Camden Archer is sprawled on a plush recliner in his room, facing a window.

Underneath him, on the floor, sits Prescott, beaten to a pulp.

A gun to her temple. A hand wrapped around her neck that’s bruised in purple and red. I feel my throat tighten. Breathe. Inhale. Don’t lose your shit.

“Diabla was the only disease I couldn’t seem to shake.” His posh English accent sounds so far away right now. He’s stroking her head. Why’s he stroking her head? I want to stop him but can’t. I know that if I don’t kill him soon, I’ll die myself. But I can’t chance pressing the knife to his throat, because he might pull the trigger.

“What is it about Prescott Burlington-Smyth that brings grown men to their knees?” he wonders aloud. My body failing me, I collapse and grab the back of his seat for balance. He doesn’t care that I have the knife pressed to his throat. I have a feeling he doesn’t care about anything anymore.

But I do. I care so much about the girl who’s forced to sit between his legs. And it’s ruining me that I can’t save her.

“It’s okay to fall, Nathaniel. We all fall sometimes.” His gun strokes the hair away from her forehead in a way that’s almost endearing. “You know, I saw you a few years ago when I visited my father in San Dimas. No one came to visit you. You were burning time in the yard. You looked so invisible inside that big body of yours. You think you found something to live for, but she belongs to me. The art of letting go. . .” He snickers. “I was never good at it.”

“Kill us both and walk away, Nate. I want him dead,” my brave girl commands in the background, but I can’t hear very well anymore. Everything becomes white. Voices are muffled. My watch stops ticking.

I’m selfish. I will never let him kill her, even if that’s what she wants.

“Yes, Nathaniel. Kill us both,” I hear him echo through red, searing pain that throbs between my temples. “Our time is up.”

For the first time since Pea and I got together, something dawns on me. I can’t save her. This time, she’s on her own.

It takes me long seconds to realize that I’m down on the floor, my eyes wide in terror. I stare at the legs of the recliner, Pea’s back between Camden’s legs. I want to move. I need to move. To jump out of my skin and be strong for her. A river of blood, my blood, starts streaming toward her.

Struggling to keep my eyes open, I try to talk to her, even though I can barely move my lips. White becomes black, and the wild ride we had together is coming to an end. If there were one last thing I could feel before I die, I’d want it to be her stupid stress ball bouncing off my face. She looked so hopeful and lively the day we rode out of Stockton together. It made me fall for her. All that spirit. She f*cking sparkled, a stick of dynamite in the pitch black of my existence. Country Club didn’t give me any choice. She ripped my heart from my chest. Is it a surprise that I can only get hard for one girl, that she is only wet for me? She gives me storm, and I give her peace.

But I can’t give her my peace right now.

Because I’m gone.

So plain looking, he couldn’t stand out in a sea of black. But he wears tailored suits, a cunning smile and the confidence of a man who never had to count his pennies. Likes: Drinking, screwing and using his father’s power to get his way. Loves: Me. Hates: Everything and everyone who might get between him and me.

“Put the gun down.” My pitch dances high and low. Shit. It could have been different, if Nate wasn’t here. I would care much less about my death.

I know Camden, and if he kills me, he’ll grieve for me more than he grieved for his dad. He’s been peppering me with kisses, wet with tears and his stinking cigarette saliva, ever since he hit me and dragged me out of his car. He ordered Simon to stay in the living room and wait for Nate as he pulled me into his bedroom, kissing, crying, apologizing and slapping me across the face all at once.

So mad. So crazy. So, so insane.

He’s rambling, something about how we could’ve been great parents. I don’t hear a word he says. The only sound that bounces inside my skull is Nate, Nate, Nate.

He’s hurt. I can’t turn around to look because of the gun that’s digging into my temple, but the blood. . .Nate’s blood is making its way to my feet. I see it running over to where I sit on the floor like a wounded animal begging to be saved, the copper scent so strong it fills my mouth, even though it’s nowhere near my tongue. Trying not to gag, I pop my neck back and forth and inhale deeply.

Please don’t die on me. Please don’t go.

It would hurt so much more than the beatings I endured from my ex-boyfriend.

“I need to take him to the hospital, Camden. You’re not your dad. You can’t get rid of two bodies without leaving evidence. Just tell me what you want, and I’ll do it.”

He wrenches me by the hair so that my ear meets his lips, the skin of my forehead stretches from the impact of his grip.

“You can’t give me what I want, because you already gave it to the poor sod who is dying on the floor behind us. That’d be your heart, by the way.”

My goddamn tears betray me again. I’m shaking violently. He’s dying. My peace, my everything, may already be gone.

“Camden, anything. Name it. I’ll give it to you. I came here for my brother, not for you,” I lie. “I’m over what happened between us. I just want my family back.”