“If it’s any consolation, he might not be able to have kids anymore, and I may have run him over with my car a little bit,” she tells me with a half grin.
“A little bit?” I smirk.
She nods.
“That’a girl. I’ll finish the rest, okay.”
She takes a deep breath. “Okay, Hunter.”
I need her to look at me for this. I need her to see that what I’m about to say isn’t comfort or adrenaline or something I’ll take back in the morning. “If Reese hit any woman, I’d hurt him so bad he’d never think about doing it again.” I pause. She nods. “But for laying a hand on you? My firefly?” I hold her gaze. “That suffering is going to make him wish he never even glanced in your direction.”
Her eyes flutter closed. I lean in and rest my forehead against hers.
The truth settles over me, and I can’t hide from it anymore.
I can’t kill him. I need him as my lawyer because I need to stay out of jail. She needs me free. Wyatt needs me free. And I need to fight like hell to be there for both of them.
But I’m going to teach that motherfucker a lesson. And the warning is going to be so clear he’ll feel it in his bones every time he so much as thinks about her name. And once he’s kept me out of prison... I’ll put a bullet through his head. Because that is the punishment he deserves.
Best friend or not. No friend of mine behaves like this and gets away with it.
“Your firefly, hmm?” she mutters against my skin, knocking me back to reality and away from thoughts of strangling my best friend to death.
I chuckle. The sound surprises me. “I think fate is pushing us together for a reason, don’t you?”
“Does that mean you’re my cowboy then?”
I brush my nose against hers. My hand cups her face like she’s the most delicate thing I’ve ever held. “I was yours the first time you looked in my direction, Lola.”
A tiny gasp escapes her. Barely a sound. But I feel it against my lips.
And even though my life is detonating around me. Murder charges, a dead ex, a war I can’t see the edges of. Even then, a piece of it just healed by having her in my home.
I want to be the place that gives her safety.
I’m going to make damn sure I am.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
LOLA
Song- Sin So Sweet,Warren Zeiders
By the time he’s finished cleaning the wound on my hand and wrapping it in a bandage so carefully you’d think he was handling porcelain, the shaking has stopped.
I’m not scared here. The adrenaline has nosedived and left behind an exhaustion so deep it’s settled into my bones.
“Hunter?” I call out, wandering from the living room.
My hip really hurts.
I find him in the kitchen. Standing at the stove with his back to me, stirring a small pan with the kind of concentration most men reserve for engines and power tools.
He’s making me hot chocolate. The real kind. Melted dark chocolate into warm milk in a pan. Just how I like it, though I don’t remember telling him that.
He just gets me. Without having to say the words.
I lean against the doorframe and smile. It’s the first real one in hours.