1. Sage #2
We do the rounds, and then it’s just us, stepping out into the warm night. The party recedes behind us, music thinning into the surf. The bluff path is sketchy in the dark—crumbling grass, switchbacks of loose gravel—and Brock falls in just behind me without comment, letting me lead.
The path ends, and the boardwalk picks up, weathered wood under my borrowed shoes. The moon is nearly full. The ocean is a sheet of dark glass exhaling white lines that dissolve at the shore. The air smells like salt and seaweed.
“So,” he says, hands in his pockets. “What brought you out here?”
“I needed a change. Amy had a room. Timing worked out.”
“From?”
“Up north.”
“Mysterious.”
“Boring. Very boring reasons. Zero intrigue.”
“I don’t believe you for a second.”
I bounce a shoulder and tuck my dark hair, tangled from the breeze, behind my ear.
“You ever get used to it?” I nod at the horizon where water meets nothing.
I look into the vast, inky black where the ocean meets the night and know that if you waded in and kept going, you’d never come back. Sometimes that’s a comfort.
“The beach?”
“No. The quiet.”
Brock glances at me, his face silver in the moonlight. “You find the ocean quiet?” His tone’s not mocking—it almost sounds genuinely puzzled, like I just called a bullhorn a lullaby.
“Compared to the city, this place is a whisper,” I say.
“I’ve never thought of it that way.”
We walk. My hands have come loose at my sides. My pulse calming to something almost normal.
This is good. This is fine. I’m fine.
Then he stops.
“Want to see something cool?”
He’s already veering off the boardwalk, hopping the wooden slats and landing soft in the sand. He nods toward the dark hump of the concrete jetty stretching out into the surf.
I stop on the boardwalk, torn between the warning in my gut and the pull to act normal.
“What’s over there?”
“There’s this plankton around here that’s bioluminescent. Disturb the water and it lights up—like stars in the ocean.” His excitement is infectious, boyish. “I found it under the jetty my first week back. It’s freaking cool.”
I look at the jetty.
It’s dark under there. Not romantic dark. Dark dark. The kind where shapes stop making sense.
“Come on,” he calls, already heading toward it. “I promise it’s safe. I wouldn’t bring you anywhere that wasn’t.”
A part of me wants to see it. I’ve seen the videos—that glittering, impossible blue. But another part of me is screaming to head home.
“Trust me,” he says, and his voice is warm with promise. “It’s really cool.”
I hover at the edge of the boardwalk, trying to quiet the alarm crawling up my spine.
Amy trusts him. Tyler vouched for him. He hasn’t pushed once tonight—not the drink, not the dance, not anything.
Don’t punish him for the reflex.
“Sage?” His voice echoes off concrete. “You coming?”
I kick off Amy’s jellies and carry them in one hand. The sand is cold under my feet.
“Coming.”
He’s already trotting ahead, mischief leaking through. “Hurry—sometimes it only shows for a couple of seconds.”
For half a wild second, some old reflex catches in my throat: don’t follow, don’t trust, don’t go where the light can’t reach.
I follow him toward the jetty.
The sand under the concrete is wet and cold. The overhang shaves the moonlight to a thin silver line at the edge of the surf. Brock is a silhouette ahead of me—just a shape. I duck under the jetty after him, my eyes adjusting in fits and starts.
“I don’t see anything.”
“Give it a second. Sometimes you have to wait.”
I wait.
A wave rolls in. Nothing. Another. Nothing.
“Brock, maybe we should—”
There’s a glimmer in the water, and I blink, gasping when a small wave turns blue.
“Oh my god.”
“Told you.”
I spin, searching for Brock in the dark. “Did you see—”
His hand is in my hair before I finish the sentence, fingers gripping tight, yanking my head back so hard tears spring to my eyes. “Get on your knees, pet.”
For half a beat I think I’ve misheard him. The word lands in my chest like a stone dropped down a well. Knees? Pet?
“What? No! Brock, what are you—”
“I said get on your fucking knees, bitch.” He shoves my shoulder, and I stumble, tripping on the wet sand.
“Get on your knees.” His voice is strangely friendly. That’s the worst part.
This isn’t happening.
“No. I don’t think—”
“Don’t make a scene, Sage. No one can hear you out here.”
His hand closes around my wrist.
The world tilts. One second I’m in moonlight and the next I’m being yanked forward, my shoulder wrenching, my feet skidding on wet sand.
I drop the shoes and my bag, and I claw for his face, his eyes, anything.
He’s bigger than me. Stronger than I thought he could possibly be.
He slams my back into the concrete pillar and my teeth clack so hard I taste copper.
“Brock. Stop!”
He clamps his palm over my mouth, fingers prying at my jaw.
“I said get on your fucking knees.”
I try to bite his hand. He grins like he was waiting for it. He shoves and I stumble, tripping and landing on the wet sand. He follows me down, his grip never loosening as he pushes me belly down.
This isn’t happening. This isn’t—
“No!”
He twists my head until he can reach my mouth and kisses me. Open-mouthed, wet, teeth scraping. I scream, or try to, but it’s nothing—he swallows the sound, pushes closer, hands everywhere, shoving up my skirt, using his body to keep me pinned.
“You like this, don’t you?” he hisses, his hot breath searing my cheek.
“Get off me!” I buck wildly, clawing at the sand, trying to get him off.
I turn my face away and he catches it in one hand, squeezing so hard it feels like my jaw will snap. “No one’s coming, Sage. You’re mine now.”
He fists my hair tighter, forcing my head back until my throat is exposed and I’m looking up at the underside of the jetty.
“Let me go! Please. I won’t tell anyone. Just let me go!”
“Shut the fuck up, Sage. You wanted this. Don’t fucking pretend you didn’t. You’ve been eye-fucking me all night. Practically begging.” He presses his erection against my ass, and I want to puke.
“I wasn’t. Please—”
“I said shut up.” He jerks my hair and pain blooms across my scalp, bright and electric. “You scream, and I’ll break your fucking jaw. Nod if you understand.”
I hear him. I hear the surf and his belt buckle and my pulse screaming in my ears.
Not again. Not again. Not again.
My body locks up—every muscle, every nerve ending going rigid.
My fingers curl into the sand. Wet grains pack under my nails. I try to move, try to kick, try to make my hands remember what hands are for, but nothing answers. I am breath and pulse and terror, pinned inside skin that won’t obey.
I focus on the sand because if I stay here, in this moment, in this sand, then maybe—
“Get on your knees and open your fucking mouth, you slut.”
Tears spill down my cheeks. Hot and silent and useless. He yanks my head and my body follows, the blunt head of his cock shoving at my lips, and then—
Nothing.
Brock jerks upward, his body lifting clean off the sand like gravity has decided to fuck off for the night. His hand rips free from my hair. He lets out a choked grunt, legs kicking wildly, belt undone, pants sagging around his thighs, dick still hard.
I scramble back on all fours, gasping, sand caking my palms and knees. He’s dangling there, mid-air, twisting like a hooked fish, making little wet animal noises.
Then I see the rope.
Thick. White. Looped around his throat. Hauling him up toward the crossbeam of the jetty.
Then I see what’s holding the rope.
Five figures emerge from the blackness one after another, like they were always there, waiting.
Their faces are hidden behind masks. Not Halloween plastic.
Smooth, matte skulls, eyeholes rimmed in nothing, like something out of a sleep paralysis.
One of them has the rope. Two more close in around Brock, methodical, watching him kick.
Another moves toward me but stops a few paces away, planting himself between me and the body twisting above us. Blocking the line of sight.
I open my mouth to scream and nothing comes out. My voice is sand and seawater, scraped to thread.
Brock’s struggles slow. Weaken. But his feet keep kicking.
The silence that follows is the loudest thing I have ever heard.
These aren’t normal men. They move like a pack, synchronized and soundless. Like they’ve done this before. Like they were waiting under here.
The nearest one—the one between me and Brock—is a mountain. Broad in the shoulders, muscles straining against a tight black shirt. He shifts his stance and moonlight catches something at the top of his combat boot. The handle of a knife. Matte black, folded, tucked into a leather band.
My body moves before my brain catches up.
I lunge.