Total pages in book: 181
Estimated words: 181613 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 908(@200wpm)___ 726(@250wpm)___ 605(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 181613 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 908(@200wpm)___ 726(@250wpm)___ 605(@300wpm)
“Let me go or I will cut you, Aspen,” he warns.
“Do it.”
But he doesn’t slice me.
“That fucker is not worth the pain he caused you!” he yells. “Let me hurt him back!”
My eyes widen.
Silas wanted to avenge … me?
BANG!
Another shot fires from Lana’s gun straight into Silas, and it hits him in the shin.
“Fuck!” Silas slowly sinks to the ground with me. “Let me go!” he roars. “Let me kill that son of a bitch!”
Lana’s closing in, and I don’t want to lose Silas, but I don’t know how to make him stop either.
“Please, Silas, you have to stop.”
“Give me one good fucking reason!”
My mom is swiftly approaching from the opposite side, while Lana is on the other side of the forest.
“My son does not deserve to die over a mistake!” Lana yells at us, her gun pointed at our heads.
Silas is on his knees in front of Levi, clutching his leg from the pain.
“He abused Aspen!” Silas’s roar fills the woods.
And my heart sinks into my shoes.
That’s what he made himself believe.
The final trigger that made him want to kill Levi.
“That motherfucker—” My mom rapidly approaches. “Killing my daughter was not enough, you had to go and violate my other daughter too?!”
From mere feet away, Mom raises her gun at Levi’s face as he crawls off the ground.
Between the violence of two mothers hell-bent on protecting the people they love, I do the only thing I can think of and throw myself into their aim, shielding Levi’s body and face with mine, raising my hand to meet the barrel of my mother’s gun.
“Step aside, Aspen,” Mom says sternly.
“You kill my son, and I will kill your daughter,” Lana warns, pointing her gun at me.
“No,” I say. “I won’t let you kill him.”
“I heard what Silas said. He hurt you. AND he killed Mavis,” she says.
“If you kill him, you kill me too,” I say calmly, holding on as tightly as I can.
She looks at me like I’ve lost my mind, but I am not letting go. Not ever.
The others emerge from the woods too, slowly approaching with guns and knives at the ready, each waiting for the other to act first.
But I’m done fighting my own family.
Done pretending I can live with the secrecy and lies.
“Mom … I love Levi.”
CHAPTER 66
Levi
Her mom’s eyes widen, and gasps follow from the rest of our families.
“You … love him?” her mom repeats, shock lacing her voice.
Fuck.
I never thought this day would come when I’d have to face all the lies I’ve told.
All the times I’ve denied myself the one thing I truly wanted.
Her.
I close my eyes and revel in the scent of her closeness, the touch of her fingers splayed against my back, as my head rests against her chest. If her heartbeat was the last thing I heard on this earth, I would die a happy man.
Even if I’m wounded on every inch of my body, too drained of blood to even defend myself, at least I got to touch her one last time.
She shudders against me. “You want to kill him? You’ll have to go through me,” she says through gritted teeth.
And I am so fucking proud of her.
My little Firefly. God, I love this woman.
“What?” Silas growls. “How? How the fuck could you love the man who killed our sister?”
“Because I’ve always loved him!” she yells, tears staining her pretty blue eyes. “He didn’t kill Mavis. She fell, and I’ve seen the proof.”
“Where?” her mom asks.
Grey runs up to us and holds out his phone. She snatches the phone out of his hand, throwing distrustful glances at him between watching the footage. We all know what she’s about to witness, and I can see the truth reflected in her very eyes.
How death lingers and haunts us all.
“That night, he made a pact with Mavis,” she says. “They’d jump together and forget about the people they were in love with.”
Heath swallows, and his face mars with confusion. “What?”
“She loved you,” Aspen says, looking at him. “Just like Levi loved me.”
Heath’s eyes gloss over as though he’s seen her ghost wink at him from the other side. “Oh God …”
Aspen looks down at me, and my fingers instinctively reach for those beautiful freckles crossing her face like the stars on the horizon.
I do.
I love her so much it hurts to see the tears form in her eyes.
Because I never wanted her to cry over me.
“But Levi couldn’t do it. He couldn’t let me go,” she says, talking to the others, while looking explicitly at me. “And it caused her to fall.”
The silence around us is like a calm wave to my bludgeoned soul.
“All this time, he’s been trying to make us hate him so he could die alone, just like her,” she says through gritted teeth, tears rolling down her cheeks. “But he doesn’t deserve to die, and I won’t let you kill him.” She swallows and strengthens her grip on me, as if she wants to tell the world she’d go down to hell with me if she had to.