I ran my mouth, he got angrier, and all the while, some common thieves that had been trailing Johnny busted in to try to nab the shipment.
Thisis why you don’t go alone.
One of the men got the jump on me, smashed his fist against my face—hence the swollen, throbbing cheek now—and was about to do it again like a fucking maniac, but I swept his feet from under him before proceeding to shoot him in the chest. The second man, seeing the fate of the first, ran before I could get him.
Meanwhile, Johnny D was hiding behind the crate like a coward, willing to let me face off against two menaloneto save his ass.
Nate and Leo showed up before I could beat Johnny to a pulp for being a little bitch.
They managed to deescalate the situation (Nate’s strong suit), but by then, the damage was already done. Though I’m sure there’s nothing broken in my face, there’s not a world where I don’t have a nasty bruise across my cheek and under my right eye for a couple weeks.
“Johnny wouldn’t have been able to really hurt me, why are you freaking out?”
“Hedidhurt you, Mary! And now your monster husband is going to kill me, and—you know what? I’m going to kill you first.”
I chuff. “You couldn’t.”
“I’ve killed before,” he reminds me, which is true enough. He landed the fatal shots to Cillian last year and earned my forever respect for it. Hasn’t killed again since, though, and I hope it can stay that way.
He’s got a tender heart, he doesn’t need it all sullied by so much death. It’s why we keep him as back up on drops to show him we value his help in our illegal endeavors without putting him in too much danger. Usually very little to go wrong.
Today was an anomaly.
An avoidable anomaly, I will admit. Johnny wouldn’t have pulled that shit if I had the guys with me and if he hadn’t, we would have been on our guard to get the punks who wanted a quick payout.
“It’s like you have a death wish. Do you really care about your life so little?”
“Nate,” I snap, loud enough to halt his rant, but his shoulders are still hitched up to his ears like he’s pissed. He was worried, I know. He was scared. I hate being scared, too.
I soften. “I’m sorry. Okay?”
He doesn’t accept my apology, but he doesn’t yell at me any more as we pull up to the curb in front of the building. I can see the night doorman, Jean, through the glass doors at his deskand sigh thinking about him inevitably messaging Maxim the moment he sees my face.
I’d call him a traitor, but he’s worked for Maxim for years. I’m the new one here.
“I’ll be more careful,” I promise.
“No more going into shit alone,” he says, and I nod. “You know better. You don’t have to do everything on your own.”
“Yeah.”
Stiffly, I reach out and pat his arm. Nate and I have spent lots of time together in the last year, even more since he and Ness got married, but we do not hug. I don’t hug many people, and especially not Nate.
But he’s obviously distraught, so I offer a lopsided sort of smile that I hope looks assuring but believe probably just looks like a wince.
“Okay, I’m going,” I say, cutting the moment off and getting out of the car. I’m about to shut the door behind me when Nate calls my name. “Hm?”
“You’re not invincible, okay? You don’t have to be.” The first part is obvious, the shiner on my face affirms the fact, but it’s my instinct to reject the latter. It’s a luxury to believe that you can be fragile, that someone will be there to pick you up if you break.
I wave and click the door of Nate’s Prius shut.
As expected, Jean smiles pleasantly at me, and then does a horrified double take when he sees I’m holding a bag to my swollen face.
“Goodnight, Jean,” I say, before he can ask about it, and rush to the elevator. The whole ride up I close my eyes and say tiny prayers to whoever might listen that Maxim won’t be home, but, of course, he is, waiting with his phone in hand in the entryway of the apartment, a stricken expression marring his perfect face.
Maxim doesn’t even say goodbye to the person on the line, just hangs up wordlessly as he takes me in. He looks sodistraught by the state of me that I feel a foreign wobble about myself. That’s the only way I really know how to describe it, an unsteadiness in my chest as he bridges the short distance between us and takes my face so tenderly in his hands. He gently swipes his large fingers down my forehead, under my chin, searching for the extent of the wounds.
There’s a burning in the backs of my eyes, and I blink hard until it subsides.
