“Told you I’m not going. It’s not your job to look out for me.” His smile disappears, leaving a grumpy scowl in its place.
“Wrong again. I have a reputation in this business. People out there think they can lie to me; I need to set that straight. Whoever wanted you dead lied to get me to do the job and they did it badly. That’s a problem that goes beyond you and your contract. Until I know what’s going on, you’re staying where I can see you.”
Does that explanation sound as ridiculous to him as it does to me? Because it could easily be argued that Rowan is right. I saved his life, which I definitely didn’t have to do. I sure as hell don’t have any obligation to stick around.
But-but-buuuut… there’s still a chance he’s lying. If he is, I’ll need to kill him. If I leave him on his own, he could disappear, making that job harder. Never mind that if I fail to complete a job? That means my life is the one at risk.
Mind you, if you searched up “wide-eyed, red-haired, gentle giant” on the interwebs, you’d get exactly Rowan Rangecroft’s picture. Can’t go taking that risk though, can I?
The price of being wrong is too high.
“Come on.” I pull a towel from a hook on the wall and hold it out to him. “Get enough clothing for a couple of days. Any medication you might need. Hopefully we won’t need to be gone much longer than that.”
I grab a towel and dry myself off as well, but when I turn back to face him, he’s got the towel loosely tied around his waist and his arms crossed over his naked chest like a stubborn toddler.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he says again.
“You’re going if I have to beat you over the head and drag you down the stairs with your thick skull hitting every single step.And I promise I’ll pack you nothing but one pair of shorts and some mismatched socks, so get. Your. Shit. Together.”
I grab the gun on the vanity. Less of a threat and more of a reminder about what’s at stake here. It can be a threat, though, if it needs to be.
He sighs, and for a moment I think I’ve got him. But then his jaw firms again. “I’m not going anywhere without Iggy.”
“Who the fuck is Iggy?”
5
Notes:
Sorry this chapter is late. My mind wandered and got lost in unfamiliar territory.
Rowan
How did I get here?
Notherehere. As in, not here in the passenger seat of this stolen Tesla (“They’re actually pretty easy to steal,” the professional hitman announced) with a guy who may or may not want to kill me but almost definitely did give me one of the most powerful orgasms I’ve ever had. Somehow. With a hand job.
Although I’m sort of wondering about that other part too. One minute I was sticking to my guns, the next I was packing Iggy’s tank and following Milo down the street.
This is more of a life choices thing, though. If I think about it hard enough, I can trace all of this shit back to that fateful moment when a handsome older man at the company I was interning for asked me to stay late one night and I thought him telling me how much he liked me made me special.
My stomach twists whenever I think of it. Seventeen-year-old Rowan was so painfully naive.
Sweet boy. We shouldn’t, but I simply cannot stop thinking about you.
Sweet boy, my freckled ass. What a load of utter horseshit. Never falling for that one again. I’ll take a hit out on myself first.
“Should be just up ahead,” Milo chirps.
Okay. Guess he’s back to being nice to me now. Or, not nice, but…chatty?
I don’t know. This guy’s more than a little quirky. Earlier, he pulled an apple from his backpack and ate the entire thing. Including the core. All I could think was, was that the apple he’d dropped in a puddle of blood? I couldn’t bring myself to ask.
I can’t get my head around any of this night. Not the way he was calling me a whore in my ear and jerking me off like he had a vendetta, and the whole time I felt more alive than I have in my entire life. Nor now, when he’s narrating the entire drive (“I heard Lake Jessup has the most alligators in Florida, but actually Lake Okeechobee has more than twice as many…”) as if the hand job, the way we met, and him being assigned tofucking kill menever happened.
Just two guys, on their way to a safe house, for no reason whatsoever. Cool.
“How the hell am I supposed to respond to any of this?”
