“Yeah?” I answer.
“Got a message from King. You’re in charge of his baby. Get one scratch on her, and he will hunt you down. You will not be able to hide if she gets a scratch… and he will make it hurt.”
“Where?”
“Precinct Six. Corner of West and…”
“Yeah. I get it.”
“Take the truck and make sure you’ve got blankets. Not one fucking scratch.”
The line goes dead in my ear. Which works. I don’t need endless fill in words. I don’t need much actually. Especially not this.
Grabbing a hoodie and nabbing my sunglasses and wallet, I’m climbing in the truck within a few moments. The gate is already open when I drive past, the prospect on duty waving me through.
I take a sharp right coming out the gate, instead of going straight, but at this time of day the traffic downtown is going to suck ass. Once I get driving at a steady speed, I turn on the scanner, listening for a hint of what is going on. It’s pretty fucking strange that I get called out. King has an army of men at his disposal. During the week, he leaves me be, which works well for me. I don’t get involved in any of his business, but that doesn’t stop him from getting involved in mine. It’s lucky he called today, tomorrow I leave for an intensive training camp that promises to be nothing but painful.
Of course, today’s the fucking day that my radio gives up. King told me there was water sitting in the wire, I told him to jam his fucking comments up his ass. The rest of the drive in, I spend the time arguing with King in my head. I can even hear his deep derisive laughter as I try to counter that I was busy and was going to fix the wires when I got back. Sitting at a set of lights, I realise how pointless it will be trying to win another argument against him. I should just man up and concede that once again he’s been proven right by something neither of us did, but by something I did not do, which is trust.
It’s not trusting him I have an issue with. I can’t trust myself.
From the first memories I have, I remember being able to see situations and people’s motivations as plain as fucking day. I’d walk into a room and be able to point out the usual cast of characters—the traitor, the lover, the dreamer, the realist. I could read a play before the person even thought it through. But now, I barely believe in myself. Well, that’s not quite right. I just have a small issue with faith.
Checking on the clock on the dash because King does not like to be kept waiting, I throw the truck in park and am out of the cabin without a backwards glance. I pull on my hoodie, hiding my Fallen white t-shirt, because the judgemental fucks at the police station are not the kindest when it comes to the 1%s.
Shoving open the door with enough force to slam the door against the wall behind it, the fucking thing hits me in the back when I come face to face with King’s baby. And there goes my fucking faith in myself again.
I was not sent to pick up King’s ‘baby’, I was sent to pick up King’s baby. And the woman who rewrote my entire life.
Raney.
Her arms are wrapped around her, she looks smaller than I remember. She’s pale as fuck compared to the way she used to glow. Trust me, I’ve got a library of images of her stored in my head so I know all her looks. I’ve pretty much obsessed about her for the last forty-eight months, two weeks and two days. Her clothes look like she’s been dragged through bushes and that sets my teeth grinding.
It’s like something in her shakes her out of her rocking and she looks up but not at me. Jesus-fucking-Christ she steals the air out of my lungs.
Instinctively, unthought out, unplanned, you fucking name it, my feet take me to her.
And then she must realise something’s different because her jade eyes rise like the morning sun… yeah, all of a sudden I’m fucking filled with a thousand extra and unnecessary words to describe her.
No shit, it’s like every part of me comes back online after being in deep, deep hibernation for the last fourteen hundred and fifty-six days.
“Colt?” she asks. Though let’s be real, to me her question sounds more like an exhale. Her hand hovers in the air as she looks like she’s waking from a dream, stuck in that state of limbo where you wonder what is real and if you’re still imagining.
And then I know how fucking real the situation is when I am saturated by her scent. Jesus, it’s like I am standing in a tunnel where the walls are made of wisteria flowers.
I’ve been obsessed with those tiny blue, pink, and indigo flowers for years. I even tried growing them. I definitely walk into florists whenever I see them just to fill my scent bank back up, but now I realise how fucking watered down all the other wisteria in the world is. Raney is wisteria, she embodies it too. The scent wafting from her is concentrated tuberose, jasmine, sweet-pea, and freesia; unique, heady, sultry.
“Puck,” I bark back absently.
I left Colt the second I left her hospital room. How could anyone go back to the way life was before I had to walk away from the most incredible person, the only person who knew me better than myself? From that moment on, who I was no longer existed.
“Fuck you too, then,” she snaps, as she climbs to her feet.
I’m struck on the spot, completely torn between defending myself and obsessing over every part of our interaction. Storing her voice, how she looks, the way she smells, in my memory in case I don’t ever see her again.
Her shoulder clips against my arm as she storms off. Turning, I expect to see her already out the door, and my gut seizes when I see her limping so heavily she’s not even six feet away yet. Her arms aren’t wrapped around her defensively, she’s in fucking pain. And I had my head up my ass making everything about me.
“Far out, Raney, hold up! You misheard, I said Puck, not fuck. Let me help.” I go to offer her an arm to lean on but quickly divert the offer of help to holding the door when the look on her face is pretty evident about what she thinks of me touching her.
