Page 50 of Beneath the Surface

She placed a tentative hand on his arm. “Gray.”

“Don’t,” he bit out, and then roughly rubbed his hand over his face. “Sorry. Not now,” he said much more softly, his shoulders hunching over as he stared straight ahead. “Please, sit down. Put on a life jacket. You too, Micah.”

When Ava returned, slumping down on the seat next to me, she sighed again. “Can you try? Please, Micah.”

Scooping up the life jackets from the bottom of the boat, I passed one to her, shaking my head. “If you can’t get through to him, I won’t be able to.”

“Please.”

When she leaned into me, placing a soft kiss to my cheek and then whispering “Please” in my ear, making me shiver, my resolve cracked.

“Okay. I’ll try.”

The boat started up before I had a chance to work out exactly what I was supposed to do to snap Grayson out of his mood, and I was glad of the reprieve.

We reached the center of the lake and Grayson cut the engine, his gaze trained on the moving shape in the distance that was Cruz on the Jet Ski. It was now or never. I came up next to him, bracing my arm on the side of the boat, so I didn’t stagger into his body with the way it was rocking over the waves.

“Gray,” I began.

“I keep feeling the bump and seeing the hand,” he whispered, and I shuddered.

“Gray,” I said again, and he finally looked at me, his gaze haunted. Gathering my courage, I moved even closer, turning into him so my chest pressed into his arm. “You’re not alone in this.”

His lashes lowered, and he quickly bit down on his lip, but not before I saw it tremble.Fuck.

“I am,” he said hopelessly, and nothing on earth could have stopped me from gripping his shoulders to make him face me, and then wrapping my arms around him.

I placed my mouth to his ear, speaking low and urgently. “You’re not. You’re not alone. I promise I’m here.We’rehere. We’re in this together.”

“It’s not the same,” he muttered, his body stiffening against me. “Fuck. I need?—”

Sudden panic that he was going to push me away had me reacting instantly and irrationally. I angled my head and pressed a kiss to the soft skin just below his ear. It was completely unplanned—and it had both of us freezing in place at the sametime. His head whipped back, his eyes wide, and I opened and closed my mouth a few times, lost for words.

“Grayson!”

The shout from our left was accompanied by the roar of the Jet Ski, and Cruz pulled up next to us, water churning angrily in his wake. “I saw something. It might be nothing, but it might be something. When I was cutting back across the lake, I noticed a path…one I’ve never seen before, leading down to a little beach. Something caught my eye, and I pulled over to check it out.” He paused, licking his lips, and oh fuck, was he actually worried? “From there, you have an unobstructed view of your boat. But not only that, on the beach, right in the center, there’s a pile of rocks.”

“Rocks…” Grayson said slowly.

Cruz nodded. “Like a cairn. A place to mark a burial site.”

30

CRUZ

Istopped expecting anything good to happen anymore, but after my beating, I didn’t think things could end up this fucking shitty.

At first, it seemed like everything would be good.

Sure, I got my ass handed to me because I’d gone lax, and between school, my new job, and whatever psycho stalker that was after me, I’d forgotten all about Big Dog. Unfortunately for me, Ricky had not forgotten about me.

I would need an out—and soon. In doing so, it would put me in harm’s way, and it would put those close to me in danger, too. Before this week, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it because I had no one close to me. Now, I wouldn’t say these three were close to me, but I would hate myself if they got caught in the crossfire of my war.

For fuck’s sake, Ava had made me lunch. No one had ever packed extra food intending to give it to me. It made me want to take back everything wrong I had ever thought about her. She wasn’t the stuck-up bitch I had initially imagined. Ava was closed off, but she wasn’t cold. She was kind and thoughtful, andif we weren’t in her father’s workshop, I would have tried to fuck her.

When both of our phones chimed simultaneously, I could see the dread on her face. When I opened mine, instead of being disgusted that we were being watched, my first reaction was to pop a fucking boner at the video of Micah and Ava getting hot and heavy.

God, they looked so hot.

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