“I know. I’m so sorry. I needed your help.”

“All of this—everything I did was for you. For him. The drugs. Violeta. Beatrice.”

“Beatrice?”

“She was going to the cops. We had to stop her.”

“We?”

Gabe’s eyes darted to Ben’s. A look crossed between them, and Ben shook his head, a short, sharp jerk.

“Who?” I insisted.

I took another step closer to Gabe.

“You fucking—fucking—” He seemed lost for words, ripped apart by hurt and grief and then, when he met my eyes, by an incandescent fury that hollowed him out and then filled him up.

“This is your fault!” Gabe lifted the gun just as I leaped for him.

We tumbled to the ground in a heap of arms and legs. But Gabe was stronger than me. He grabbed a fistful of my hair and slammed my face into the wooden floor. Fireworks sparked behind my eyes. A dizzying pain crashed into me as the cartilage in my nose made a wet crunch. The taste of copper gushed into my mouth, and I went limp.

“Let her go!” Nate’s voice came to me from somewhere far away. His gun was trained on Gabe.

Gabe snaked an arm around my throat and yanked me to my feet, using my body as a shield. The pressure from the crook of his arm squeezed tighter and tighter, the gun pointed at Nate. My breath was trapped in my chest, leaden and blazing. Pressure built inside me, burning, swelling in my rib cage.

I flailed weakly against him. I caught sight of the stack of wooden two-by-fours leaning against the wall. I twisted, trying to grab one, but missed. I gasped for air, clawing at Gabe’s arm.

I didn’t mind dying if Josh lived. If he could grow up and go to his senior prom and go to college and meet a girl, get married, have a child of his own, and know the depths a parent would go to for their child.

So I did the opposite of what every instinct screamed at me to do—I stopped fighting. My body abruptly became a deadweight in Gabe’s arm. He stumbled forward, releasing the pressure on my neck ever so slightly.

I gasped, inhaling cool, soothing breaths of air. Then I dug my heels into the ground and shoved myself back, ramming into Gabe as hard as I could. We flew backward, slamming into the wall.

He grunted, the impact knocking the breath from him, and his arm relaxed. I twisted out of his grasp and lunged away from him.

Gabe raised the gun one last time. He stood straight-backed, his arm a perfect arrow. I reached for a two-by-four and turned, ready to hurl it at him, but the gun was trained on my chest. Gabe’s eyes on mine were expressionless.

“Emma!” Nate jumped toward me.