“I don’t,” I assure him.
He tilts his head to the other side. “Huh. I’ve never heard that one before.” He glances at Hunter. “What about you, brother?”
“Nope.” Hunter steps up behind me and brushes a few snowflakes from my shoulder, making me want to smack him. “I think we might have an anomaly on our hands.”
He sounds just like my aunt, which pisses me off.
“I’m not an anomaly,” I bite out. “And I really doubt this is the first time a girl has turned down your option.”
“Oh, it is.” Zay assesses me way too closely with his dark eyes. “But every other time we’ve given a girl the option, it hasn’t been under these circumstances. We’ve never had to drag a girl out here before. We’ve always picked who we wanted and proposed the idea. And none of them turned it down. In fact, they’re always eager to accept. It was never a threat, but an honor.”
“Bullshit,” I say. “I bet they’re just afraid of you.”
He rolls his eyes. “We’ve never had to scare a girl like this before. You’re an anomaly whether you think you are or not. Now, we have taken some guys out to this bridge, but they don’t get option one. But none of them have ever made the jump either.”
I swallow hard, not wanting to ask, but needing to know. “So, what happened to them?”
“Happened to who?” he says with a smirk, and my stomach sinks. Still smirking, he snaps his fingers. “See how fast we can make you disappear, Raven? And from what I’ve read about you, I don’t really think anyone is going to miss you, the little murderer whose aunt and uncle had to take in because the police couldn’t build a good enough case to put you in juvie or in a psych ward permanently.”
I ball my hands into fists. Then I lift my hand, preparing to swing at him. Deep down, I know it won’t do any good, but at least I’ll get to hit him one time before I dive to my death.
He catches my fist, stopping me right before my knuckles collide with his cheek. “Nice try, but you’re going to have to do better than that.” He shoves me back a little before releasing my hand. “Now, it’s time for you to decide your fate because my brothers and I got other shit to do today.”
He acts as if this isn’t a big deal, which makes me wonder what kind of stuff is a big deal to him. Just how bad do things have to get before he feels some sort of guilt?
I guess I’m about to find out.
“I’m not going to sleep with you and be your servant.” I square my shoulders. “I choose to jump off the bridge.”
Disbelief flickers in his dark eyes, but he quickly erases it and shrugs. “Fine.” He gestures at the bridge. “Go ahead then.”
I suck in a breath, and then another, waiting for them to announce that this is all a joke. Not that I really believe that’s going to happen. I can see in his eyes that he doesn’t care what happens to me. Still, I latch on to hope, stupidly probably.
After a few slamming heartbeats go by and no one says anything, I turn and start toward the bridge. Snow flutters from the sky and covers the ground, causing my boots to slip underneath me. Having lived in a rather warm place most of my life, this whole snow thing is relatively new to me. I just hope the water is not too much colder than the air. How cold does it have to be before I get hypothermia?
I really hope I don’t find out the answer to that.
I sigh as I reach the bridge. Then I inch over to the side and peer down. The water isn’t too far down, but I was never worried about the distance. Honestly, I’m not even super concerned about hypothermia either, because freezing to death isn’t going to matter if I can’t figure out how to swim to the surface.
“Just kick your feet, Raven,” my dad tries to encourage as he stands in the pool with me, helping keep me afloat as he tries to teach me how to swim. “You can do this, sweetie. You can do anything if you put your mind to it.”
God, how I wish his words were true, but I’m not sure my mind is going to get me out of this. No, the only thing that’ll be able to save me is for me to either run and hope they don’t kill me, which I kind of think they might, or jump and hope I either float to the surface or that one of them feels sorry enough that they save me.
“Quit stalling!” Zay shouts out, his voice echoing across the hills.
I glance back at him, then at Jax, before finally looking at Hunter, searching for a sign that this is all a big joke or that they feel bad, but I can’t see their expressions through the falling snow.
Sucking in a breath, I direct my attention away from them. Then, taking another inhale and exhale, I hoist myself over the railing and onto the beam. My boots instantly slide against the wet metal, so I grasp on to a beam running above my head. Gripping tightly, I peer down at the water.
It’s not that far.
You’ve got this.
Just jump, get it over with, and then you can …
Can what? Go home to your family and tell them what happened? Yeah, you don’t have a home or a family, you made sure of that. And now you have to live an endless amount of days feeling that emptiness that constantly fills you, day in and day out.
Suddenly, being up here doesn’t seem as scary. No, the future is what is really scary. Knowing nothing is ever going to change. And it’s all my fault.
All of this is.
So, letting out an exhale, I let go.
I let go of everything and fall.
Chapter Eight
I hear someone shout something, but the words are stifled as I crash into the river, my body instantly locking up as I sink.
Holy shit, Jax was right. The coldness has taken my breath away. It also feels like a thousand needles are piercing my flesh. That pain is the easiest to handle, though. It’s kind of like the pain that came when those words were carved into my flesh.
Freak.
Loser.
Murderer.
I think my uncle may have enjoyed that punishment more than all the others he’s given me.
Freak.
Loser.
Murderer.
Freak.
Loser.
Murderer.
The girl who killed her parents.
And now I’m going to be the girl who killed her parents and paid for it when she sank to the bottom of a river and froze to death.
This is going to be my tomb.
But as soon as my feet touch the bottom, my instincts kick in, and I try to swim to the surface. The chill of the water burns my muscles, winding them into knots and making them useless.
I start to sink again, darkness taking over. And I start to let it …
Blood on my hands.
“Hide, Raven,” my mom begs. “Hide and don’t come out. Do you understand?”
I frantically shake my head. “No. I can’t leave you.”
She grabs my shoulders and looks me in the eyes. “You have to. And you have to promise to forget what’s about to happen. Promise me.”
I shake my head again, tears burning my eyes. “No, I’m not going to. I’m staying with you. I’m not going to hurt—”
Arms wrap around me, and then I’m being pulled upward, toward the sky. I’m dead, and I’m going upward. But that can’t be right.
No, when I die, and if there is a Heaven and a Hell, I definitely won’t be going upward.
You’ve got it wrong.
You’re going the wrong way.
I need to go back down—
I gasp as I break the surface of the water then cough as the air burns my lungs.
“Are you fucking crazy?” Zay glares at me as he holds me in his arms, swimming us over to the shore, the water rushing around us.
I want to answer him, but I’m chattering too hard to form any coherent words.
He shakes his head, his muscles wound tight, water dripping from his soaked hair and onto his face. “Why the hell did you jump?”
I want to gape at his stupid question, but exhaustion is grasping ahold of me. My eyelids start to lower as water drips down my face.
“Don’t you dare go to sleep,” he growls as he drags me onto the shore.
My clothes are soaking wet, and I realize my jacket is no longer on my body.
“You wanted to be stubborn, so you keep it up,” Zay says, leaning over me, his storm cloud eyes full of fire. “Do you understand?”
I give a feeble nod. Or, well, I think I do. My head feels so heavy.
“My jacket …” I mutter. “I need it …”
“Forget your fucking jacket,” Zay snap, droplets of water dripping from his lips as snowflakes fall around him. “It’s gone.”
I start to cry. Well, I think I would, except my eyes are too frozen. “I need it … It’s important to me …”
When he lets go of me, I peel my eyelids open and try to move, but my arms are useless lumps of frozen flesh. So instead, I slump into the dirt.
Zay shouts something, his words muffled, sounding so far away. I’m drifting into the cold with the snowflakes …
Hunter’s gorgeous face appears over mine, his skin as pale as the snow. “Jesus,” he whispers. “I can’t believe you did that, little raven. Why …?” He crouches down beside me and rakes his fingers through his hair. “We need to get her somewhere warm.”
Again, I don’t understand why they’re acting as if they had no part in me jumping.
Jax only adds to that confusion as he rushes down the hill, shouting, “We need to get her in the car and get her warmed up before hypothermia kicks in!” When he reaches us, he nudges Hunter out of the way and scoops me up into his arms.
A drop of warmth starts to seep into me as his body heat engulfs me, but the cold hastily takes over again.
Numb.
I feel numb.
I feel nothing.
Weightless.
And it’s kind of blissful.
“Get the car running,” he orders as he jogs up the muddy, snowy incline that leads to where the SUV is parked.
Hunter hurries ahead, running up the hill much quicker than Jax, but he’s also not carrying my frozen ass. That doesn’t explain where Zay is.