I head back into the city and onto the other side before racing up Ember’s road. I come closer to her house before realizing that I can’t bring this down on her. I can’t come here and have her and her family hide me from the rest of the world. That would incriminate them, and I refuse to do that to her. She deserves so much better.
Before my front tire hits her drive, I pull on the throttle and send my bike flying down the other end of the road, but where the hell am I supposed to go? I’m too ashamed of myself to go back to the boys. They knew I had to do it eventually, but there’s something so different between talking about it and actually doing it. No, I won’t go back there. I have to disappear. I have to get out of Ravenwood Heights for good.
I ride for what seems like hours, heading out of Ravenwood Heights before turning my ass around and flying straight back into town. I go around in circles, not knowing where the fuck to go or what to do until I pull up at a familiar pier and launch myself off the bike.
I run down to the beach, only stopping when the cool tide hits my feet, and I scream into the night. Dropping into the water, I watch it soak into my clothes and instantly turn the water a cloudy red.
I glance down to find my clothes stained in Kurt’s blood and dried against my skin. I scream more before panicking and throwing myself further into the water, desperately trying to scrub it from my body.
I dive into the water, letting it completely submerge me while trying to wash the blood from my hair. I furiously scrub at my skin, leaving it red and raw, wishing it would just go away. But the more I scrub, the more I seem to find. It won’t go away, it’ll never leave me.
Twenty minutes later, I sit under the pier with water dripping from my body. The night has gotten so much colder, and as I sit in a tight ball, my knees pulled up to my chest with my arms wrapped tightly around them, I shiver, wondering if this is some deformed kind of punishment from the skies above. I deserve so much worse.
I ended a life tonight. Who the hell am I to judge if someone deserves to live or die?
I feel sick.
“Found her,” a chilling voice says from beside me.
My head snaps up, and I find King staring down at me with a look in his eyes, so full of concern that it has tears springing from mine. He slips his phone back into the pocket of his jeans before crouching down and scanning his intense stare over my body, completely taking in the train wreck before him.
King reaches out and pushes my cold, wet hair back off my face, letting me see the devastation and pain written over his. He gently shakes his head. “I’d take a fucking bullet for you, Winter. I’d do anything to save you from having to go through that, even if it meant doing it myself.”
The tears flow from my eyes, and without hesitation, King scoops me up into his warm arms. He holds me close to his chest as he walks back up through the soft sand until he hits the pavement. He walks toward my bike, and as I raise my head off his chest, I notice a familiar Escalade parked right behind it.
Movement across the street catches my attention, and I find Cruz walking toward us. He meets us by my bike and after his eyes travel over my soaking wet body, he silently throws his leg over my bike and lets the engine roar to life.
King takes me to the front passenger seat of the Escalade and puts me in before standing in the open door for a second just watching over me. He waits a beat, his eyes softly roaming over my broken face before grabbing the seatbelt and silently clipping me in.
Cruz takes off down the street, riding my bike like a professional, and not a second later, King drops down into the driver’s seat and kicks over the engine. Before taking off after Cruz, King fiddles with the temperature settings, doing his best to heat up the car to gain control of the violent shivers that overwhelm my body.
Silence falls through the car as he starts driving through the streets of Ravenwood Heights. We get halfway back to Carver’s place when King turns and looks at me. He doesn’t say a damn word, but his concern is clear in his eyes, and for a moment, I can’t find the words to say.
King and I have had a strictly sexual relationship, and outside of that, we pretend to hate one another, but right here, I’m seeing another side of him, one that confuses the absolute shit out of me. Maybe there is something more between us than just hot, fast sex. His comment down on the beach about taking a bullet for me and saving me from having to do what I did completely threw me off.