Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 78487 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 314(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78487 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 314(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
“I know, but it’s one of the reasons why you love me.” My smile fades. “You do still love me, right?”
To respond, he steps closer, takes my face in his big hands, and kisses me. His tongue slides into my mouth, and I moan. His answer is loud and clear.
He takes my hand. “You sure you can walk?”
“Yes, now get me home.”
“First, let me call Jack.”
As he reaches inside his cut for his cell, something catches in the corner of my eye.
A shadow rises out of the dark water like a swamp creature and takes aim at Ares.
“No,” I cry.
As it fires, I step in front of Ares, and everything turns black.
ARES
“There’s nothing you can do for her,” the doctor says as he ushers me out of the room. He’s British, his words clipped and fancy.
“Is she going to die?” I can barely talk around the lump in my throat.
Inside, I’m a fucking mess.
Since getting Rory to the hospital, I keep reliving the horror when she stepped in front of me and took the bullet to her chest and fell to the ground.
“It’s too soon to tell, I’m afraid. We’ve done what we can, it’s up to her now.” The doctor tries to give me a sympathetic look but looks awkward instead. Either the cut I’m wearing scares him, or it excites him. It’s hard to tell. “In the meantime, let’s get you fixed up. That shoulder has got to be hurting.”
“I don’t need anything,” I say gruffly.
“But you’ve been shot.”
The moment Rory fell, I charged at the psycho. He shot me in the shoulder, but it wasn’t enough to stop me. Through the pain and threat of death, I took his gun from him and shot him.
A lot.
Now, I’m bleeding. But I’m too wired on adrenaline to feel the pain.
“I’m not leaving her.”
“I get it, you’re worried about her. But you need to be strong for her and that gaping hole in your shoulder isn’t going to help matters. May I suggest you look after yourself so you can look after her?”
“Fine, do what you gotta do, but then I’m coming back here, and I’m not leaving until she wakes up and walks out with me.”
He nods. “Well, it’s a start, I suppose.”
In one of the emergency room cubicles, he removes the bullet. My insistence on no painkillers sparks that fear versus fascination in him again.
“You’ve got a strong pain threshold,” he says, impressed. “But then, you certainly fight like you do.”
“You watch me fight?”
“Oh, Ares, my boy, you won me fifty dollars against the Scorpion.”
I grunt, but my mind automatically switches back to Rory, and it brings a new wave of fear with it. My hands curl into fists. If she dies, I don’t know how I will survive this.
“Look, if I can offer you some advice. You seem like a lovely fellow, and you obviously love Aurora. But torturing yourself over what has happened isn’t going to help her. It’s not going to help anyone.” This doctor likes to talk when all I want to do is quietly torture myself. “Honestly, the best thing you can do for her now is to make sure everything is taken care of, so when she wakes up, all she has to focus on is getting well again.”
After he sews me up, I convince the doctor to let me see Rory again. But we’re stopped on the way to her room by Sheriff Pinkwater and Jack.
“You found him?” I ask.
“Right where you said we would. Full of holes and floating in the lake.” Pinkwater’s gaze slides to the doctor, then back to me. “He had so many holes in him, we’re lucky he didn’t sink.”
“Forensics is at the boat now,” Jack adds. “So are the FBI.”
“FBI? They didn’t know about it two weeks ago.”
“Now they do.” Pinkwater shakes his head. “Just in time to take all the fucking credit.”
“Let them. We don’t want the exposure,” Jack says.
He’s right. With exposure comes interest. With interest, comes trouble. Especially when you make good money from a thriving marijuana and bootlegging business.
I don’t linger, I need to see Rory again.
But as we pass, Jack stops the doctor. “Anything she needs, she gets.”
He knows how much Rory means to me. He also knows why she was in town. When she was in surgery, I filled him in on the details. I was hesitant about telling him, but I’ve never hidden the truth from Jack. It’s why he counts on me so much.
I thought he’d be pissed.
Call me a dumbass for falling for the wrong girl.
But he thought about it and then nodded. “If Bronte had come to town looking to put a bullet in my ass, I would have loaded the gun and handed it to her.”
The doctor takes me to see Rory.
And again, the sight of her unconscious and connected to machines kills me.