’ve been paying more attention instead of jamming out to Pop Smoke. I’d blinked, and something appeared in the middle of the road, hunched over with glowing yellow eyes that stared into the depths of my soul. I’d slammed on my breaks, but it was too late.
My car collided with it, wrapping around the strange animal and flinging my ass out of the driver’s seat, through the windshield, and into the air until the hard blacktop broke my fall.
The fabric of my clothes soaked up the cooling blood seeping out of me. I lifted my head just enough to glance down and see my tibia twisted, protruding through my skin like a pencil poking through paper.
Silver lining? My body was numb, and I didn’t feel a bit of it.
All because I didn’t wear a fucking seat belt.A half-assed chuckle escaped my bloodied lips.Destined for more? Such bullshit.
A banshee-like shriek assaulted my eardrums, ending my bitter mirth. Hot, viscous fluid oozed from my ears.
Couldn’t a girl die in peace?
“No the fuck you don’t!” A deep, aggressive voice growled into the night, and then the God-awful screeching ceased.
I inhaled the crisp night air before exhaling a crackled breath with a wince. My ribcage must’ve been destroyed from the impact, but even so, I could appreciate the sexy British accent the guy had.
“Bloody hell. This is our fault!” another smooth, melodious voice said before a loud bang sliced through the air.
“It was the abandoned’s fault. Damn thing crawled up from Hell after all,” another new voice lectured, just as deep and sexy as the first two.
I must be imagining voices. What the fuck is an abandoned?
“What kind of human is that? There’s something to her scent.”
My scent is fine, thank you.
“It’s probably the abandoned you smell, you wanker. She’s dying,” the first voice said.
No shit, dude.
“She’s fit.”
My stomach suddenly filled with butterflies alongside what had to be internal bleeding. Hearing a British dude call me anything remotely positive would do that to a girl.
“How can you tell under all the fucking blood?”
“Sod-off, Thaddeus. Oh, shit. She is gorgeous.”
Someone’s hand brushed my hair away from my face as they bent forward, blocking my view of the stars. I wasn’t sure when they’d gotten so close.
A man with inky-black hair tied back into a bun came into focus above me. Sharp green eyes rimmed with mossy green and flecked with bright emerald stared down at me. He had a strong jawline, slender nose, and delectable thin lips I could only dream of kissing. Those eyes watched me for a long moment, a weighted pause as I bled out on the asphalt. “You’re right. She’s bloody perfect.”
You’re fucking perfect, handsome stranger.
