Page 4

Gunner

M onday night. Diletta is baking cookies. I’ve been watching her from the shadows on the other side of her backyard fence. The neighbors aren’t home. They’re a young, married couple. They got into their car an hour ago and haven’t returned. It’s not late yet, but late enough that they might be back any minute. I’m hyper-aware of my surroundings, watching the street for any sweep of lights that suggest they’re coming home.

I shouldn’t be here.

Not just in the neighbor’s yard, but at all.

I seem to have a problem with self-control as of late. Shocking, but I guess there’s a first fucking time for everything. My string of bad decisions can be traced, and they go back years where this woman is concerned, but it’s the growing number of slip-ups that’s concerning.

I don’t do fuckups.

So what was yesterday in the shoe store?

I froze on the inside the second Diletta walked in. I’d planned to stay well out of sight, but then Penny ran for the door like she was gonna go sprinting down the street and I had to make myself known. She’d looked directly at me, but there was no sign of recognition in her eyes. There was a strange brightness, a flicker of interest, like she enjoyed what she saw.

You’d think that most women would look at me like I’m a monster, but that’s the very thing that gets most of them excited. If not for my size and obvious comfort with brutality, there’s always the leather vest and the bike. Attention. All of it, unwanted.

The only woman I have ever desired is the one I’m watching stick a sheet of cookies into the oven right now. Seeing that prick get close to her in the shoe store painted a haze of red so bright over my vision, that I couldn’t help myself. I reacted. I got up in his face, which meant that I got too close to her. I felt the exact second her eyes lingered on my stitches.

Stupid. Just plain fucking stupid.

Stupid to get close, stupid not to race out the door the second I saw her enter, stupid to have rolled my sleeves up for once because the Henley was irritating the hell out of my wound.

Amateur hour has apparently been extended because I can’t resist the draw to get closer. I know I shouldn’t go back to my old spot, but there are several others, near other windows, that I could crouch down or under. If I went right back to the old spot, it would probably be safe. No one would ever be dumb enough to repeat their actions, so thinks most of the world.

Diletta saw my face yesterday. She was so close that I could feel the heat of her body and smell her sweet scent.

As if her knowing your face ever made a difference.

I know I need to leave. Tonight. This is the last time. The last of the last of the last.

I can’t stay here.

I have a bag packed and waiting for me on my bike. I’ll ride to the next small town, sell it for nothing, and use cash to buy a beat up, nondescript vehicle. I don’t know where I’m going, but I’ll drive and drive and fucking drive until I’m far away from here.

I’ve made such a commitment to being a cold, unfeeling, unreadable monster, that even I believe that fairytale half the time. It’s almost a surprise how hard my heart wrenches in my chest at the thought of not being able to see her again. There’s no fucking shield of numbness now.

I flex my hands in my leather gloves.

One more time, and I can’t let it be from the other side of this fence. I have to be as close to her as possible, as if I’m bound by an invisible leash. Shackles. This woman has bound me and tied me up, wrecked me so fucking thoroughly, ever since the first time I saw her.

I’ll never forget a moment of tonight either. The last.

I grasp the top of the fence and slip over, careful to watch for any fucking nails this time, but the boards are in better shape, even if the thing is leaning precariously to one side. I drop down to the ground soundlessly, the trees and fence boards consuming my shadow.

It always bothered me that I couldn’t do things for Diletta. Shovel her sidewalk. Put ice melt down. Pull a few weeds from her flowerbeds. Fix her dilapidated fence. I couldn’t risk leaving any little tells behind. It would have freaked her out and she would have moved immediately. I would have followed, but the pattern couldn’t continue.

By keeping to the shadows, I ensured she was safe and felt safe. She moved on from the terrible thing that happened to her. I slowly watched the haunted ghosts leave her eyes. Watched her find joy again. Make friends. Become a member of the community. Find meaning in her new life.

How ironic it is that I head straight for her kitchen window along my safe path and something grabs my ankle.

I fly forward, crashing into the side of the fence, trying to grasp hold and shake off whatever it is. I hit the ground hard enough that half the neighborhood probably heard the fall, but immediately whip around. There’s no one there. Nothing but a stake and a silver bit of wire glinting in the moonlight.

A goddamn snare.

The back door bursts open and Diletta is there, not a hair out of place, standing with her feet spread in her cutesy little teacher dress. She aims a gun at the obvious large shadow stopped halfway through her backyard.

I’m so goddamn pathetic. If I wasn’t such a goner for this woman, a fucking sap who had to see her one last time, then I wouldn’t be face down on the ground right now. If the me of five years ago could see me now, he’d be laughing his ass off.

Yeah, though five years ago I didn’t know I was about to meet my match and had no idea until she was kidnapped and I walked right into the heart of the mess.

Diletta glances around, then stomps over, the gun extended in front of her. She edges closer. I keep my face to the ground. The situation is shit, but not nearly something I can’t get out of. I’m only sorry that I’m going to have to scare her to do it.

“What the fuck?” she hisses, right before the gun presses into the back of my skull. I’m dressed in my usual late night stalker’s getup, but I can feel the cool, solid metal through the thin black fabric. “Are you doing in my yard?”

She’s so close that I can smell her again. Sweet, lush flowers. That same scent. She hasn’t changed it. Ever tried to get yourself out of a situation like this with a hard-on so brutal it makes walking nearly impossible?

In an instant, I rear up and snatch the gun away from her. I whip the knife out of the top of my boot and slice cleanly through the snare’s thin wire. The thing is so sharp it could probably amputate a limb clean off.

I’m fast, but so is she.

A well-timed kick catches me straight in the jaw. My head snaps back and I stumble, losing the hold on my knife. I still have her gun. My free hand snakes out and grabs a fistful of her hair. I wind her as gently as possible into me, grabbing her around the shoulders while she thrashes. She tries to headbutt me by driving the back of her skull directly into my face, but I dodge. My toes get stomped on, but in my boots, I feel nothing. She aims a backwards kick higher, straight for my groin, so I tuck myself up flush against her, flattening her heaving body against mine. She goes still immediately, her breath changing from anger and adrenaline to fear.

I realize that she can feel the bulge in my pants pressed right up against her ass.

Fuck .

Fuck, fuck, fucking hell.

I never wanted to hurt her and now she’s panting in fear. She thinks that I’m going to rape her. My stomach twists so violently that bile surges up into the back of my throat.

I only ever talked to her in forced low tones. Gravelly whispers. Distorted so that she wouldn’t know what I really sounded like. It’s been five years. She has to have forgotten even that much. I spoke in front of her at the shoe store. She had no idea who I was.

“I’m sorry,” I tell her, speaking softly, but not a whisper. Not low. Not gravel. A rumble that escapes the black hood that hides my face and breaks through the night. “I never meant to hurt you or scare you. I’m leaving. I won’t come back. You’re not in danger.”

I relax my hold on her arms just slightly, easing up to prove that I mean what I say.

She turns her hands into claws and immediately drives both elbows into my chest. I rear back and her nails get me, scoring along my forearms, raking over the fresh stitches. I have a long-sleeved Henley on, but that hurts like a motherfucker. My pain receptors go white hot. I don’t make a sound and the pain channels into adrenaline. If she was actually an adversary, she’d be in serious trouble right now. Wounded animals don’t take kindly to having blood drawn.

She stumbles away, then stops, staring at me, chest heaving, eyes bright and wild.

She’s glorious, my goddess. I drink her in one last time.

I’m breathing harder than I should be too. As I etch the vision of her, riled, flushed, and feral, into my mind, memorizing every detail of her bathed in the gold of the light at her back door, it’s not just my wounds that hurt. The only emotion I once felt was desperation-laced fear and that was honed into the sharp blade of anger. For years, it fueled everything I did.

Hauling my ass over the fence and fleeing the yard again, the anger returns, gnawing at the edges of my vision, my mind, my inner organs, but it’s laced with something far more devastating.

I left my blood in that yard a few nights ago.

Now I’m leaving the few remaining scraps of my humanity behind for good.