Page 8
Gunner
I t’s three in the morning, freezing cold and pouring with rain, and I’m standing in the shadows outside Diletta’s backdoor, only half bothering to conceal myself, sans balaclava. She knows who I am now so it’s pointless hiding my face.
I can’t ever remember being so sick in my life.
Despite her promise to poison me, it’s been five days, and she hasn’t come around to the clubhouse. No cookies, cakes, or dubious potted plants have materialized. For my part, I’ve stayed away from her. Maybe that’s why. She hasn’t needed to match my lowlife activities.
I’ve been following Lark and Penny everywhere. Penny has been sick for the past few days, so my services weren’t needed. I’ve never underestimated an opponent, but I did underestimate the power of a five-year-old’s germs which thanks to my close contact with her, are now running rampant in my body.
I spent the night in the club’s communal bathroom puking up everything I’ve eaten for the past month, but when Raiden asked me to help him with some VP shit in the morning, I did it without complaint. He’s still doing most of the club’s books. There’s no one here who’s as good with numbers. I occasionally fill in the gaps of what I was doing before. Mindlessly. Everything is mindless because only one person matters. When I’m not watching her, all I do is think about her. This afternoon, Tyrant asked me for a favor. A group of shitheads keeps coming into one of our nightclubs and he wanted me to accompany Reaper and Crow to give them a warning about trying to push their pills there or anywhere in this town.
We were there for hours and unfortunately, I affirmed my hatred of public bathrooms by getting up close and personal with the disgusting place. Twice.
I bring my hand to my aching shoulder and when I pull away, my palm is scarlet in the darkness. I can smell the metallic scent of my own blood. Tonight has been a shitty night all round. I’m soaked through, still nauseous as fuck, dehydrated, and bleeding out because some punk ass college kid decided he wasn’t going to heed our warning.
It’s been a really, really shitass day.
Why am I even here right now instead of taking myself off to Archer’s clinic like Crow and Reaper wanted me to?
Because I don’t want this to be over. I’m an addict and I can’t stop.
Because when shit is awful, I want to fall back on the one thing that gives me comfort. Watching her. The woman who threatens both gunshots and chocolate chip cookies.
Because stupidly, it’s been a while since I’ve eaten a bullet. It’s an annoyance. It hurts. It’s worse that I already felt like shit. I’m drenched to the bone and probably going to catch pneumonia if I don’t bleed to death first.
Because I had this stupid notion that more than I needed or wanted medical assistance, I wanted her. I want comfort. I want her to comfort me, even if I don’t deserve it.
I just wanted to be close.
I’m close, alright. Close to death’s door. The world is starting to black out, but at least it’s a relief from the raindrops pouring off my bowed head. My body is starting to numb out. Finally.
The back door bangs open. The motion sensor light floods the yard, illuminating my pathetic ass figure. My angel freezes. She’s got a fuzzy bathrobe thrown over her pajamas. Bare feet sticking out, she’s getting wet because of me. I don’t know why my brain focused on that detail when it should be more concerned with the fact I’m dying—or at least it feels like it.
The numbness spreads from my shoulder to my legs. They give out and with a dull crack, I’m on the ground. Still upright, hand pressed protectively against my shoulder, the blood flowing through my fingers shockingly hot against the freezing cold downpour. My stomach twists and rises up my throat, hotter than the blood. I turn my face to the side and retch up pretty much nothing but bile. I don’t know if it’s the stomach flu or the gunshot wound at this point.
I wipe my mouth, belatedly realizing that it was with my bloody hand. I spit as soon as I taste the salty metal on my lips.
“Holy fuck, Gunner. When I said that I- when I threatened you, I- I… did I curse you? You’re not looking so good.”
“Don’t feel so good either.” It’s strangely easy to be truthful with her if I turn it into a game. All of it’s just another lie anyway.
She takes one step away from the door into the pouring rain. “Stop!” I bark. She freezes, looking around for danger. She’s not afraid, just cautious, dropping down like she’s going into ass kicking mode.
If I had more energy, I’d find that so hot.
She straightens when she’s sure it’s just us here and pads over. The grass squishes under her toes soundlessly. The gold flecks are bright in her eyes as they look me up and down. She bends, about to touch me, but I rock back. The motion sends nasty black spots reeling in front of my eyes, blocking her sweet face out entirely.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” she sighs, managing to sound more annoyed than afraid. “It’s the middle of the night. If you didn’t want me to come out and help you, then why are you here?”
I needed to be. I need you. I want… I just want you. Just an ounce of kindness.
The words are unspoken.
I don’t want Archer’s clinical hands on my body. Don’t want him fixing me. I didn’t want the clubhouse or any of my brothers. It’s been days and I just wanted to be here, I needed it more than I need to breathe.
Which might not be for all that much longer given how much blood I’m losing and how cold I am.
Her fingers brush along my jaw. “I think you need to come inside.”
“Please don’t,” I beg her, trying to shake her off. I get more black spots and a wicked twist of nausea for my effort.
“Don’t what? Touch you?”
“Yes. Don’t. You’re too… you’re pure. You’re an angel. I’m filth. A demon. A man with no soul. And… I’m sick. You shouldn’t be this close.”
“So you just wanted to stand out here, bleeding, in the pouring rain, while you’re ill, staring at my house while I was obviously already asleep?”
The teasing disbelief brings me back to a moment of coherence. I blink hard, clearing my vision.
“Dear god, you’re a stalker and a dumbass. You think I’m an angel? That’s some heavy delusions.”
She sweeps her hand over my leather vest. Her light touch, warm through the rain, travels down my bare arm. Painful. Her touch is more than electric. It’s a brand, reaching down into my soul. My face is wet. Is it the rain or something else?
Her face is still the same when I get my eyes open again. I haven’t sullied her. My darkness didn’t leach into her immediately and choke out her light. I haven’t poisoned her.
She’s right. I am a dumbass. Why did I believe I had the supernatural power to do that?
“I don’t want to be your villain origin story.” There’s a good chance I’m getting beyond delusional now. I barely register saying the words. They sound like they’re coming from far away.
She laughs as she sticks her hand into my armpit and jerks me up. I have just enough strength to help her. She’s strong. She was used to this, in her last life. She knows exactly how to fix me. I think. She was a nurse and that probably didn’t extend to surgery. She might not have even been allowed to do sutures, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t know how.
We take one unsteady step together. I can’t feel it. The cold, the pain, my feet, my body. I feel nothing but the shocking heat of her touch. It can’t be that hot. Not really.
“You’re about twenty-six years too late.”
“For what?”
“Villainy. I’m well acquainted already.”
Is she only telling me that because she thinks I’m going to die? Or does she think it’s just a joke? She’s blowing her cover with me. Why? She should have slammed the door in my face. Her conscience would have prevented her from going back to bed. She could have just called an ambulance. Had someone else deal with her problem for her. Said some stranger stumbled into her yard, bleeding all over.
Instead, she takes me into her small back entrance. I make out the shapes of shoes neatly lined up. A rack of coats.
“You need to get warm.”
The bathroom is just off the kitchen. I know where I’m going. She snorts when she realizes that and shakes her head when she gets the light on.
She thrusts me into the little stall shower, clothes and all, I start protesting and try and pull off my cut. She gently eases it off and drapes it over the stool, then shoves me back in the stall and cranks the spray on. Not too hot. The water swirls brown from the mud on my boots and when that clears, a sickening pink. I throw my hand out against the wall to brace myself. She gives me lukewarm water first and then increases the heat.
“Stay there. I’m going to get my kit.”
“Mmmmm.”
It takes her a while, and in that time, I retch again, covering my side in it. I screw my eyes shut tight, painfully and utterly humbled by the disgusting mess I am. How could I have brought this to her doorstep? What is wrong with me? Fucking up the past few times like I- like I wanted to get caught. Now this.
I turn to let the spray wash everything away.
When Diletta returns, she’s dressed in a red crewneck sweater and black yoga pants. She has a toolbox in hand, like someone would bring to a torture appointment. She sets it on the sink and opens it. No tools. Nothing torturous unless you count all the medical shit inside. Forceps, scalpel, gauze, bandage, ointments.
She leaves wordlessly and comes back with an IV bag and the accompanying shit for that. I had no idea she’d been able to get stuff like that here, but of course she had the money to purchase whatever she wanted if she asked the right person.
She closes the lid of the toilet and then stands on it, hooking something over the shower curtain rail, she then hangs the IV bag on it, and turns to me. “Get out of the shower.”
I turn off the water. I try to lift off my t-shirt, but I have no power in my arm. I wonder how much damage the bullet’s done. I should have gone to Archer, but the thought of going under for surgery actually makes me gag again. Nothing comes up this time.
“Stop. I’ll cut it off you.” Diletta frowns. “When you said you were sick, what kind of sick?” She gets out a pair of nitrile gloves from her kit and snaps them on. “Is it something life threatening? Do you have trouble clotting? Heart problems?”
“Just a stomach bug.”
“Did you catch that before or after you caught the bullet?”
“Before.”
She points at the toilet. I’m dripping all over the place. Ruining her bathroom with water and blood. “Sit.”
I obey.
She picks up a pair of wicked looking scissors, sharp blades glinting in the light. “Hold still please.”
I don’t even so much as breathe, as she cuts a line clean down the front of my shirt. She’s the one who sucks in a breath when she moves the pieces of my ruined shirt aside.
Not because of the bullet wound and the blood. She hasn’t even looked there yet.
How could she when my whole chest is a mess of twisted, scarred flesh? I’m a nightmare character come to life. It’s so bad, healed so wrong, it looks like a patchwork map of melted flesh. The tattoos cover it, but there’s no escaping what they’re hiding.
Diletta’s eyes tear up and her throat works. Her hands tremble as she reaches for my shoulder, finally inspecting the wound. “How did you burn yourself?”
“With fire.”
She bends me roughly forward. “You don’t say,” she mutters dryly, but then hums with approval. “There’s one hell of a nasty exit wound back here, which is good, unless it’s damaged something. I’m not a specialist, but it looks like you got lucky, other than the idiotic amount of blood you’ve lost and the extreme risk of infection.”
She eases me back and her eyes travel down my chest again. My abs flex under the scarred skin like they’re bracing for impact. I know what I look like. How twisted and mangled I am. At least when I pulled Adolfo Rossi out of that burning car, the flames didn’t reach below my waist. I can’t say that burning my dick off would have been worth endearing myself to the Don, or anyone else.
I expect some level of horror and disgust, despite the fact that Diletta is a trained nurse who has likely seen countless amounts of gore and death, but her eyes are soft. Sad. She can’t block it out.
“I’m so sorry that you had to endure that.”
At least the mangled skin hides the myriad of other scars. I tattooed what I could of my arms. The burns that reached down past my elbow weren’t nearly as bad. Even my upper arms are nothing compared to my chest.
“Scars tell a story,” she whispers as she douses a wad of cotton balls in antiseptic. “Fuck.” She drops the wad and goes for the IV instead. “You should start feeling a lot better once you’re hydrated and now that you’re warmer. I don’t think the blood loss was too severe, so most of the symptoms are probably more from the stomach bug.”
I’m still sitting here soaking, but she keeps her house hot. I’m no longer shivering. No longer numb, either.
I feel it when she presses the alcohol to the exit wound. The burn pretty much imprints itself on my brain. I’ve been shot before. It’s not exactly a good time, but I’d take it over getting burned and having to heal from that any day.
“It’s pretty jagged,” she says. “Exit wounds usually make a mess.” She pauses before wiping gently, cleaning the area. “But then, you probably know that.”
“Why? Because you think I go around shooting people?”
“More like, I doubt this is your first rodeo being the one on the other side of the gun.”
On either side, it wouldn’t be my first time.
“I’m going to have to stitch you up.”
She finishes cleaning me up, dropping the soiled cotton into the garbage can by my feet. Her floor is a pink puddle. A stain. Just like me. On her life.
She takes out a little pack from her kit and tears it open. Holding up the threaded needle she says, “I’m sorry. Ideally, I’d want to numb you up, but I don’t have any lidocaine and using a topical gel will irritate the wound.”
I shrug, “It’s not the first time I’ve been sutured without anesthetic.”
Her hands are gentle, but firm on my shoulder. The first stick of it in my jagged flesh makes me inhale hard. It makes my cock so much harder. It punches against my jeans. It’s not the pain that’s doing it. It’s how close Diletta is. How she’s focused entirely on fixing me. The heat of her coming through her gloves.
She’s too fixated on the wound to notice. “I know it hurts. I’m sorry.”
I grunt.
“You’ve been through worse. I get that too.”
She punctures that needle through my flesh again and again and each time, I feel the echo of that pinch in my dick. I’m so stiff that it’s painful.
“Are you cold?”
“No.”
“Liar.”
When she’s done stitching me, she grabs a towel off the rack and sets it on my lap, right over the bulge of my erection. If she notices, I’ll die, but she’s back to my wound in an instant, bandaging it up.
“You need to see a surgeon for this, or at least a doctor. I don’t think the bullet hit the bone, but if it caught it, you might have bone fragments and there’s a risk they could nick an artery. I’m not saying that to scare you, but so you’ll take this seriously. You’ll also need to monitor it for infection, I don’t have any antibiotics otherwise I’d give you a prophylactic dose.” She stands back, hands on her hips, so sassy that I’m relieved the towel is in a lump in front of me, hiding my raging hard-on. “Please tell me that whoever did this to you was just some punk kid who’s regretting his actions right now, and not an enemy that I really don’t want to get up close and personal with by you bringing them right to my door.”
Her speaking my greatest fear chokes me. Bile craws up my throat. I could be sick again, all over her floor. It would only add to the mess I’ve made, so I swallow convulsively a few times.
“Some punk,” I manage. Tonight, it was. “Club business.”
She cleans up the kit, checks the IV, then strips off her gloves. “Take off those wet clothes, get the towel on, and come to the bedroom. I want you lying down and warm while that IV finishes hydrating you. I’ll get something set up over the bed for it.”
I gape at her, and she blinks back when she catches me staring.
“What? I know you know where everything is.” She shakes her head like she can’t believe that now I’m on the inside and she’s the one who brought me here. “You came to me. I’m going to make sure that you stay alive until someone gets here to pick your ass up. If you die on me, I won’t forgive you for scarring me for life.”
She leaves, shutting the door behind her like my privacy means anything.
The tremors start as I kick off my soiled boots and get out of my jeans. Trying to peel off the wet denim wrenches my shoulder, which is already screaming at me. The IV line tugs at my skin. I want to rip it out, but I resist, knowing how pissed Diletta would be. I’m shaking violently by the time I get the towel wrapped around my waist.
I don’t even recognize myself right now. Weak, pathetic, here.
I keep my wet boxers on and secure the towel at my waist. It’s dwarfed on me, more like a loincloth than a bath sheet. I don’t have to worry about boner problems any longer. I probably don’t have enough blood flow to sustain it.
Diletta is outside waiting when I open the door. She deftly gets the IV bag down and stares at me in that clinical way that nurses have that says she’s going to stand for zero fuckery. I have no choice but to head to her bedroom.
Her bed.
She’s peeled back the covers. She was just sleeping there an hour ago. Her scent clings to the sheets, the pillows. Shampoo. Perfume. Laundry soap. Her clean, perfect skin.
“Get in.”
“Di—” I never nearly slip up. Something wary flashes in her eyes and her lips part, but I quickly recover. “Do you think that’s wise? I’ll bleed on everything.”
“I’ve sutured the wound.”
“I might puke all over the place.”
She points to a trashcan with a white plastic bag by the side of the bed. She hooks the IV bag to the hook she’s already got in the ceiling above the nightstand. Unless I tear this out of myself and bleed all over the pristine furnishings in here, I’m going to have to do as she says.
Slip into her bed.
Cover up my vile, filthy body, my black as sin soul, with her white sheets.
“Gunner. Now.” Her voice is hard. She’s done arguing. She looks half done with me period, dark circles under her eyes, wet spots on her clothes, arms crossed.
I sit down on the edge of the bed. It’s almost too much. I’m shaking. Badly. I try to make it stop, clenching my teeth tight and focusing on getting my shit together, but it only makes it worse. My teeth start chattering against each other.
Diletta’s warm, small hand lands on my good shoulder. She guides me, ostensibly, but her palm flattens out and smooths the smallest circles over my inked back. Thank fuck I never got anything written in Italian. In any language, actually. There’s only the bowed stone angel, wings spread wide. The club’s logo.
A few of my club brothers have the angel on their back or inked on their chest. What better way to belong to something than to etch it into your skin?
That angel might be an identical copy of the club’s logo, but I didn’t get it for them. That angel is another entity completely. If her head was tilted up, she would have had Diletta’s face. It would have freaked her out completely.
More than she already must be.
She should be.
Except… the woman who points at the bed is completely calm. She’s absolutely certain. She’s in control of herself and the situation.
“Do you need some help?” she asks, far more kindly than I deserve.
“I’m not getting in there.”
Her face hardens. “What? Why? What’s wrong?”
“That’s your bed.”
She rolls her eyes. “I know it’s my bed, but I’ll take the couch tonight. Or the chair. I want to make sure you’re okay.”
“No.”
I love the way her lips purse. She’s digging in. She wants me to stay, even though I shouldn’t be here in the first place. I’m her goddamn stalker and she’s just showered me, patched me up, and offered me her bed. That’s more kindness in an hour than I’ve received in an entire lifetime, and it hits hard. I don’t feel so numb at the center of my chest anymore.
“If you don’t get in there right now…” She points at the right side of the bed that she’s readied. “Then you’re out in the rain.”
“That’s cold, Haley Black.”
Fire erupts in the depths of her eyes at the use of her full name, illuminating the golden flecks. There are a few hazel spokes, if you look closely. They’re so vivid right now. “The coldest. That’s me.”
“Still no.”
She sighs, knowing that I know that she wouldn’t turf me out for anything. “Please. Get into bed. I need you to do that for me.”
“I’ll be the one taking the couch.”
“Okay. Couch it is. But just- hold on. Let me get it ready. Wait there, please.”
I’m unnaturally good at following orders. That’s what made me such a good soldier. I was the Don’s guard dog, his feral little pet.
I’m reaching my limits, still trembling. It’s stupid to argue, but I can’t get in that bed. I can’t foul it with the blood on my hands, the black in my veins. It’s bad enough that I’m inside this house already. That I let Diletta touch me.
Diletta’s back, carrying a blanket over one arm. “I have the couch all set up. You’ll need this. I’ll come with you to hook up the IV bag. I can put on a movie for you. Which chick flick is your favorite? I reckon Thelma and Louise would be a good choice, or maybe you’d prefer There’s Something About Mary , so you can take notes on stalking.”
My lips twitch. This woman.
“Let me help you.” She reaches out, trying to take my arm, but I jerk away from her bare hand not wanting her to touch me.
Her jaw juts out. “Fine. Go ahead.”
I have to take slow, shuffling steps. There’s so much black. It’s useful in that I can’t feel any pain from my shoulder other than a dull twinge, but it’s also annoying and embarrassing.
The sharp prick hits my upper arm before I can react. I’m too slow to bat it away. Diletta empties the syringe into me. My eyes fly open, and I give her a glower that could crush a man, but she just glowers back.
“You need to rest. You wouldn’t have let me give it to you otherwise.”
Now she grabs me, her skin hot on mine, both hands around my bicep. She thrusts me to the bed with far more strength than should be contained in her small body. I can already feel whatever she put in there dragging me down. What the fuck has she given me?
As if seeing my panic she says, “It’s just a painkiller. You’re exhausted. It’s going to put you out right away, I knew if I asked you if you needed anything for the pain, you’d be all macho and refuse.”
She’s calm and methodical as she arranges my huge limbs on her crisp, warm sheets. Her touch is sure and gentle.
I try to swing my legs back out in protest, but my limbs are lead. I can’t move.
“Arggh…” That’s as much as I get out before the medically induced darkness takes me away.