Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 59521 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 298(@200wpm)___ 238(@250wpm)___ 198(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59521 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 298(@200wpm)___ 238(@250wpm)___ 198(@300wpm)
My life is a series of twists and turns, and this one.
Oh, this one takes the cake.
Let me paint you a picture.
It starts with a luxury voyage, my dance team, and a group of world-famous fighters.
Strange, right?
That’s what I thought too.
Still, I figured I’d smile for the cameras, survive the awkward introductions, and count down the days until I could get back to my real life.
Simple.
Or at least it should have been.
Instead, I get a storm.
A shipwreck.
And him.
Arrogant. Protective. Infuriatingly attractive.
The kind of man who gets under my skin almost as much as he gets in my way.
The kind of man I should probably avoid.
The kind of man who keeps saving my life.
Now we’re stranded on a remote island where every day is a fight to survive, and every night makes it a little harder to remember why falling for him is such a bad idea.
But here’s the thing.
The island isn’t the only one keeping secrets.
The longer we’re trapped here, the more questions I have.
About the wreck.
About my teammates.
About my family.
About my father.
About the rescue that never comes.
And about the fighter who’s becoming impossible to resist.
Because sometimes the most dangerous thing isn’t being stranded on a deserted island.
It’s trusting the wrong person
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
PROLOGUE
THERE IS SOMETHING about cold water and the way it stings against warm flesh that is absolute.
Or maybe it’s the way it feels so incredibly huge against my tiny human form, like it could just swallow me up and not a single person in the world would notice, because to it, I am insignificant. Nothing more than a blip, forgettable to it, another soul sucked into the depths.
Yet, my body still flails around, trying to stay afloat, even though the very idea of staying up seems pointless.
I can’t decide if the burning in my lungs is better or worse than the icy needles scraping my skin, but both are preferable to the idea of letting go. Ace would never forgive me for that—not after he made me swear to keep my head above water, no matter what.
A stranger who wants me to survive.
I blink and cough, unable to see a damn thing in the pitch-black night. I jerk my head above the waves and cough up a mouthful of ocean. Someone is screaming—no, wait, that’s me. Almost funny. My limbs are so cold they ache, but I force them to move, to splash and churn and keep my head above water.
A hand appears out of nowhere, grabs me under the arm hard enough to bruise. “I got you.”
Ace.
Somehow in the darkness, he found me.
“Aggie,” I croak. “Tati...”
“We got ‘em.”
I cling to his jacket, trying not to drown him, but also needing my head to stay above water. He has something wrapped in his hand, and it takes me a minute to realize it is the lifeboat. Somehow, through all of it, he got hold of the one thing that could possibly save our lives.
“I’m going to need you to help me get you on this boat,” he growls, and then pushes me towards it.
A wave smashes into us from behind. I nearly lose him, but Ace’s grip tightens and pulls me with him, and now we’re both under, spinning in the dark. My chest tightens, desperate for air, but his hand is still there, grounding me even as we’re dragged down.
I think about letting go, just for a second. Letting myself sink, arms out, just allowing the world to slip away. Instead, I kick hard, aimless, and suddenly my head is above water and I’m coughing and gasping at the same time.
Ace pulls me to the lifeboat, and Kellen reaches down and hauls me up as if I weigh nothing.
Aggie is bawling, Rachel is screaming, and somewhere behind me someone is making a sound I have never heard a human being make before. The water around us is black and it goes on forever. My hands won’t stop shaking. I press them flat against the floor of the lifeboat and tell myself to breathe, just breathe, but the air tastes like salt and bile and I can’t stop seeing it—the way the yacht just went, like it was never there at all.
We’re alive.
I don’t know what that means yet.
1 – Earlier
“FLEX, GRACE, YOU’RE not giving it your all.”
Taking a shallow breath, I clench my jaw and flex, twisting my body in ways the body was never meant to be twisted.
Yet still, my coach will push. He will push until my feet bleed, until my back aches, until my body can’t take it any longer. Then, and only then, will he tell me that I did okay. Never good, just okay. It doesn’t matter that I’m his champion, he’ll never let me hold that title with pride, it will always come with some twisted stab at my self-esteem.
“What has gotten into you today?”
His voice is rough, and for a small man, he can be quite intimidating. His brown eyes narrow, causing his nose to pinch, and his face scrunches with rage that I just know he wants to unleash.
“I’m trying, Brady,” I mutter, pushing off the rail and shaking my head in frustration.
“If that’s trying, then we all might as well go home and be done with your career because it’s fucking not even close to being good enough.”
Breathe, Grace.
“I’m not feeling well, can we pick up tomorrow?”
His eyes flash, like he’s trying with all his might to hold something in, something he knows isn’t worth releasing because my father would murder him where he stands. After all, without my father, this man wouldn’t be getting paid what he is to make me the best.
Money makes the world go round, and all that.
“You’re leaving tomorrow, or have you forgotten?”
I shake my head. “I haven’t forgotten, but I’m still unsure why we all need to go on a fucking vacation right now, when the showcase is a matter of months away.”
“You’re telling me,” Brady mutters. “That one is on your father.”
My father, one of the most powerful men in this town, decided a few weeks ago that he was going to send me and my team on a vacation. Considering my father has never, not even once, sent me away for anything nice, I am more than a little sceptical. Dancing has been everything to him since he figured out I could move right. And he doesn’t let me miss a single practice unless I am absolutely unable to move. It’s just lucky I love it, because otherwise it would destroy me.