Chapter 23
Vaughn
There’s a sudden impact ofno sensation.
Numbness prickles and spreads, washing over my skin.
I know I’m shot. I know I got her out of the way, but she still could have gotten hit. I tried to get between her and the gun, I tried. “Claire,” I call out to her. My voice is a garbled mess. Shit, that bastard better not have hit me in any place important. I’m still moving, so it can’t be that bad. Let’s hope his aim is for shit.
Pins and needles tingle and heat, then turn to fire.
“Claire!” I call out again. My arm burns like a motherfucker, it’s like someone is rubbing glass shards over my bone—or tattooing into every inch of my body at once. “Claire!” I shout again. I just need to see if she’s okay.
She kneels beside me, pulling at my shirt, trying to rip it over my head. I like the fact she wants my shirt off, even though I know it’s not for a reason I’m smiling about. “Why are you smiling like that?” she cries.
“You’re getting me naked.” The room spins and I feel a bit nauseous. The shirt is warm and wet against my skin.
“We need to stop the bleeding,” Claire’s telling someone. Her voice is too shaky, I don’t like how she sounds. She’s worrying over me. Maybe the fucker did have good aim.
“Where…where am I bleeding?” I ask, drunkenly.
Her eyes are darting all over me, and I know I’m not going to like her answer. “It’s okay, Vaughn. You’re going to be okay.”
Liar. Liar. Pants on fire.
“Areyouhurt?” I rasp. It’s all I care about—not me, not the money—I need to know she’s okay.
“I’m fine. I’m fine. Just stop bleeding, Vaughn,” her face is too pale, but those eyes, though, so damn blue. Striking. It’s like getting hit by lightning.
“I believe I might have jumped in front of a bullet for you,” I grunt in pain. It’s like blisters under my skin, aching and ripping my flesh. The pain ebbs and flows, like waves.
“Yeah,” she sobs, “you did.”
“Oh, babe, don’t cry. It’s got to mean something, Claire.” Before anything else happens, I need her to know exactly how I feel. I have to tell her what I want, what I always wanted. “Wait, wait…where’s Matteo?” Does that bastard still have the gun? What if he shoots again? What if he hits me in the head and I can’t think? Six times seven is forty-two. The square root—I don’t even care. “Where’s Matteo?”
She lifts her hand and there’s a gun in it. She points the weapon behind her, gesturing to a heap on the ground. I wonder if he’s dead and how it happened. Did he shoot himself? How did Claire get his gun? Did she shoot him? If I wasn’t so messed up, I think I’d be very turned on right now.
“I think I knocked him out,” she whispers. She’s got the sleeve of my shirt wrapped around my arm and my ribcage. She’s squeezing my arm so tightly fireworks light up my skin. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she chants, “I need to stop the blood…I got to keep it inside you.”
“Claire, if we don’t get out of this alive—”
“Don’t finish that sentence! I’m stopping the blood. Chloe called 911. You’re going to be fine.” She’s crying, tears and mascara trail down her cheeks. “You’re going to be fine. And you’ll still be rich, too.”
“I don’t want that money either,” I whisper. A throbbing coldness creeps through my insides. “I don’t want anything…or anyone…but you, Claire.”
She wipes at her nose and nods her head. “You stop bleeding and you got me, okay? You got me.”
“For always,” I demand.
“Forever,” she whispers, then touches her lips to mine. I close my eyes and let her kiss me.
When I open them again my mother is sitting next to me. What the hell happened to Claire? You can’t just kiss a beautiful girl then open your eyes and see your mother’s blotchy, pinched-up face. That’ll fuck a guy up for life. I try to sit up, but I can’t. I’m strapped down.What in the actual fuck?
There’s an IV attached to my hand, and an emergency technician, who looks suspiciously like Abraham Lincoln, beard and all, bends over me. From the way the surface I’m lying on bounces, I figure I’m in an ambulance. Good, my brain still seems to work. “Where’s Claire?” I ask. My voice sounds like a stranger’s.
“Don’t worry about her, she’s with Chloe following us to the hospital,” my mother says through tightly clenched teeth.
I look at her closely. She’s either worried or really needs to use the bathroom. Shit, I think I’m high. “Don’t try to talk,” she says, patting the stretcher.
