If You Dare (Dare #3) — PROLOGUE

PROLOGUE

DEKE

DEATH IS A debt we are all born owing.

It’s something that money can’t buy nor can it be traded.

You can’t bargain for more time. When it’s up, you accept it like a fucking man.

I’ve never been afraid to die. Or to love, for that matter.

Aren’t they the same?

You surrender to a fate you have no control over. You don’t get to choose when or how you die, just as you can’t choose when and who you fall in love with.

Some couples get a happily ever after while others are toxic for one

another.

My love was like that.

She lied; I believed every word.

I hurt her; she forgave too easily.

It was a vicious circle of deceit and sex wrapped in a pretty black bow.

Neither one of us could quit.

I wrapped my hand around her throat, and she begged me to breathe.

She stabbed me in the heart and demanded I bleed.

She might as well have been fucking poison, but I would have drunk her anyway.

That was the kind of obsession I had for her.

I knew how it would end—total devastation.

A war zone of broken bones and bleeding souls.

I should have hated her, but that’s the funny thing about love—it’s out of your control. And even when it leaves you with two black eyes, you beg for more.

People are afraid of the unknown, but I never feared death, and love was no different.

She was going to destroy me, and I was going to let her.

It was a game that could only end one way—a slow and torturous death.