Drown in You, page 1
Copyright © 2024 by Harmony West
Cover Design © 2024 by Beholden Book Covers
Mask art © 2024 by Zoe Maxwell
Published by Westword Press
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
ISBN (paperback): 979-8-9881181-6-9
Also by Harmony West
Diamond Devils Series
If You Dare
Drown in You
Devil You Know
Saint and Sinner Duet
Her Saint
His Sinner
Standalones
Always with You
Captivate Me
For the readers who finished If You Dare in a sitting and asked for more masked hockey men, this one is for you
Contents
1. Sienna
2. Luke
3. Sienna
4. Luke
5. Sienna
6. Luke
7. Sienna
8. Luke
9. Sienna
10. Luke
11. Sienna
12. Luke
13. Sienna
14. Luke
15. Sienna
16. Luke
17. Sienna
18. Luke
19. Sienna
20. Sienna
21. Luke
22. Sienna
23. Luke
24. Sienna
25. Luke
26. Sienna
27. Sienna
28. Luke
29. Sienna
30. Luke
31. Sienna
32. Luke
33. Sienna
34. Luke
35. Sienna
Epilogue
Read More From Harmony West
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Chapter 1
Sienna
Death is the three men lurking in the shadows.
They’ve trailed me around town before, but this is the first time they’ve found me alone.
I text Juliet.
Sienna
They’re following me.
Stephen, Kade, and of course, Marcus.
The injury to his back may have abruptly ended his football career, but it doesn’t stop him from chasing me.
My phone buzzes.
Juliet
Where are you??
Sienna
Nearly home. Passing the park soon.
My apartment is in sight. Mom is probably still waiting up for me despite her early shift.
I should know better than to be out past dark. Especially alone. Especially in this town. There are no safe corners for me here. Not anymore.
Not after what I did.
They’re getting closer, the cruel laughter and taunts drawing nearer. But I can’t make a run for it. They’re football players at the local university. Other than Marcus, they’re all in the best shape of their lives.
If I run, they’ll give chase. And I don’t want to find out what they’ll do to me when they catch me.
Another text from Juliet.
Juliet
I’m coming.
Sienna
Don’t
But I don’t get a chance to hit Send before a meaty hand wrenches the phone from my grasp and another slips over my mouth.
My heart stops.
Beside me, Stephen leers, holding up my phone with a sickening grin, his rich-boy veneers on full display. Kade yanks me back against his hard, solid body, jolting my heart to life again.
I scream against his hand, the heat of dread burning my cheeks and the back of my neck.
No one will hear what they do to me. No one will care.
The putrid odor of sweat and alcohol seeping from their pores is one I won’t ever forget.
From the shadows, Marcus ambles in front of me. His hazel eyes cold and vacant, jaw square and hard. Solid muscles still bulge beneath his clothes despite the months he’s been trading the gym for physical therapy. The poster boy for fraternities across the nation.
Before it happened, we barely knew each other. Students at the same university whose paths never crossed until Juliet introduced us. I meant little to him then, and I mean nothing to him now.
Panic makes my frantically pounding heart climb to my throat. After a targeted campaign to turn me into the town pariah and torment me from a distance since that night, they’re finally doing more than scaring me.
Tonight, they’ll make me pay for what I did.
“Where you going, Sienna?” Marcus’s voice grows fangs and drags down my spine.
“Home.” The word is muffled by Kade’s hand still covering my mouth.
They all laugh. They’re not letting me go home.
Maybe Juliet will call the cops. Maybe she’ll call Mom, who’s much closer and the only other person in this town on my side. No one other than my mother and my best friend will care what Marcus, Stephen, and Kade are about to do to me.
When everyone else hears the news, they’ll think I deserved it.
Marcus nods at his henchmen. “Take her to the park.”
Stephen tucks my phone into his pocket and latches onto my arm, his grip unyielding and tight enough to bring burning tears to my eyes. Marcus’s lackeys drag me toward the trees. I wriggle and kick and scream, heart thumping harder with every failed escape attempt and every inch closer to my demise.
I fucked up. Maybe I deserve what’s coming to me, but I can’t go down without a fight.
Once we get close to a tree past the nearest park bench, Kade hurls me forward, my back slamming against the bark and knocking the wind out of me.
I don’t get a chance to catch my breath before Marcus lands the first blow to my stomach.
My head swims with the pain, and I gasp out the little remaining air in my lungs.
Stephen aims a kick at my leg and my shin splinters. Tears spring to my eyes.
Kade’s cruel laugh precedes his fist striking against my skull.
My vision darkens, the stabbing pain in my temple drowning out the agony radiating through the rest of my body.
Mom. Juliet. Ten. What will happen to them if I’m gone? Will Juliet think to tell Ten what happened to me? I’ll die before he and I ever get a chance to meet. Before I ever get to see the face beneath the mask.
And Mom . . . Mom will be lost without me. I’m all she has left.
“Stop!” I cry out, bending at the waist and covering my head with my arms. The protection they offer is flimsy. I might as well not try to shield myself at all for the little good they’ll do against my assailants’ fists.
Marcus shoves me to the ground, straddling me and pinning me against the cold, unyielding earth. His body is a boulder on top of me. Anything he wants to do to me, he can. I am powerless to stop him.
“Don’t, Marcus!” Tears from the horrifying mix of pain and terror spill down my face.
He leans closer, beer breath flooding my nose as he growls in my ear, “You think you can accuse me of some sick shit I didn’t do? You think you can get away with ruining my life?” He pulls back slightly so I get a clear view of the malicious smile distorting his face. “If you’re going to accuse me, I might as well be guilty.”
Raw terror threatens to make my heart burst. “No, Marcus! Please, don’t. Please don’t do this. Everyone knows it wasn’t true—”
“Maybe you should’ve realized that before you nearly fucking killed me.” With one hand, he pins my shoulder down while the other finds the button on my jeans.
I wriggle desperately beneath him, heart pounding impossibly hard while his teammates egg him on. “Should we take turns?” Kade runs a hand through his greasy hair, his snaggle-toothed grin enough to turn my stomach. “Or should we all fuck her at once?”
Marcus gets my jeans unbuttoned and my zipper down.
No, no, no. This can’t be happening—
“Hey!” A husky, feminine voice cuts through the silent darkness surrounding us. “I’m calling the cops!”
“Fuck,” Stephen hisses.
But Marcus doesn’t budge from his position on top of me. “Stay out of this, Juliet.”
She glowers at him. Half his size but completely unafraid. Nothing scares Juliet. “Get the fuck off her, Marcus. Now.”
“How the fuck are you still taking her side?” His lip curls into a snarl. “You were there that night. You know exactly what happened.”
Juliet steps closer, emerging from the darkness beyond Stephen and Kade. While most adults still confuse me for a high school student, no one expects Juliet to be any younger than twenty-five. If not for the youthful tautness of her skin, most would note her regal posture and the lift to her chin and expect her to be the CEO of a multimillion-dollar company, not a college student. A goth queen in a short black skirt, inky thigh-high socks, and an unzipped jacket. In her hurry to get to me, she didn’t have time to slip on her usual array of white gold jewelry.
People respect her. Fear her, even. She’s the only reason I’m not already dead.
“Sienna was just trying to be a good friend. It was a mistake.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. A mistake. A mistake I
“What were you going to do?” Juliet demands. “Rape her?”
“Of course not,” Marcus spits. “I wanted to scare the shit out of her.”
He finally slides off me and fresh tears spill down my cheeks. This time in relief.
The flashlight from Juliet’s phone lands on my face. “It looks like you did a lot more than that.”
Pain from the strike against my temple radiates down to my eye now. When my fingertips graze delicately over the skin, it’s already swollen.
“She deserved it,” Kade hisses. “She ruined our boy’s life.”
“Really?” Juliet’s glare burns a hole in Kade’s skull. “Because it seems like he’s trying to ruin it himself by getting thrown in prison.”
Stephen laughs, tossing my phone onto the ground beside me. But every part of me aches too much to reach for it. “Like the cops will ever lock him up for something he does to her.”
“Want to find out?” Juliet’s threat almost convinces me she believes the cops would actually give a shit. That anyone in this town would choose me over the golden boys.
Maybe if Marcus wasn’t here, Stephen and Kade wouldn’t let her stop them. But Marcus won’t let anything happen to Juliet. She didn’t cause this mess.
I did.
Not to mention, it’s Juliet’s parents paying for Marcus’s medical bills and physical therapy.
“Juliet—” he starts to protest.
“Get out of here, Marcus.”
His jaw clenches, but he hobbles past her. He’ll never move as fast as he used to. Never again be the star quarterback. Never play in the NFL.
Because of me.
I ruined his life. I stole his future.
When the football players finally retreat into the darkness, I spit up blood. Every part of me aches, stomach and legs and head crying out in agony. Now that the terror is subsiding, the pain grows unbearable.
This won’t be the last time. Next time will be worse. Next time, I might not survive what they do to me.
Juliet crouches, her dark boots inches from my nose. Her long, black hair streaked with shocks of red is tamed into a side braid, freshly wet from the shower. Her blue eyes roam over me, examining my injuries while her hand rubs soothing strokes over my shoulder.
She bites her lip. For perhaps the first time in her life, Juliet is scared. “You can’t stay here, Sienna.”
“I know,” I whisper.
I knew the second they got their hands on me. The second Stephen snatched my phone from my grasp. Whatever they had in store for me, they couldn’t let me call for help.
They’re not going to stop. They’ll never stop until they decide I’ve paid for what I’ve done. That I’ve paid my debt.
And I have an impossibly huge debt to pay.
Juliet reaches for my fingers and squeezes. “If they get their hands on you again, they’ll kill you.”
Chapter 2
Luke
My dream girl is dead.
She’s in a casket, skin almost translucent, hands folded together on her stomach. Her blonde hair has been drained of color, and she’s in an ankle-length white dress. She wouldn’t be caught dead wearing that if she was alive.
I rip off my jersey, pushing through the crowd to get to her as they lower her into her awaiting grave, casket still open.
“Stop!” I shout. “I need to put this on her!”
She should be buried in my jersey. The name Valentine stitched across her back until we’re both nothing but dust.
But they don’t stop. They don’t hear me, even as I scream my throat raw, the desperation clenching my heart as her coffin hits the bottom of the grave and they pour the dirt over her body.
I scream for them to close the lid. But no sound comes out.
My hands are see-through. I’m a ghost too.
I lurch awake, a cold sweat coating the back of my neck, my chest, my pits. Hop out of bed to toss water on my face and brace against the sink, bags beneath my eyes to mark all the sleepless nights that have come before this one.
I sneak back down the hallway to my room, careful not to alert Bud, who will wake the whole house. Coming home on break is always an adjustment. I miss sharing a house with the Devils who would all shrug it off if they saw me wandering around like a zombie at three in the morning.
Not getting away with that shit around my mother. Since I’ve been home, she’s plied me with chicken soup, grilled ham and cheese, saltine crackers, peanut butter sandwiches. Every comfort food she can think of.
I grab my phone off my nightstand to fire off a text to the one person I know is lying awake with me. A smile pulls at my lips when I spot the message already waiting.
Sienna
I want one of those old cameras where you can’t even see the photo you just took. You use it once and those are all the photos you get.
Sienna and I met on social media when we were angsty fifteen-year-olds. Our parents had just started dating, and when I found out Mike had an estranged daughter he hadn’t seen since she was nine, I snapped a photo in a mask, made a new account under the nickname Ten for my jersey number freshman year, and reached out to her.
I knew what it was like to lose a parent. Even if I’d never met her, I knew her pain. But I couldn’t reach out to her as Luke, son of her dad’s new girlfriend. She wouldn’t open up to me if she knew who I really was.
Not sure what I expected to come of it. Nothing, really. Figured she’d probably ignore me when I messaged her. But she didn’t.
Hi. I like your mask.
Right away, she was the sweetest girl I’d ever met. The kind of girl who didn’t deserve a shitty dad but definitely deserved a good friend.
That’s what we’ve been for each other since, even after our parents' brief relationship ended. She might not know my real name or face, she might believe the lie I fed her about living in California, she might not suspect the California number I acquired to text her is from an app, but everything else is real.
Ten
You know they actually put a camera on that phone in your hand. You can take as many pictures as you want.
As expected, her response comes seconds later.
Sienna
Ass.
Ten
Why do you want a disposable camera?
Sienna
Because it’s not about perfection or curating an aesthetic social media feed. It’s about capturing the moment, with all its beautiful imperfections.
Ten
You sure you want to be a nurse? Pretty sure poetry is your calling.
Sienna
I can have hobbies.
Ten
I thought your only hobby was reading smut.
Sienna
That’s just the main one.
Ten
How dirty is your book tonight?
Sienna
Absolutely filthy.
I grin. Sienna somehow manages to bring a smile to my face whenever I forget how to use the muscles that curl my lips up.
My phone chimes with another message.
Sienna
Why are you awake?
No one knows about the nightmares that have been plaguing me since Chloe died, not even Sienna—the memories twisted by my sleeping brain into funerals that are even more disturbing than the real one was.
Everyone around me knows what happened to Chloe, but nobody knows what happened to me after Chloe died. My brain isn’t wired right anymore. Not since I saw her body in that casket, looking like she wasn’t even dead. A sleeping beauty who merely needed a kiss to awaken.
