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“It’s not a warzone. It’s my life.”
“Well your life has too many fucking shootings and explosions for my liking,” he hissed. “And it’s not havin’ any more. I’ll stay in it to keep an eye on Gwen, for Ian. But for you, you’re not stayin’ in that shit.”
“That shit? That’s my family.”
“Jesus, Lucy! They’re a fuckin’ gang that has a history of getting women killed.”
I went still. “Don’t,” I choked. “Don’t you say another word about shit you know nothing about.” My voice was ice. Pure ice even he couldn’t melt.
“You know what I know?” he said, stepping forward so he was close but not touching me. “That what I feel for you is something more. More than anything. Special. The kind of special that people fight wars for, kill for. Die for. Write fuckin’ poetry for. I’ll do all that for you. In the blink of an eye. But no fuckin’ way am I going to stand by and watch while you do it for someone else.”
I glared at him. “It’s not someone else. It’s the only family I’ve ever known. My whole world. You’re asking me to give that up for you?”
He gave me a long and measured stare. “No.” One word. So final, so heavy it dropped past the surface that I keep so still, making waves the likes of which I’d never seen. “No, I won’t ask you to give up the world. But I can’t watch while that world self-destructs either.”
He stepped forward, clutching my face and kissing me long and hard before turning on his heel and walking out the door.
I flinched at the slam.
Then I stood there.
And cried.
And promised myself that, despite how much it seemed like it would, the pain of that wouldn’t kill me.
Six Months Later
I was stuffed in a closet.
Not my first choice of hiding places, considering that’s where all the dumb bimbos in horror movies hid and were subsequently shanked, but I was in a rush. Now I regretted throwing popcorn at the TV and ranting about how stupid they were. Maybe they weren’t stupid; heck, they could’ve been fucking brain surgeons. I considered myself reasonably smart, yet there I was. Terror had killed a disturbing amount of brain cells. Or maybe it was the glasses—okay, bottles—of wine I routinely had to accompany aforementioned B-grade horror movies.
Whatever it was might just be the key to my demise.
In a closet.
Great.
I guess I loved clothes enough, so it was rather poetic that I’d see my end in the place where the objects of my superficial obsession came to live.
My rapid breath was like ice in my lungs and my heart seemed to vibrate the flimsy wooden door of the closet. It was the kind with the wooden slats and gaps where the light seeped through. If I tried, I could press my face up to those slats and get a better view of what was going on. Though if I did, the man who had just killed someone in cold blood would likely see the violet-tinged eyes I’d always been so proud of, and then I’d be dead.
I stayed pressed back as far as I could, swarmed by fur coats and Burberry trenches while breathing so hard I thought the sound might travel across the street to the classy boutique I’d been planning on maxing my credit card out in after this. Maybe that’s where my girls would go shopping for my funeral outfit if I didn’t get my rhino breathing under control.
I pursed my lips, hoping to muffle the sound. Couldn’t do anything about the heart though; it kind of had to continue beating.
I really hoped it would.
“Boss, it’s taken care of,” a raspy voice declared from somewhere close. Close enough that I could see the shadow through the gap in the door. Close enough that I could smell the Old Spice on my would-be murderer’s skin.
I squeezed my eyes shut with a childlike hope that such a gesture would make me invisible to the world around me that was only blackness surrounded in Old Spice and the metallic twang of blood. But then even as child, I had known that didn’t work. Even as a child, I had kept my eyes wide open.
There was a pause, then a rustling of papers. “The manifest isn’t here,” the voice stated.
I tried my best to remain still, to not throw up, which was what I really felt like doing. I’d come in for a routine interview to discover my interviewee with her throat slit. I had to stuff myself in a closet when I found out the murderer hadn’t fled the scene yet.
Hiding would have most of my friends gazing at me in disapproval. I knew it wasn’t what my biker family would have done. They would’ve most likely taken down the murderer with as much effort as it took me to max out my credit card, looking like they could grace a GQ shoot while they were at it. But I was not tall, muscly and menacing, nor did I sport any kind of weapon on my person. Well, apart from a bottle of pepper spray I was pretty sure was expired.
