Uh. No. I don’t think so. I might have a taste for deliciously dangerous Daddies. But my taste did not stretch to icky creepy teeth guys.
There was no time to panic. I mean, obviously, my brain was panicking on my behalf, running around in circles screaming "we're gonna die, we're gonna die, we're gonna die" in a shrill internal voice, but externally, I just stood there, hands up, acting like this sort of thing happened to me every day.
Spoiler: it did not.
The guy fished a rag and a tiny bottle out from the inside pocket of his jacket and, before I could even say 'hey, what’s that?' he had the cloth mashed over my face. A burning, wickedly sweet smell hit me like a truck. I tried to jerk away, but he was way stronger than he looked. Or maybe I was just weaker than I thought. My knees buckled. My hands flailed, desperately searching for the door, for the sink, for anything to hold onto as the world started to tilt sideways.
And then I was sinking, arms heavy, and everything around me going dark.
13
Chapter 12
Iwas really struggling with my guilt after watching Alfie's forlorn expression as he walked away from me. Not to mention the anger at seeing him hold that... that... lumberjack's hand as he led him to the truck they'd arrived in.
Who was the asshole, and why was he holdingmyAlfie's hand?
No!
Definitely not my Alfie. Not my anything.
The thought should've settled something in me.
It didn't.
If anything, it just made the hollow feeling in my chest worse. I swore under my breath and dragged a hand through my hair as I turned away from the road where the lumberjack's truck had disappeared in a cloud of dust.
It didn't matter. Didn't matter who Alfie was with. Didn't matter how he found me. Didn't matter how damned hard it had been not to pull him against me and tell him to stay. Withme. What mattered was finishing the job. I'd already screwed up enough for one day.
Behind me, Milo groaned from where he lay cuffed on the porch, blood soaking through his shirt in thick sluggish waves.
"Looks like your bullet went clean through," I muttered to Milo. "Aren't you a lucky boy." I watched him with a weary eye as I grabbed the first aid kit from my truck and headed back to him.
His lip curled immediately as I crouched down beside Milo. "Don't touch me."
"Then stop bleeding out all over the porch." I pressed gauze against the wound hard enough to make him hiss through his teeth.
Good.
"Stop whining like a baby," I muttered as I continued to work on him.
He in turn continued to look at me like he wanted to kill me. Honestly? I couldn't blame him. I had just put an end to his villainous ways.
The wound itself wasn't pretty, but it was far from fatal. I wasn't a doctor or anything, but I had enough experience that I knew it hadn't hit anything important, and with enough pressure, he'd be fine until I got him to a police station.
I wrapped the bandage tight, ignoring his cursing, then hauled him upright by the arm with enough force to nearly take us both off balance.
"I'm gonna kill you," Milo snarled. "And don't think this is over. I'm not going to get locked up again."
"Yeah, yeah," I returned, rolling my eyes at his dramatic diatribe.
My leg was starting to ache from where his buckshot had got me earlier, each step sending a dull pulse of pain up my side, but I ignored that too.
Pain was nothing. Pain made sense. It was feelings that were the problem. Specifically, feelings for loud-mouthed blond boys in cargo shorts.
I shoved Milo into the back seat of the truck and slammed the door behind him harder than necessary. Climbing into the driver's seat, I scowled at Milo in the rear-view mirror before starting the engine. The road stretched ahead in long, dusty ribbons beneath the fading afternoon sun. Milo sat cuffed behind me, occasionally muttering threats under his breath.
I tuned him out. And tried really fucking hard not to think about Alfie.
