KIERAN:
Was I dead?
I wasn't sure yet. But if this was the afterlife, it sucked.
Everything ached. Not in the poetic way... no, I mean the sharp, fuck-you-for-surviving kind of pain. My side throbbed like someone had jammed a hot poker into it and decided to stir. My throat was dry, tongue thick. My head, don't even get me started on my head. It felt like I'd been run over by a truck. Twice.
I cracked an eye open.
Ah. No white clouds. No burning flames either.
Just… a room.
A plain, shitty little room.
Faint yellowish light filtered in through dusty curtains. There was a half-dead plant on the windowsill, a suspiciously pink mug beside it that said "Don't Talk To Me Before Coffee", and—was that a pair of panties on the door handle?
Yes. It was. Lacy, purple, probably not washed recently.
Fantastic.
So this was hell.
I exhaled slowly, my ribs creaking in protest. The kind of breath you let out when you realize dying would've been easier than whatever this was.
I took a second, tried to force my brain back online. What the fuck happened?
I was supposed to do a simple check. Routine. Jace was driving. Devon had the location. Everything was fine, until it wasn't. Until they turned on me like wolves. No warning. No explanation. Just bullets. Fucking bitches.
I shot Jace in the face. No hesitation. Devon too, but still got clipped. Right side.
Assholes didn't even land a clean shot. Yet somehow I escaped into the city.
I barely made it out of the car after I crashed. I must've hit a pole or a dumpster or… something. Whatever it was, it almost kissed me goodnight and left me in some alley that smelled like piss and regret.
And then, God.
The voice.
A woman.
All breathy panic and moral compass. She wanted to call the cops.
The cops.
I had to pull a gun on her. Because that's what I needed: a felony and a lecture.
And now somehow I was… here?
In this chaotic little estrogen pit?
I shifted, a groan scraping out of my throat before I could swallow it. The pain stabbed through me like a hot needle. The wound was still there—definitely. But the blood was cleaned, and it'd been wrapped tight. Crude job, but enough to keep me from bleeding out all over her Hello Kitty bedsheets or whatever the hell she had going on here.
I needed Kyle. I needed to get out of here. I needed...
I blinked again.
Someone was next to me.
Not in the bed, thank Christ. But right by it. Curled on the floor like a cat that had been drop-kicked into a breakdown.
It was her.
The dumbass lady.
Curled in a ball, arms around her knees, head slumped down, tilted a little to the side, mouth slightly open. She was snoring. And, drooling on her own wrist.
Unbelievable.
She'd sat there. On the floor. All night. Watching over a half-dead stranger who literally pointed a gun at her. And now she was passed out like a babysitter who gave up halfway through the night.
Her hair was a mess. Her sweatshirt was hanging off one shoulder. There were bags under her eyes. She looked like someone who cried during sad commercials and collected weird coffee mugs.
What the hell was she playing at?
No one was this stupid.
Or maybe she was. Just… unhinged enough to help a bleeding man because her conscience told her to.
Or she had some other angle. Maybe she was waiting for me to pass out again so she could rob me.
Joke's on her. I didn't even have a damn wallet.
No, wait, I was starting to think like an idiot too.
I reached out, almost on instinct. Just to touch her face. Just to see if she'd flinch.
Her skin looked soft. Warm. Normal.
Then,
BEEP BEEP BEEP.
The alarm on her phone exploded like a bomb in the silence.
She jolted up like she'd been electrocuted, flailing slightly, eyes wide and panicked and confused and...
She saw me.
I froze.
She blinked.
Everything in me tensed.
And I knew this was about to get very interesting.
I watched, amused, as panic bloomed across her face like a fucking weed. Her gaze dropped instantly, to my hand, still halfway to her cheek.
She scrambled back like I'd lit a match under her ass, knocking over a half-empty water bottle and nearly face-planting into the wall in the process.
"Y-You're—oh my God—you're alive!"
She said it like it was some sort of miracle.
I blinked.
No shit?
"I thought—I thought you died! I mean, you weren't waking up and I checked your pulse, like, twice, but then I thought maybe I messed up and you were dead and I was just too dumb to realize and now I was gonna have to turn myself in or go to jail or something and they'd think I killed you—" she rambled, hands flailing, voice climbing into that high-pitched, breathless octave people hit when they were half a step from total breakdown.
I stared at her.
She kept going.
"I mean, I didn't do anything! I just, I tried to clean you up and stop the bleeding, and then I sat here and watched in case you like… I don't know, died again or something—"
Jesus.
How much air did she have in those lungs?
I raised a brow, waited for her to finally shut the hell up, and when she did, heaving slightly, eyes wild, I let the silence hang for a beat longer before deadpanning:
"…Are you done?"