Burning.
The memory opened like a door kicked in by fate. Smoke. Fire. Dark hair wild around a pale, bruised face. Blood on her mouth. Eyes too big, too haunted, too alive. She had looked at me that night like she didn’t know whether I was salvation or one more dangerous thing coming out of the dark.
Beautiful.
I hadn’t meant to name her like that.
The word had just been there, waiting.
My body bounced as hands dragged me. Pain tore through my side, then receded too far, which scared me worse. Someone was yelling for pressure. Someone else was cursing about time and cops and hospitals. Nate was beside me or behind me or gone. I tried to turn toward him, but my body had become a distant country with bad roads.
Georgia, I told myself.
Think of Georgia.
But my mind kept running backward through Destiny like she was the only road left lit.
Her hands shaking at Mandy’s grave.
Red paint smeared across stone. Across her fingers. Across her sleeve. Destiny scrubbing at poison like grief could be cleaned off if she just ruined enough fabric.
My hands around hers later, washing the red away.
Soap.
Water.
Her silence.
The way she let me touch her because I wasn’t trying to take anything.
Then her mouth under mine in the dark by that grave, soft and trembling and brave. The kiss that should have been nothing. One kiss. One mistake. One moment with a girl too young, too wounded, too forbidden to become anything real.
Except it had become everything.
The vehicle lurched.
Pain flashed.
I heard Nate groan somewhere close.
Good.
Alive.
“Stay with me,” a brother said.
I didn’t know which one.
Callum maybe.
Bullet.
God.
Didn’t matter.
I was trying.
