“What the fuck?” I growled low.
He had her in a headlock, her hair in her face, and a huge fucking smile on his. She struggled and fought, trying to reach him behind her, and while I was trying to decide if I was angrier that he was touching my shit or if he was really hurting her or just playing with her, he let her go, pushed her forward, and splashed her, both of them laughing and answering my question.
I gripped the window frame, scowling down at them. They stood waist deep, his chest naked, tattoos blaring, and she in some halter bikini top. Over the next several minutes he worked with her on different holds and how to get out of them. His lips moved, talking her through what to do as he grabbed or yanked her or backed her into the edge of the pool.
I almost snorted. Fucking Rika.
This was her idea. I’d bet any piece of ass she sent Will over here to teach Winter some self-defense moves to fend me off. Nice move, kid, but this was chess, not checkers. Remember?
Winter shot out her hands, planting them on Will’s chest, and I breathed hard and deep, my eyes burning with a glare.
She doesn’t touch him.
And he doesn’t touch her.
Releasing the curtain, I spun around and walked out of the bedroom and down the stairs.
I liked that Will was here. I wanted him here. I wanted him with me.
But he was not her fucking lifeline. Period.
I rounded the bannister and made my way to the back of the house and through the back door. Walking to the edge of the terrace, I stopped and looked down at them as they talked and played.
It made sense now why he took her into the pool. Without her sight, it helped her maintain balance and cushioned any falls during their training. Thank you for that, Will. I wanted her in perfect condition.
Sprinkles of rain hit my shoulders, and Winter fluttered her eyelashes as she turned her face to the sky and held out her hands, palms up. Drops hit the water, clouding the still surface, and the fire pit crackled near the pool house, an inviting glow under the darkening sky.
Will smoothed his wet hair over the top of his head and finally looked up, spotting me. He stood there, still and unwavering, his fucking juniper eyes always twisting a goddamn hole through my head like a screwdriver, and for a moment, it was high school, we were side by side, and Winter wasn’t standing between us.
In that moment, I wanted to grab him and her and Banks and put us all on an island, because they would never not belong to me.
Lightning shot through the sky, thunder cracked, and Will and Winter exchanged words before she hopped out of the pool. He followed, helping her find her towel.
Once she was dried off, she wrapped the towel around her body, but when he tried to take her hand, she waved him off. He said a few more words to her, she nodded, and then turned around.
Putting out her right hand, she made her way back up to the house, toward me, and I locked eyes with Will.
The corner of his mouth tilted in a challenge, and I shook my head as Winter made her way in my direction. Walking right past me, she paused, turning her head my way, and I looked down at her, knowing she knew I was here, mere inches away.
My eyes fell down her face, neck, and shoulders, touching her the only way I’d allow myself just yet.
Stupid girl. He only taught you to fend off one attacker. What if there were more?
She dropped her head, her lips tightening, and she walked on, back into the house.
Soon.
Will dried off and walked over to the fire pit, holding out his hands to warm up. I descended the brick steps, making my way over to him.
“I got your letter,” he said, staring at the fire.
I quirked a smile, remembering the note I sent him a while back. Challenging him to find me. To face who he really was, and it wasn’t as Michael and Kai’s third wheel. Fuck them.
“You think you can stop me?” I stared at him over the fire. Is that why he was here? Doing Rika’s bidding and trying to arm Winter against me?
But his eyes danced with mischief even though he still wasn’t looking at me. “You didn’t think that beating I gave you was the end of it, did you?”
My smile froze, remembering the beating I let him give me last year, because I knew I deserved it. I’d knelt there, letting him hit me again and again, because I wanted to feel worse on the outside than I did on the inside, and for so many moments, I just wanted him to kill me. Just kill me, because I can’t take it back, and I can’t move on.
I’d almost killed him. And I wanted him to hate me so hard he would fucking murder me, and then maybe, after his anger was spent, he’d love me again. Whether I lived or died, he needed to forgive me for standing by and letting Michael’s brother do what he did on that yacht that night.
But I wasn’t the only one to blame for all that shit that went down two years ago after we got out of prison, either. I took my punishment for my part, but I wasn’t taking it lying down again.
And if at least a small part of him wasn’t willing to forgive me, he wouldn’t be here now. He wanted to be here. He hadn’t let it go, which meant he hadn’t let me go. Not completely.
“You missed me,” I said in a low voice.
He moved behind the flames, circling the fire slowly, and I did the same, following him.
“Didn’t you?” I taunted.
His wet jeans clung to his legs, and I noticed he’d added some more ink to his chest and arms since I last saw him.
But some things hadn’t changed. He was still dwelling on shit and still getting drunk and high all the time. He needed me.
A small chuckle escaped him as I caught his eyes again. “You were my heroin once upon a time,” he said, and his eyes disappeared behind the flames again.
I stepped again, moving around the fire and locking eyes with him again. “And you still like your drugs from what I hear.”
He shook his head, knowing full well where I got that information. “Fucking Rika.”
“Fucking Rika.” I nodded.
He moved again, disappearing, and I advanced, seeking him. His eyes on me when he dropped out of sight and still on me when he reappeared. His lips twitched and his gaze was charged with fury, rage, excitement, the blacks of his eyes small and sober, because he didn’t need that shit when he had me.
“Winter likes you,” I said, taking another slow step. “She seems to trust you. Why?”
“I have a way…with women,” he teased.
“I remember.” I licked my lips. “You were fun to watch.”
His breathing turned shallow, and I knew he was remembering all the shit we got up to back in the day. We had some fun.
Even without girls.
“You want to see me with her?” he asked. “Is that it?”
I laughed under my breath and cocked my head. “Not exactly.”
I shot off, catching him off guard, darted around the fire and slammed my palms into his chest, pushing him backward into the wall of the pool house. He grunted, hitting the brick with his bare back.
The rain started pummeling the awning overhead, and I raced up to him, ready to throw him down on the ground, but he bent over and barreled into my stomach, sending us both falling to the concrete deck.
I bared my teeth, seething and throwing my fist across the side of his head while he punched my stomach. I tightened every muscle in my gut against his attack, and I didn’t know if I was really angry or just desperate to engage him in anything, because I’d fucking missed this, but either way, I was having fun.
I threw him over onto his back, and he kept rolling, trying to get away, but I caught him. I landed on his back, pressing him into the ground and driving my arm into the back of his neck to keep him in place.
“Oh, I remember this,” I taunted in his ear, every inch of my chest pressed against his back and both us very aware of my groin on his ass. “This is what you really missed, isn’t it?”
He jerked his head back, trying to head butt me. “Don’t fucking t
alk about that,” he growled. “I was drunk.”
“All three times?” I teased, smiling. “Michael and Kai don’t know how close we got, do they?”
I lowered my mouth to his ear, ready to revive his memory of how there were moments when I was the only one who would give him what he needed. When no one else was there for him, and we had everything money could buy but all we really wanted were things that didn’t have a price.
When we were young and already drained and rotting from the inside out, and for a few nights here and there we just wanted to touch someone who got it. Who understood.
I could make him remember. I could push forward and not think and make him not think and just go and take and feel and…
Reaching around, I grabbed the front of his throat and buried my face in his fucking neck, but he thrashed, jerking his head back once again, breaking free from my hold, and slamming me in the bottom lip.
I squeezed my eyes shut as the corner of my mouth dug into my teeth, and I growled, distracted long enough for him to throw me off.
Heat coursed under my skin, and my heart picked up pace as I laughed and licked the cut, tasting the blood on my mouth.
You fucking little shit. Will was nice…until he wasn’t. Winter shouldn’t trust him too much.
I stood up as he rose to his feet, as well.
“You know,” he started, a condescending little smirk on his face. “I was never turned on by Winter growing up. Too pale. Too pure.”
He bent over, swiping my cigarettes off the ground and pulled one out. He tossed the pack back to me, and I caught it, glaring at him as he bent down to the fire, lighting the end.
“She was pretty, but I like my meat hot.” He blew out a stream of smoke, his gaze locked on the flames as he drifted off in thought for a moment. “Sexy with chocolate-colored hair and olive skin. Fat lips and dark eyes taunting me behind some seductive, librarian glasses.”
He trailed off, lost in the images in his mind, and I knew exactly who he was thinking of. But after a moment, he shook his head, coming back. “I never really knew why you were drawn to Winter. Michael and Kai thought she was just a one-night stand to you, but I knew better.” He raised his eyes, meeting mine. “They didn’t see the way you would look at her at school, during lunch and in passing in the hallways. And how no one—no one,” he re-emphasized the words, “fucked with her behind her back after what you did to any guy who disrespected her, like making an obscene gesture right next to her that she couldn’t see.”
He circled the fire again, and I did the same, not taking my eyes off him for a moment.
“But about a year ago,” he said, “I checked in on your girl. Watched her rehearse at the theater with a fellow dancer. Some guy.”
My teeth slowly ground together.
“Though they weren’t doing much rehearsing,” he taunted, and I could see the images playing behind his eyes. “He had her pinned against a wall, her long hair spilling around her and her skin flushed with sweat and heat from dancing… His hands were all over her, and his tongue halfway down her little throat.”
I held back the snarl that pulled at my lips, but I couldn’t help the images that flooded my mind. Of a time when I had her in very much the same fucking position. Her naked breasts, her arms around my neck and hugging me to her, us in a tangle so tight you couldn’t tell what was me and what was her…
Slut. I hoped he was telling the truth.
“She stopped it when he tried to undress her,” Will told me. “But one thing I noticed for certain. That girl is ready to be used like a woman.” A heated look crossed his eyes. “And she may not have liked it with you, but she just might love it with me.”
I balled my fists.
“Yeah,” he mused, his tone trying to get under my skin. “She’s damn-well turning me on now. She felt really good in the pool, and I can just see her lily-white ass backing up into my cock, her hair bouncing against her back—”
I kicked the fire pit, and it went tumbling into the pool, extinguishing, and I lunged for him, but he made no move to get away. With one hand on the front of his neck and the other hand on his back, I whipped him around and threw him into the wall of the pool house.
“I almost killed you once,” I gritted through my teeth and getting in his face. “I could do it again.”
“Then do it,” he fired back. “Do it, because I got nothin’ to lose, D. Nothing.”
He gasped out the last, desperation suddenly rippling off of him, and it was familiar, because I felt it, too. I stared at him, his eyes searching mine.
“I can’t stop going down this road I’m on,” he nearly whispered, his eyes watering. “My family is done with me. Michael has Rika. Kai has Banks. You were a lie.” He faltered, dropping his gaze. “She was a lie.”
She.
She was next. After I was done with Winter, I’d do it for him.
“I’m not afraid of you,” he said, even though his voice was laced with defeat. “I’m not afraid of anything anymore. If you don’t kill me, I’ll keep pushing you until you have to. And I will fuck you over any way I can.” He bared his teeth, growling. “In ways she’s gonna love.”
I slammed him into the wall again, but he still didn’t fight me.
“You wanna watch?” he egged me on. “Come on. She won’t even know you’re in the room. You can see if she likes it with me. See if she responds to me better than she responded to you.”
Stop it.
“See how hard I make her sweat and moan and how fast I can make her come on my dick,” he sneered.
I glowered at him, my fingers digging into his neck. She wouldn’t want him. And so help her God if she did.
“So do it then,” he urged, finally shoving his palms into my chest and pushing me back. “Kill me before I can fuck her, because I won’t stop.”
He pushed me again, and I stumbled back, my fingers tightening into fists.
No. Stop, just stop.
“Because I have a passion for self-destruction, and you always knew it, and you always knew we would end badly.” His voice cracked. “This won’t end any other way.”
Was he right? Did I think our friendship would survive our future?
Be with me. Just be with me. Not against me.
But he shoved at me again. “I’ll take her from you.”
“Don’t,” I choked out.
The walls were closing in. I couldn’t breathe.
But he pushed me again, and I winced, my chest now aching. “And she’ll take me away from you, and then you’ll be all alone. Like you always should’ve been.”
My stomach churned, and I seethed, and then he hit me, fire spreading across my cheek and sending my head jerking to one side.
“You’re gonna deal with me!” he yelled and then hit me again, sending me stumbling. “Kill me. Fucking finish the job and kill me, because I’m fucked, and I hate you, and if you don’t take me out, I’ll take you out, because it’s fucking over!”
He shoved me again and again, and I was losing it. I shot out my hands to stop him, “Don’t. Stop.”
A tear streamed down his face, but he wiped it away, growling. “Do it,” he bit out. “Snap my neck, rip out my throat, or strangle me, you sick fuck! Just do it!”
He punched me across the jaw, pain shot through my head, and I clenched my fists so tight my nails dug into my palms.
“Will…” I breathed out, unable to catch my breath. “Don’t.”
“I’ll never stop.” He shook his head, coming in again. “Never.”
He pushed me. “Kill me.”
Stop.
His hands slammed into me again. “I’m going to take her away from you, so kill me.”
You can’t have her. I’ll…
“Kill me, so I’m out of your way!” he bellowed. “If you did it right last time I’d be at the bottom of the fucking ocean, so finish the job, and then you can have her!”
An image of him sinking below the deep, black surface of the sea cra
wled into my head, and I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to get rid of it.
He would’ve been gone forever.
“Fucking kill me,” he said, his voice even and suddenly calm.
“No.”
“Kill me. You’re going to have to.”
I shook my head.
He grabbed me by the collar, screaming, “Do it!”
And I grabbed his neck in my hands, ramming him into the wall of the pool house. “I can’t!”
He grunted, breathing hard, and I dropped my forehead to his, unable to swallow the fucking needles in my throat.
“Fuck, I can’t,” I whispered. “Please, stop. Please.”
“I can’t,” he mouthed, and tears streamed down his face. “I can’t.”
I moved my hands to his face, just holding him, and ready to say so much, because I never had to hide anything from him. He never saw weakness when he looked at me. I wanted to tell him things.
I wanted to tell him that I never would’ve hurt him. That I didn’t know what Trevor was doing, and it wasn’t supposed to go down like that, because out of all three of my friends, Will was the one I would always save first. That my pride and anger wouldn’t let me retreat, and that if he had been pulled to the ocean’s bottom, out of my reach, I would’ve followed him.
I would’ve fucking followed him and rotted down there, close to wherever he was, because nothing I would’ve acquired after that—my inheritance or my vengeance on Winter—would’ve been worthwhile without him.
His breath fell on my mouth, and his wet hair behind his head grew warm under my fingers. He needed me. I dug my fingers into his scalp. He had to realize he needed me. No one was going to hold him up like I would.
No one.
I dove in, catching his bottom lip between my teeth and pushing us both through the pool house door.
He stumbled back, snarling and ready to fight me, but I rushed in, sinking my mouth into his and pushing him down onto the couch. I covered his lips with mine, gripping his throat with one hand and holding myself up with the other.
“Fuck you,” he sneered, pulling his mouth away.
I grinned and flicked his lip with my tongue. “Only if you want to.”
Kill Switch Page 16