Page 112 of The Road to Ruined

"He feels really guilty—about everything. About Rhett and Brady…leaving you. He misses music. He missed you a lot, too, baby."

I pull Luca's arm over my body and lace my fingers between his, kissing the top of his hand and then the other. I've missed them. His hands used to wash my hair and hold me at night, and carried me a few times when I couldn't carry myself. They're the ones I used to imagine running through my hair in the mornings when he was gone, and I couldn't get out of bed.

They're the ones that held me when I cried and wrote me a sad song.

"I missed him, too." I hope I can help him, too.

"He'll be okay, Teag," Declan says. "You will, too. I love you."

"I love you, too."

He leans in and kisses me again, running his hand up my thigh and hitching my leg around his waist while his lips slowly engulf mine. It feels so good—kissing him slowly like this, toying with his lips between my teeth. I push a hand through his hair and bring him closer, kissing him deeper.

We pull apart when a fist pounds against the hotel door three times.

I gasp, and Declan presses a finger to my lips. "It's okay, kitten. It'll just be Travis—I told him to knock three times like that," he says.

But he's whispering. And he'd only be knocking if there was a problem.

"Don't open it," I whisper, grabbing his arm. "I'm scared."

"Just be quiet, okay?"

As he climbs out of bed and moves toward the door, I grab my knife from the nightstand and shake Luca awake. "Luca, wake up! Someone is here!"

"What?" he asks. Then, he hears the knocks on the door for himself. "Oh, shit."

He climbs out of bed and pulls on his boxers just as Declan reaches the door. "I told you it was just Travis," he says, looking through the peephole. "He's standing too fucking close to the door, though. Giant fucking moron."

But when he opens the door, a man in a gold mask tosses something at Declan and pushes his way into the room.

It was the giant fucking moron's severed head, and it rolls across the floor until it stops a few inches away from my feet.

TWENTY

"Get her out of here!" Declan shouts as the two of them struggle. The man in the mask, too short to be Sebastian, slices at the air in front of Declan with a machete as he moves toward the back of the room. Declan grabs the lamp beside the television, pulls its cord from the wall, and hurls it at him.

When the man ducks, he lunges for him, knocking him off of his feet, and they struggle for control over the blade between them.

"Let's go, Teag," Luca says, ushering me toward the door with a tight grip around my wrist.

But before we leave the room, the masked man regains control and ends up on top of Declan with the knife raised over his head. I break free of Luca's grip and lunge at the man, knocking him off of Declan and burying my blade into his right shoulder.

I didn't think about it; I didn't aim, and that was a mistake. It's enough for him to release the knife, but not much more effective than that. He easily shakes me off of him, and when Declan comes up with the masked man's knife, he already has me in aheadlock. The man pulls me to my feet, takes my own knife from his shoulder, and holds it to my throat.

"Luca, stop!" Declan yells before he can lunge, unarmed, at the man. He holds Luca back with a hand on his chest. "Easy..." he cautions the man who has me in a chokehold. "Don't do anything rash. Let's figure something out…"

"It's okay," I tell them both, choking on a sob. "It's okay. I love you."

"Shut up," the man says, digging the knife into my flesh. "This isn't a prisoner exchange. You're all going to die. She's just going to go first."

I squeeze my eyes closed. I hear nothing but muffled voices over the sound of my own blood pumping in my ears.

It's painless—that's what I'm thinking when warm blood sprays over my neck and the side of my face.

It's painless. What a relief.

The arm around my neck falls away, and I no longer feel the weight of the body against my back. I fall to my knees, and when I open my eyes, I'm still in the hotel room. I grab at my throat, and my hands come away bloody, but I'm still breathing; I still hear voices in the room around me. I try to wade through the sound of my pounding heart and zero in on them, and it just barely works.

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