AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He pulls back just an inch. “Just because you left doesn’t mean the rules don’t apply to you anymore.” He brings a hand up to clap my shoulder. An innocent move, really, but my body remembers. My nervous system knows.
My senses brace for the pain, but at the last second, Felix lifts his hand higher and cups my cheek instead. “I’m not here to hurt you, bro. And you can tell the pretty doctors I’m not here to hurt them either. You know what I can do. You know what each of us was trained for. So the fact I’ve had a million chances at Minka and she remains alive should tell you I’m not a threat to her.”
“Leave us alone.” I shake off his hand and take a step back. “Stay away from Copeland. Tell the Pastores, or whoever comes looking, that Tim and I are long dead. Then you have a united front. You, Micah, Cato. You become heads of the Malone table.”
“You know it’s not that easy! You know better, Archer.”
“Make it work.” I shove him back and spin when the bar door opens.
Where I expect drunken patrons to stagger out, it’s Tim whose hard eyes lock onto Felix’s stumbling body. He moves to stand beside me, flexes his hands, and grits his teeth.
Then he speaks.
“Go.”
It takes me a minute to understand he’s speaking to me.
“I’ll take care of him,” Tim continues. “I’ll kick his ass back to the East Coast, if that’s what I have to do. But you,” his eyes cut across to mine, “you can go to bed.”
“I’m sticking.”
“You’re about to fall,” he counters easily. “You’re pale. You’re injured. You’re still getting better. It’s three in the morning. Go to bed, Arch. Fight another day.” Then he looks back to Felix. “What do you want? Why are you here?”
“You know why.”
Backing away, since Tim’s not wrong and my head swims from being upright too long, I turn on my heels, knowing neither of my brothers is likely to kill the other between now and morning.
Grabbing the building door and stepping inside, I climb the stairs on shaking legs. My stomach feels hollow, and my brain spins, spins, spins with what may be delirium. I’m overtired, underfed, my adrenaline has spiked and run out, and there’s still that thing about missing blood.
One flight of stairs, the darkness presses in around me. Two flights, and my fingertips tingle. Three flights, and hope springs, knowing I’m so close. On the fourth floor, I push through Minka’s door and emerge into a fully lit kitchen that burns my eyes and breaks my heart.
It’s nearly morning, but the lights are on like it’s merely dinnertime.
Kicking my boots off and locking up at my back, I flip switches as I move, and use my phone to illuminate my way. Through the living room and past a watchful Chloe. I follow the scent of Minka’s shampoo andknowshe’s showered in the last hour. She waited for me. She tried to buy time and be up when I got home.
Peeling my coat off, I ignore the ache of my shoulder as I tweak it. I’m in so much pain now, there’s simply no more I can absorb. So I just let it happen. I unsnap my jeans and unbutton my shirt. Dragging everything away, I drop my keys somewhere in the hall, and my phone about three feet further along. I toss my shirt to the floor and wander the hall in boxer shorts and not much else.
Then I emerge into the main bedroom to find Minka in a towel, her hair wrapped up tight in another. The light is on, but she lies in the center, her face pointing toward the doorway.
Because she was waiting.
But her eyes are closed.
Soft breath whistles past her lips and steals whatever shred of my heart she didn’t already own. Then, as though she knows I’m hurting, she stirs in her sleep and shuffles to the top of the bed so I can slide in beside her.
So I don’t have to lift her.
A silver chain glitters on her ankle, beckoning me to come closer and demanding my attention. But then she drops her feet beneath the covers and robs me of my view of something new and intriguing. Her eyes stay closed. Her body wrapped in a towel. She snuggles into my pillow, then when I slide in too, she swaps out the pillow for my chest.
Her lips go to my flesh, and her thigh drapes across mine.
Positioned exactly like that, she continues to doze, to rest and strengthen herself for another busy day tomorrow. And because her touch soothes me, heart and soul, she drags me into unconsciousness less than a minute after my head touches the pillow.
MINKA
Falling asleep at any point after midnight, to me, means automatic crusty-eyes and a dull headache thudding in the back of my skull.
Falling asleep closer to three, in my opinion, is inhumane.
