Trying It All

Trying It All - Prologue

Ten Years Ago . . .

Fire.

Scorching, licking flames.

Gusting balls of it shooting toward him . . .

Riley Ness jerked awake from the nightmare. Gasping. Then he realized two things. It wasn't a nightmare—it was the fucked-up reality of his situation. And he was gasping because breathing was so goddamned hard.

The fire had been real. Just yesterday morning. When their school bus crashed, exploded into flames, and slid down a cliff somewhere in the Alps. The fire had driven him and his friends out of the bus in a hurry. Riley could still feel it licking at the back of his legs, superheating his jeans as he tried to squeeze through the broken window.

It was the last time he'd been warm. That's what happened when your coats burned up inside a bus and Fate kicked you in the ass with a March snowstorm. Or maybe those things happened all the time here in Switzerland. Italy. Whatever side of the border they'd landed on. Riley didn't know. He hated not knowing. Hated it worse than the smell the drill made when he got fillings. Which had always been his high bar of gross-smelling things.

Until the bus.

Until, along with the acrid stench of burning rubber and the chemical smell of gasoline, he'd noticed another smell, even worse, that had to be the gaggingly noxious scent of their driver burning up.

"Dude." Josh Hardwick's face hovered about an inch in front of him. Which wasn't a pretty sight to wake up to at fucking all. Blood had dried in streaks down Josh's forehead and cheeks from the gash on his head. The one they all figured might be a skull fracture, since Josh kept passing out. "You okay?"

Day two of no food. No phones, since they'd burned up along with the coats. No chance of rescue. "Um, yeah. Better than if Samantha Boyd just finished giving me a blow job right after I got an A on my physics midterm."

"No need to be a douche-nozzle." Josh stayed put, staring at him hard. "It's just that you sound like my grandma's cat when it tries to hork up a hairball."

"Oh." Guess that gasping-for-air thing sounded as painful as it felt. Riley put a hand on his broken ribs. Compression made it a little less painful to breathe. Like he was being stabbed with steak knives instead of with a chain saw. "Sorry. Didn't mean to wake you up."

"Pretty sure my headache did that. Or Griff's snoring." Finally, Josh rolled off to the side. Not too far, though. The two of them were tighter than a hot dog in a bun. And Griffin Montgomery and Knox Davies were tight in line behind them. It was the only way to keep warm in the cave overnight. But it'd damn well be filed under Things we never talk about again if they did get rescued.

"I'm not snoring," Griff protested. He yawned and fisted his eyes. "You have to be asleep to snore. You can thank Ry for all the loud noises during the night. Sure you're getting enough air with those two broken ribs?"

Not even close to sure. "Dunno. Do I look blue?"

Josh laughed. But not his dirty-joke laugh. The bitter one he used when he didn't have time to finish a test because of what the teachers at Roosevelt Prep had just labeled as dyslexia. "Dude. We all look blue. Frostbite's turning us into Smurfs."

Riley laughed. Instantly regretted it. Pain stabbed through him. And when he grabbed for his ribs, the pain in his shoulder added a nice level of queasiness to the roiling agony. "I'm now sure that it's three broken ribs. For all the difference it makes."

"Yeah, but how great does your shoulder feel?" Griff asked with a smug smirk in his voice.

"The dislocated shoulder you shoved back into place against a rock wall like you were trying to knock ketchup out of a bottle?" Actually, it'd felt way better after Griffin popped it back into the socket. Not that he'd admit it. Tossing and turning on the ground all night didn't do it any good, though. "It fucking hurts. If Logan had been here, he wouldn't have let you do it."