How Sinners Fight - Eva Ashwood Page 0,83

the car toward the dark woods, Gray pulls me against him and presses a hard kiss to my lips.

When we break apart, he cradles my face in his hands. “Don’t be a hero,” he murmurs, his voice strangled. “Don’t do anything risky. I’ve almost lost you way too many fucking times, and I can’t bear to lose you again.”

He kisses me one more time, like he’s trying to seal a promise, and the second he releases me, Declan spins me around, his lips finding mine. His hands run up my arms, cradling my neck, his fingers brushing up against the soft skin behind my ears.

When he pulls away, his eyes are dark in the faint moonlight. “We’ve always got your back, Soph, okay?”

I nod, not trusting myself to speak. I don’t know why this feels like a goodbye, why I feel like I’m about to walk into the forest and never come back, and I try to convince myself that it’s a crazy premonition.

Just nerves making me jittery.

“I really don’t want to win that bet about you getting in a fight,” Elias says when it’s his turn, and although he tries to make his tone joking, his voice catches in a way that makes my heart constrict. “Okay, Blue? You got that?”

His arms sling around me in a tight hug, pulling me close. His kiss is soft, searching, intense—nothing like his usual flirty, hungry kisses. When our bodies mesh together, I can feel the soft brush of his breath against my ear.

And then there’s space between us again, the mountain air a cold chill after his hot skin against mine.

“We’ve got this,” he says quietly. “It’ll be okay.”

I nod, turning away from them before I can rush back into the car like a coward. I made this mistake, and I’ll fucking fix it. I should have never let Max go off with Aaron like that right after he learned that she shared Cliff’s secret with me. I should’ve known better than to trust any of the Saints.

My heart thuds in my chest with every step into the woods. The guys follow close behind, cloaked in shadows. So well hidden that if it wasn’t part of our plan for them to stick close by, I would never guess they were there.

I suck in a breath, flicking on the small flashlight I pulled from beneath my sink. Every dorm has one in case of power outages, and I never thought I’d have to use it.

But here I am, I think bitterly, using the flashlight, in the middle of the woods, in the middle of the night, looking for my best friend who’s been kidnapped.

A few minutes pass. I can’t hear the telltale sounds and signs of movement behind me anymore, but I know the Sinners are there. They won’t let me face this alone, and as much as part of me hates that, part of me loves it too.

Abruptly, the faint path I’m following stops.

Up ahead, the beam of my flashlight illuminates limp black hair, a body slumped against ropes that bind it to a tree.

Max.

Oh, fuck. My heart falls into my stomach, the flashlight nearly slipping out of my hand. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“No,” I whisper. It’s a raspy plea into the darkness. “Be alive. Please. Fuck. Please.”

My heart pounds out an erratic beat as I rush over to her. Someone has tied her up against the tree with thick rope, restraining her. I don’t know if she was conscious when it happened or not, but I can tell by the cuts and scratches on her olive skin that she didn’t go down without a fight.

Her body is chilled from the cool night air, but she’s clearly alive. Thank fuck. She groans and stirs as I tug at the ropes around her, trying to untie them.

Leaves rustle to my right.

A twig snaps.

My heart leaps up to my throat as my head whips around. I expect to see one of the guys coming to help even though they were supposed to hang back—but instead, a fucked up Halloween mask shines in the halo of my flashlight, scaring the shit out of me.

I realize almost too late that the person is holding a thick branch, lifting it—

Shit.

It hits my body with a heavy thud, sending pain rushing through me as I stumble back. The world spins in my vision, and I struggle to reorient myself.

I hear the sound of something whistling through the air, and I realize my masked attacker is about to try