Nightfall (Devil's Night 4)

“Fuck her.”

“I said enough.”

I shot him a glare, both of us climbing out to the point and up onto the rock, peering out at the gray sea, the lighthouse on Deadlow Island the only thing shining in the darkening horizon.

It was probably for the best that Adventure Cove was closing this fall. Things needed to die.

I looked down, inching to the edge and watching the water crash into the rocks.

“There’s someone for you too, you know?” I teased him, forcing a smile.

“I never said there wasn’t.” He blew smoke out of his mouth, flicking his cigarette off the cliff. “There’s someone for me. I’ll have her and my kids someday, but I’m not letting her fuck me up—or someone mess Michael and Kai up—the way Emory Scott messed up your head.”

I sighed, thinking back on my last year in high school and all the times she walked past me as if I’d never been inside of her.

Pride is a motherfucker. I couldn’t chase her anymore and still like myself, so I toughened up and gave as good as I got, ignoring her too, and what do you know?

I still didn’t like myself.

“I would’ve been good to her,” I said, kicking a pebble over the edge. “I was good to her.”

“And she didn’t trust you,” he added. “She’s a snotty, stuck-up little cunt who thought she was better.”

I looked away, his words making my blood boil a little. He was trying

to be a friend. Trying to be on my side.

But I wish he’d shut up. Emmy wasn’t like that.

I could be angry with her but no one else.

In my heart, she was still my girl.

“And you’re going to spend the rest of your life showing her that she was wrong,” he told me. “That she missed out on the best.”

Yeah. I’d try.

I inhaled a long breath and tipped my head left and right, cracking my neck.

He was right. It was long past time Will Grayson came back to life. With or without her.

“Let’s do Devil’s Night tonight,” I told him. “I’m in the mood for the good ol’ days.”

He grinned, ready as always.

• • •

I wasn’t sure when I’d figured it out. Damon would never tell me what had happened that night I saw them in the locker room—just that he’d run into Emory and she’d helped him.

Over time, I continued to watch her, the reality of her routine giving me all the information I needed, but was too blind to face sooner. The bruises, scrapes, and cuts couldn’t have come from anywhere but her home. She didn’t have friends. She didn’t go anywhere other than school, the movies, or her little projects around town.

Unless she was in some underground fight club happening right under my nose, that piece of shit was brutalizing her.

I knew why she hadn’t told me. I knew why she thought she couldn’t tell me.

Martin Scott was only one of the things in our way, but it was the one thing I could beat the shit out of.

“Do we really want to do this?” Kai asked, hesitation thick in his tone. “A cop is a crime—like a real crime, Will. We all understand this, right?”