I train my eyes toward the gun lying on the floor, smoke still faintly curling out of it.
“Don’t fucking lie to me.” My voice is harsh, cutting. I barely recognize it. “You shot me. You aimed the gun at me, you pulled the trigger, you shot me.”
He edges closer to me, and I manage to pull back, although every inch of my skin aches.
“Are you hurt?” he murmurs.
“Yes.” I choke out the words. “Yes, because you fucking shot me, you psycho. It hurts everywhere.Everywhere. Go away, Quill. Please go away.”
I don’t want to die like this, helplessly bleeding out in front of the man who destroyed me.
But he doesn’t listen. He doesn’t respect the desperate plea breaking from my mouth. He never does, because he’s a monster.
He closes the distance between us, and I’m powerless to do anything about it. I’m in so much pain.
“Where does it hurt, cricket?”
I shake my head, willing him to go away, because how can I resist him as he kneels down over me? When his hand is stroking my hair, the other one toying with the hem of my shirt as if he’s hesitating to pull it up?
“Where does it hurt?” he insists.
“Everywhere. I don’t know. Everywhere.”
“On your stomach?” He looks down at my hands, which I’m just now realizing are pushed over my belly, like they’re trying to prevent the wound there from being ripped apart by gravity.
“Yes. My stomach. Yes.”
My voice breaks and I realize I’m crying too. Quill pulls away my hands then lifts my shirt, more gently than I would have thought possible for him. I gasp, startled, when he lays his warm hand over my skin.
“There’s nothing here.”
“Stop lying. There is. It hurts so bad. You shot me.”
I sniff loudly, feeling the snot run down from my nose, but I’m far past embarrassment.
“My chest hurts. My chest hurts too. Everywhere hurts.”
I’m sobbing louder than ever, convinced I’m dying. Convinced I’m bleeding out from my wounds. Because Quill shot me. I know he did.
I remember everything.
I remember him walking in after that Devil—Logan Colt—took me. I thought Quill had come to save me. Instead he aimed hisgun at me.
That’s when I stammered out the words I’d never said to anyone but Josh. Which makes no sense, because why the hell would I tell some random guy I just met about one of the two most traumatic things that have ever happened to me?
But I guess telling Josh allowed me to break through the layers and layers of silence that had built up inside me since that moment. When Quill aimed his gun at me and I looked into the barrel of certain death, the words came tumbling out of me.
It was pointless, anyway. He already knew. He’s the one who told them to do it, wasn’t he?
Only I’m not dead. Not yet. I’m bleeding out from somewhere, I’m sure of it, but I’m still not dead.
And my killer is crouching over me, one hand gently on my stomach, his other hand gingerly undoing the top buttons of my shirt so he can examine my chest.
“You don’t have any wounds,” he says softly. “None that I can see.”
“You’re lying. You’re lying. It hurts everywhere. You shot me.”
His fingers are back to weaving their way through my hair.