I was about to faint. I could already see it in my head.
“Do it,” repeated James more angrily.
I stopped breathing when Austin pushed the gun into James’s cheekbone, leaving an indent.
“I’ll do it sooner or later, Hunter. I’ll kill you with your own gun, asshole. You’re wasting your time trying to find it, but you know what? I always have it on me. Dick. I’m giving you five minutes to get out of my house.”
“Five minutes?” asked a woman.
The girl who’d answered the door had come into the bathroom a little while ago, but I was so upset that I hadn’t even noticed.
“We’ll give them time to recover,” sneered Austin. Then he looked at James’s silhouette.
“From what?” the redhead asked him.
“This,” groaned the guy, before punching James in the face and chest as the shadow of the gun pointed at his head loomed above. I was speechless. Ethan passed me and left with the girl, flashing a grin so horrifying that it gave me goose bumps. I felt myself tear up when I saw James’s silhouette rolled up in a ball in a corner.
Come on, June, now’s not the time to cry.He was a pile of blood. I started hyperventilating.
“Jesus Christ, you’re bleeding so much. Where’d he hit you? How is that possible?”
I was starting to panic.
“June.”
“Yeah?”
“My hand’s bleeding, the first wound.”
I saw a first-aid kit above a sink. I ran to grab it, then opened it. The smell of hydrogen peroxide stung my nostrils.
“Stay still.”
I tried to get a clean shot, but James kept moving his head to avoid my touch. I couldn’t even look him in the eye. I felt guilty. William and Jackson must’ve heard the commotion in the bathroom because they came in.
“What happened?”
“Nothing,” James and I answered in unison.
I started disinfecting his lip. He groaned softly and intermittently, then I took his hand and tried to wipe the back of it, but Will crouched down and literally ripped the cotton ball from my hands.
“I’ll do it,” he said, making me back away.
Jackson looked to the side, and I understood that it was time for me to step aside.
“Did he say something to you? Did you talk to him?” asked James.
“They’re inflexible. They want to hold on to the gun. They solved the issue like we asked them to, and the fact that we’re starting to piss them off and bursting into their house isn’t a good thing. He knows he has two shitheads for sons, but we better not show up at the club again. Especially you. He said you lied to him.”
“What the fuck would I have said? I wasn’t the one who forced him to use that fucking gun.”
“James, if Taylor’s dad realizes it’s not at his house and reports it missing, it could be a problem for Austin. They won’t let him off scot-free in that case,” Will explained calmly.
“I’ll do it in a way that he won’t notice.”
“How, James?” Jackson said, worried. “Taylor hates you one day and not the next.”
“Well, he’ll make her not hate him anymore. You know how to do that, right, James?” William tried to sound convincing, but I started feeling a lump in my throat.
