Page 121 of Twisted Little Game

He can’t.

He can’t fucking be here⁠—

Tate emerges from the forest, and my heart drops.

I run toward him instantly, feeling like I’ve just fallen into a living nightmare.

Tate is all I see.

I lunge at him, all of the other sound falling away around me, and I use my body to block him from all of them.

I don’t know if they’ve seen him yet, over in this tree-lined edge of the lawn. I shove his body to the ground immediately, pinning him there as he hits the grass.

My words spill out in a hoarse, desperate plea. “You have to get out of here. You have to leave. Run, Tate, and don’t fucking come back.”

His beautiful eyes.

His body, so vulnerable, so close to all of this senseless violence.

He shoves at my body, trying to get me off of him, but it’ll never work.

I don’t budge an inch.

“I couldn’t stay there,” he says, “knowing you were going to get hurt. How could I leave you like this? I’m not afraid, Roman.”

Another gunshot goes off behind me and I push down harder on Tate’s body.

He reaches low into his pocket beneath me and he pulls out the knife I lent him earlier, and he grips it firmly in his fist.

“Be afraid,” I roar at him.

“I was sitting in that house and all I thought of was you.”

Two more gunshots sound out from closer toward the house. “I need to go. Don’t fucking move from this place.”

I lace my fingers into his hair and give it a squeeze, leaning over to crush a kiss to his lips before I run back over toward the house.

Tackle is laid flat on the ground already.

Maybe dead, but I can’t tell.

Yegor is hobbling on one leg, dragging the other behind him, and is leaning around the front corner of his house, pointing his gun in the direction of Natalia.

Maks has Benny subdued, but Natalia is beside them, waiting for something.

Waiting for…

Crack.

Another gunshot, louder this time, comes from the edge of the yard.

I turn and see Sevan. He fired a round but didn’t seem to be aiming to hurt anyone, just wanting to make a distraction.

And it works.

I get a moment to move forward, running in the gravel toward Natalia. I kick the gun from her hand, then go for the rope in my pocket, immediately yanking her thin wrists back as she screams at me to let her go. I restrain her arms behind her onto one of the wooden pillars in the front of the house.

“Too slow, Romik,” she utters. “You think you’re perfect, but you’re too fucking slow.”