Smith.
My eyes slid to him, and he stood off to the side with his pistol pointed at me.
“You don’t want to fuck with me!” I screamed, my hand shaking and tears streaming down my face. “I’ll fucking kill you!”
A single gunshot cried out, ripping through my side. My eyes bulged. Tears stopped. The impact jolted me back and knocked the air from my lungs. I fell back against the wall, the gun heavier in my hand and gravity dragging me down.
Mia, my baby … I grasped at every ounce of strength to pull myself up against the wall and waved the gun in Smith’s direction, refusing to stop until they were all dead.
Desperate, I pulled the stiff trigger, and a thunder sliced through the air as a bullet tore through the center of Smith’s forehead, blood painting the wall behind him.
A second wind jolted a rush inside me like a shot of adrenaline. Despite the burning, the heart-wrenching pain materializing, and the warm blood seeping from the bullet hole at my side, I stormed over to Dex.
He slowly shook his head, panic invading his senses, and before he could get a word out, I slammed the base of the gun into the side of his head.
Dex fell back into the couch, and I gripped his black hair, yanked his head back, and dug the tip of the barrel under his chin.
“Alright, I get it,” Dex’s voice shook with his palms in the air. “I get it, Oliver.”
Flashes of Mia and I went off like fireworks in my head. The first time our eyes met in the mess hall, her small smile in the bathroom when we first talked, the late-night rendezvous’, chasing her in the library, reading to her, the lovemaking, the fighting for each other, the tears, her golden eyes, the paper roses, the dancing, the stars, the sunrises, proposing, our drunken nights, the wedding … Falling into this maddening love that stayed forever and ever …
“No,” I wiped my face into my sleeve and cocked my head, “you don’t fucking get it.”
Then I pulled the trigger.
“Oliver!” Adrian shouted, my eyes weighing heavier and heavier. He’d taken off my black hoodie, and I had it pressed against my side, but it wasn’t helping. My white tee soaked in blood. It was everywhere. The color of rage. The color of love.How is it possible?“Hang in there, mate. We’re almost to the hospital.”
“No,” I croaked, shaking my head. With the gun still in my grip, I clenched both my eyes from the white blistering pain, my body begging to pass out. But, I knew Mia. She was waiting up for me. “Take me home.”
“You’ll never make it,” Adrian nervously explained, whipping the car to the right, and my head dropped over the passenger side window.
I lifted the gun over my thigh and pointed it at him. “Take me the fuck home,” I seethed through gritted teeth. We couldn’t be more than ten minutes out. I could make it to her.
“Fuck, Oliver!” Adrian slammed his palm against the steering wheel once before he shook out his hands and released a drawn-out breath. “I’ll take you home, but I know you, and you won’t fucking shoot me,” his voice shook, and his hand came down over the gun as he took it from my clenched fist, “You have to trust me, mate.Blindly. It’s your turn to trust me blindly, Oliver. You hear me?”
Nodding, my hand relaxed over my thigh as Adrian drove with his knees, wiping down the gun with his shirt. Going well over a hundred miles per hour, he dropped the gun inside the door pocket and snatched his mobile phone from the cup holder, punching in numbers before bringing it to his ear. Adrian’s wide eyes flicked over to me. “Yeah. This is Officer Adrian Taylor,” he turned his frightened gaze back to the road, “I’m undercover with SC and O ten. I have a twenty-three-year-old male in critical condition. Gunshot wound to the abdomen. I need an air ambulance right away …”
My brows pinched together. “A?” It hardly came out against the pain.
Adrian cocked his head back to me as he continued into the phone, “My location?” his breathing was heavy and voice shaken as he looked over my condition, and I squeezed my eyes closed as we hit a turn. “The Masters cottage in Surrey …”
The rest drifted as I shifted to my side, cringing from the pain, and with two fingers, I pulled out Mia’s Christmas gift and clutched it into the palm of my hand. My head rocked against the window, and I turned my gaze to the sky, pinning it on the iridescent moon for the rest of the way.
In record time, Adrian pulled outside my cottage. My insides were on fire. The pain was unbearable, and every slow and short step toward our front door felt like a mile as our Christmas tree glowed through the window. Adrian shouted from behind me before the car door slammed, but I kept going with her gift clutched inside my fist, probably ruined. But she had to know.
Once I reached the front steps, I shoved my bloody hand into my pocket and pulled out my keys. After a few attempts, the door opened, and I collapsed against the door frame.
Then there she was, coming from our bedroom and appearing before me in her red pajamas and her hair a wild mess.
Her presence, it was overwhelming.
I dropped my arm to my side.
Mia.
I only saw her, and she saw me.
Horror flashed in her eyes, but I couldn’t wipe the smile from mine.
