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He reaches over and straightens my crown. “Good.”

He looks back over the water, and I stare at the side of his face. I think about how much this man has come to mean to me as the gondola slowly starts to move again.

Vero is already pacing when we reach the ground, and as soon as I step out, he grabs my hand. He announces the mazes are next, and I let him pull me along because his excitement is contagious.

We reach the scare maze, and red smoke pours out. Vero points to the sign marking the entrance, which reads: Abandoned Hope. “I helped design that,” he says proudly.

“The sign or the maze?” I ask.

“Both,” he says, bouncing on his feet.

I know going in I am at a disadvantage, as Vero knows what to expect. “You’ll be fine,” Vero tells me, picking up on my energy.

“I’m not scared,” I reply.

Which I’m not. After everything I have been through, this is a piece of cake.

We go inside, and the first section is a long corridor. I pace myself, waiting for the jump scare. Something drops from the ceiling, and I lurch back, making Vero cackle. Thankfully, it’s just a fake spider that got my punch in the face, and not a real person.

We round the corner, and a figure steps out of a doorway. I walk around him without pausing, and hear Vero tell him he did a good job.

I’m feeling good about myself as we move on to the next part. It’s a wider room that appears to be completely empty and is lit up more than the other two. I’m halfway across when the floor drops a few inches with no warning and every light cuts out.

Something cold touches the back of my neck, and I scream as I frantically grab onto someone’s arm.

The lights come back on, and I stare up into Ares’s grinning face as I’m clutching his side.

“I wasn’t scared,” I say to no one in particular.

“The indentations on my arm suggest otherwise,” Ares replies.

“I was startled when the freaking floor moved. I could have died.” Then I realize what I said, and silence surrounds us. “But I didn’t.” I point at an actor now standing in the room with us, clearly the one who put ice on the back of my neck. “You are fired.”

“He doesn’t work for you,” Clay adds with a smirk.

“I will take it up with the hirer and firer on the island.”

“I’m sure Nix will appreciate that, so good luck.”

I flip Clay off.

“That’s my girlfriend, isn’t she beautiful?” Vero says, leaning closer to the actor. So I flip him off as well.

“See? Stunning.”

The actor just nods as Vero laughs.

I straighten my crown and walk forward, ignoring them all as I storm through the rest of the maze and push out the final doors. Everyone is right behind me and no one comments on me leaving so fast.

Vero catches up to me and slips his hand into mine. He drags me again, and we follow a path I have never taken before that leads to the beach. It’s a fair walk down a hill to somewhere that is really not a large beach—more the bottom of a cliff and some sand at low tide.

The guys pile some wood that they must have brought down here earlier into a pit they dug and light a fire. I raise my brow at Ares, and he nods to confirm he set this up earlier.

Vero sits cross-legged close to the fire, too close for comfort, and I watch his cape in case it goes up in flames.

Brawley sits on a log, and I perch beside him. Clay finds a spot on my other side, while Ares sits beside Vero. He pulls a flask out of his jacket pocket and passes it over to me.

“Did you have a good time?” Brawley asks me, wrapping his arm around my shoulders and pulling me closer.