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The burning in my chest intensifies. My vision is starting to spot at the edges.

Lukas. Please…

With the last of my energy, I claw toward the light.

The dress fights me every inch of the way. It’s wound around my legs like it wants to drag me down to whatever lies at the bottom of this spring. More bodies, perhaps.

Something Lukas once said to me rises in my head:You’re exhausted from being in charge of your own survival.

When he said it, I felt like he’d slapped me in the face. That’s how I know he was right: The truth always stings like a bitch. Maybe Iamdesperate for someone to swoop in and save me, to shoulder the weight I’ve been carrying since my parents died and Gideon fell apart and I became the only functioning adult in my own sad little universe.

But I’m not about to provehimright.

Not here.

Not like this.

I kick hard, scissoring my legs through the warm water, and arrow up to break through the surface with a gasp that tears my throat to ribbons.

Ah, air. Sweet, glorious, life-giving air. I’ve never appreciated it as much as I do right now.

I suck it down in greedy gulps, treading water while my heart pounds. My hair is stuck to my face, my mascara is running amok, and what remains of my dress is basically a wet rag glued to my body.

But I’m alive.Isavedmyself.

Lukas didn’t do a fucking thing.

He still doesn’t, as a matter of fact. He stands there, hands firmly ensconced in his pockets, watching me tread water.

“You think I killed her, don’t you?” he asks softly. “My wife.”

I laugh deliriously.We’re going to talk about this now, here, like this? Alright then. Fine. Have it your way, sir.

“The thought might’ve crossed my mind,” I admit.

Lukas’s face contorts without moving, that familiarhow-does-he-do-itdisplay of emotion that involves nothing being displayed at all. Then, grimacing, he stoops down, grabs my wrist, and hauls me out of the pond in one fluid motion.

I’m pressed against him now, soaking through his pristine Oxford in seconds. My whole body is shaking, but what’s worse is how exposed I am.

The dress is plastered against my skin from head to toe, and my impromptu plunge has turned it completely transparent.

I might as well be naked.

“I didn’t kill my wife,” he says. “Not like you think I did.”

It’s my turn to call bullshit, or at least to demand a better explanation. But before I can get there, Lukas’s hand fists in my wet hair and yanks my head back.

“But I’m not a good man, either.”

And then he kisses the hell out of me.

His mouth is hard and unforgiving. I taste salt and sulfur from the spring water on my own lips. He pulls me closer with the hand still fisted in my hair as his tongue pushes into my mouth and clashes with mine.

His other hand drags down my body. When his palm cups my breast through the soaked fabric, I arch into him automatically. The silk is so thin now it might as well not exist. His thumb finds my nipple and circles it, once, twice, then presses down with just enough pressure to make me moan into his mouth.

He swallows the sound. Takes it from me like he owns it. Hell, maybe he does.

Then he’s walking me backward, his grip relentless, his mouth never leaving mine. My shoulder blades hit bark—one of the olive trees ringing the grotto—and the impact knocks what little breath I have left straight out of my lungs.