And though Javier’s face was shadowed from the sun, I saw something in his eyes that I had never seen before. Absolute disbelief. Absolute shock. Absolute … fear.
And I felt relief that he was still standing there, alive. I did have it in me to kill him, that dark part of me that wanted him dead. But now I had nothing to regret.
I whimpered and rolled over, grasping my leg as another wave of pain rolled through while he stood there above me, in the middle of a firefight, absolutely dumbfounded by what had just happened.
Suddenly the ground around us erupted in another spray of bullets. I screamed and quickly rolled over, trying to get out of the way.
And Javier turned and ran back toward the pool house, toward safety, leaving me there on the grass, bleeding, while the bullets came closer.
Leaving me alone.
Leaving me to die.
I guess I had pulled the trigger first. The honeymoon really was over.
I rolled over onto my stomach, avoiding getting too close to Dom who lay dead beside me, and watched as he ran, wondering if there was a point in me crawling after him. I wondered how long I had before I died. I wondered if I’d ever see Camden again. I wondered if my life made a difference to anyone out there.
I just wanted another chance at it.
Another chance to be me.
Scars and all.
And while I was lying on the grass, my leg bleeding out, soaking my jeans, I heard a few more pops of bullets go out.
Javier was running into the pool house when he was struck in the back.
I screamed bloody murder.
He fell down flat, legs sticking out of the door, motionless.
Javier.
Shot.
Dead.
No.
No.
Not yet.
His legs twitched and he managed to pull himself into the pool house until I couldn’t see him anymore.
“Ellie Watt!” a cold voice bellowed from across the lawn. I could barely tear my eyes away from where Javier had disappeared, fighting back a range of emotions I couldn’t even pin down but I managed to turn my head. The voice had reached into me, holding me tight with an icy fist.
Travis was standing on the lawn where it met the edge of his patio, gun in hand.
In front of him was my mother and Camden on their knees with their hands behind their heads.
No.
Not this.
Not now.
My heart couldn’t take any more of this. Every part of me was shattered from leg to soul.
“What do you want from me?!” I screamed at him. I grabbed my gun out of my boot and staggered to my feet, crying softly from the pain as I touched my right leg to the ground.
“Come closer and we’ll talk,” Travis yelled back. “You might want to keep your gun down, though. You know you can’t save both of them.”
I sobbed in pain and anger and started limping toward him, practically dragging my bloodied leg behind me, gun at my side. Each step I took riddled with more pain, more sorrow, more hate toward this man who had taken everything away from me.
I wouldn’t let him take Camden.
I wondered if he knew that would be my decision. He figured I came all this way for my mother when that wasn’t the case at all. He was betting on me picking her, saving her.
I remembered when Derek had asked me what I would do if I had to save my mother, how I said I’d have to let the situation dictate my choice.
I knew my choice back then and I knew it now.
I stopped a few yards away and looked at Camden, at his beautiful soul in those blue eyes. We stared at each other locked, in our gaze, locked in love. He wouldn’t want me to make this choice either. I could only hope he wouldn’t make it for me.
“You don’t look as lovely as you did when you were Eleanor Willis,” Travis said, smiling like the devil, his gun in the middle of the two of them but leaning more toward my mother.
“You don’t look so hot either,” I retorted. His normally neat dark grey hair was messed up with pieces of plaster in it, his slick Italian suit covered in blood and tears, his terrible eyes red. “Your age is showing.”
He kept smiling and nodded at me. “Sorry about your leg. Hope it doesn’t leave a scar.”
I swallowed hard, overtaken by the anger and the pain and the determination to walk out of there with the love of my life. I chose love over everything.
Love over gold.
I raised my gun straight up in the air and pointed it at him. “I hoped this doesn’t either.”
“You kill me, Ellie,” he said quickly, a rare tremor coming through, “your mother dies.” He trained the gun to the back of her head.
“You wouldn’t kill her,” I said and though I wished it weren’t true, I had to wish it was true. “You love her, don’t you?”
His eyes narrowed. “She loved me enough to make up for it. You can’t love in this business, Ellie. Sooner or later everyone dies.”
Javier had said that to me. Now I didn’t even know if he was alive or not.