Finally, they’re done with me. Sierra emerges from the living room looking less pale, a fresh bandage on her arm. One of theparamedics trails behind her, still trying to convince her to go to the hospital.
“Ma’am, we really recommend?—”
“I’m fine.” Her voice is flat. Exhausted. She glances around the trashed apartment—the bullet holes, the blood on the kitchen floor. “I just want to leave.”
The paramedic looks at me like I’m supposed to talk sense into her. I don’t. She wants out of here, and I’m not about to force her into anything. She’s had enough of that.
“She said she’s fine,” I tell him.
He sighs and hands me a sheet of wound care instructions.
The cops say we can leave. I take Sierra to her bedroom first so she can stuff whatever she needs into a duffle bag.
“Bring anything you can’t live without,” I tell her. “Don’t worry about clothes or toiletries. I’ll buy you whatever you need.”
I just want to get her the fuck out of this apartment.
The police are still processing the scene when we leave. The hallway is full of nosy neighbors, but one hard look from me sends them scattering. I keep my arm around Sierra’s shoulders, tucking her close as we step into the elevator.
The doors slide shut. In the silence, she clears her throat.
“On the bright side,” she says, “at least the bullet holes will distract from the water stain on the ceiling.”
She’s trying. I can hear it—the ghost of her usual warmth, her stubborn optimism fighting to surface. But her voice is too thin, too shaky, and the joke lands flat.
I pull her tighter against my side. She lets me.
“I’m taking you home to rest,” I tell her. “It’s going to be okay. Nothing like this will happen again, Sunshine. I won’t allow it.”
I’m not sure I can even promise something like that. But when her brown eyes meet mine, I can see she believes it.
That’s all that matters.
The drive home is quiet. Not the peaceful kind we share when I’m working in the garage and she’s watching me. Not the easy kind when we’re on the couch, her watching TV while I read.
This silence is heavy. Wrong. And I don’t know how to fix it.
Of course I don’t. All I’m good for is violence.
I shake my head to dispel the thought. Now’s not the time to dwell on my own issues.
I texted Dario before we left the apartment, and when we arrive at my place, his car is already parked out front. I guide Sierra inside.
“I want to rest,” she says quietly.
I take her to the bedroom, pulling back the covers so she can climb in. She looks so small in my bed, so fragile with the blankets pulled up to her chin. I press a kiss to her forehead, and my hatred for Viktor intensifies.
He’s hurting her. Scaring her. Taking away her light.
He’s a snake that needs his fucking head cut off.
I leave the room and walk past Dario in the living room without a word. In the kitchen, I grab a bottle of water and a pack ofpeanut butter crackers from the pantry—the kind Sierra likes—and head back to the bedroom. Dario watches me curiously as I pass him again, heading back to the bedroom.
I don’t explain the urge to take care of her. I don’t fully understand it. It feels natural, this need to make sure she has food and water when she wakes up.
Sierra’s eyes follow me thoughtfully as I place everything on her nightstand. I feel strangely exposed under her gaze.
“You should see your face right now,” she murmurs.
