“We’re not,” Arabella snapped.

“She told us in the locker room weeks ago. Spilled it all out,” Alice added.

He just stared at me, unmoving, like a sculpture—an angry god, a heartless prince. People were running around everywhere. Yelling. Screaming. Pulling their friends by their sleeves. I didn’t know for sure, but guessed there were drugs at the party. Poppy would never touch them, but that didn’t mean people hadn’t brought them. It was beyond her control.

I scanned the pool area. Joints, lines of crushed pills and powders, bongs, pills in bags, and more lay around everywhere. Anyone caught inside could very well kiss their college dreams goodbye.

“Get down here right now,” Vaughn barked at me. He sounded impatient, but not impersonal. I don’t think he realized that.

I shook my head. “I can’t. I’m locked upstairs. The key dropped into the pool,” I explained, just as the lights went out.

Poppy probably wanted to do some damage control on her way out, make it look like there hadn’t been a party.

Arabella sashayed toward a fire lamp standing on the wooden table by the loungers, making a show of running her finger around its edges, taking her time.

“Since you two are all secretive, and since this is getting on my nerves, I guess there’s only one way to find out if Vaughn really does like you, Drusilla. Oh, you thought changing your hair color was going to help cover your fugly face?” She looked up, scanning my recently restored hair. “So dead wrong.”

With a flick of her wrist, she knocked the lamp to the ground. The glass shattered, and the fire inside licked the table, spreading fast.

The alcohol.

Everything was soaked with alcohol. Arabella jogged toward Alice, tugging at her bikini string.

“Come on. Let fucked-up Romeo save his creepy Juliet. Oh, and Vaughn…” She looked back, smiling. “Thanks for all the help getting what I wanted. No hard feelings, right?” She winked.

I watched as the girls ran for safety as the fire spread across my backyard. The sound of the music died, replaced by wheels screeching to a stop as the police arrived. I closed my eyes and shook my head.

It was done. I knew it. There was no way for me to get out of here. Papa was still at work, off at the gallery. Everyone else had left.

“Jump,” Vaughn snarled.

I shook my head. I no longer cared about being caught inside a house full of drugs. I cared about surviving. Vaughn glanced at the pool, looked up again, and frowned. He was calculating something. Then it occurred to me.

He believed them.

He thought I’d told them his secret.

He wasn’t going to help me.

I swallowed hard.

Don’t beg.

Fear creeped in on me, coating every inch of my body with cold sweat, but I still couldn’t find it in me to plead with him to save me.

And he wasn’t going to. He was going to let me burn for what he thought I’d done to him.

I took a step from the window, turned around, and tried kicking the door open.

I clawed at the wood, feeling my nails chipping, and knew I had absolutely no shot at getting out of this room on my own. How had I been so stupid? Why did I fling my arm out, trying to talk to Vaughn, a guy who’d made it clear he wanted to hurt me? What the hell was wrong with me?

I grabbed the doorknob and pulled at it, propping one leg against the wall and using all of my strength. I was too shocked and full of adrenaline to cry. Then I heard something behind me. When I turned around, I saw the window was smashed, completely broken, and Vaughn was crawling inside. He’d climbed onto the roof, probably after calculating that it’d take him too much time to find the key underwater in the dark. Tiny pieces of glass clung to his shirt and flesh like fangirls. His left bicep had a tiny, open wound. I’d never met a god who bled so often.

Wordlessly, he turned around and started kicking out the remainder of the window glass so we wouldn’t get cut on our way down. The fire was gaining speed and body. I saw the tips of orange flames dancing at my eye level on the second floor.

More sirens—this time firefighters—rang in the air, deafening me. The sound of heavy wood splitting suggested the front door had been kicked in. The cops were downstairs.

“Won’t they see us?” I asked.

He didn’t turn around to look at me. Just nudged the last piece of glass aside to make the window a perfectly glassless hole.

“I’m going down first, and then you’ll jump into my arms.”

“You can’t catch me,” I told his back.

Vaughn was bigger than me, but he wasn’t the Hulk. Jumping into the pool made more sense, although I’d have to take a leap and hope not to hit the deck. Bloody hell, hoping to be saved at the last minute by a flying unicorn was more likely.

He turned around to me, seething. “You do it my way, or you burn to death. I really don’t care. This is a one-minute offer. I’m not fucking up my life to save yours, Good Girl.”

Vaughn slipped out the window without glancing back at me. I realized it was still more than I could have hoped for. Everybody else had run away. Poppy probably forgot I was even in the house.

I ran to the window and watched Vaughn climbing down the roof, then taking a leap to the patio. He walked backward, watching me with his calm, dead eyes, and waited for me to jump. I held the window frame, shaking all over. There was not even one bone in my body that wanted to do this. I tried to tell myself he was going to catch me, that he wasn’t just saying that to let me die. He wouldn’t go through the effort of climbing up just to watch me plunge to my death.

“I didn’t tell them your secret.” My fingers dug into the wood of the window frame, the splinters cutting through my skin like little blades. The police officers were raiding the second floor, I could tell. I could hear them. They were going to find the attic, and then me. “Tell me you believe me, and I’ll jump.”

“What difference does it make?” He bared his fangs, staring at me with forced boredom.

The fire spread, licking at the grass and approaching us with surprising speed, though he didn’t seem to mind at all. We were already dangerously close to getting caught.

“Because it’s the truth,” I screamed.

Our eyes met in the dark and held for a moment.

“I don’t believe you, but I’ll still catch you,” he said. “I will always catch you, the fucking dumbass that I am.”

“What do you mean?”

“You soften me.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want to fucking kill you! You’re too fun to fuck with. Now Get. The. Hell. Down.”

I jumped with my eyes shut, not expecting it to work, but Vaughn defied gravity and somehow caught me honeymoon-style, while still managing not to fall back. It was like my bum knew exactly how to land in his palm, my back braced against his other hand. In one smooth, continuous movement, he ran to the back of my house, ignoring the fire at his feet, keeping me closely pressed to his chest.

He shoved me behind the bushes, then joined me, taking shelter and hiding. The cold, moist earth was a welcome relief from the dancing flames, and I shuddered with pleasure as I took a clean breath—just in time for the firefighters to start yelling among themselves and turning on their hoses.

We watched them from behind the grand bushes.