Just then, July and Wes arrive, and seeing the bag of tools in her hand, I shake my head. “You better not neuter me, girl.” I smile, trying to ease some of the anxiety I see written over her face.
“You probably need to be neutered,” she replies, and I grin before eying the stuff she sets out on the table. “Can I ask how this happened?” she asks softly, pulling the belt loose and the towels away from my shoulder and looking at the wound.
“No,” Wes inserts before I can, pulling out a chair and taking a seat across the table from me.
“You don’t think I have the right to know, when you show up at my house in the early hours of the morning, asking me to stitch up a guy with a gunshot wound, while refusing to take him to the hospital?” She narrows her eyes on him, and he doesn’t even flinch.
“Nothing you need to worry about.” He looks at me, assuring me with his eyes that he’s not going to rat out my girl.
My girl. I smile to myself over the fact I’m thinking of her that way when I barely know her. Not to mention she just shot me.
Wes’s answer clearly pisses July off. She pours some alcohol onto a piece of gauze and begins wiping down the wound as she glares at Wes. “This is the last time I see you,” she tells him with a grimace.
“You already know that’s not happening, July,” my brother says as his jaw tics.
“No.” She shakes her head, getting a new piece of gauze to clean the backside of my shoulder. “I know twice you’ve called me a bitch without cause.” I wince at that, since my mom would skin me alive if she ever heard me call a woman a bitch. She shakes her head again then turns it so her gaze connects with his. “I know you made me feel like crap when you found my cousin in my house.”
“I—” Wes starts, but she cuts him off.
“No, you didn’t even ask; you just jumped to conclusions.” She finishes cleaning my wound then looks at Wes again. “Then you show up at my house and ask me to do you a favor, refusing to tell me anything. So, yes, this is the last time we see each other. I think it’s obvious we have no reason to stay in contact,” she grumbles, and then frowns when she sees me smiling.
“You are so fucked, brother,” I mumble, looking at Wes. He rolls his eyes at me as July starts to thread up the needle. It doesn’t take long to get the wound closed up, and I don’t even flinch as she works on me. Maybe it’s the Jack, or maybe I’m in shock. Hell, it could be a little of both, but by the time she’s finished putting a bandage over the stitched up wound, the sun is beginning to rise.
“Thanks, girly,” I tell her, standing up from the kitchen table, and Wes shoos her off to bed while he and I clean up the mess.
On the drive back to our compound, Wes speaks up. “Correction: I think we’re both fucked, bro.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, quirking a brow at him.
“You’ve had a dreamy-ass look on your face ever since we left Kayan’s place. You so much of a masochist that you’re falling for a girl who shot you? We all know you like it rough, man, but goddamn.” He chuckles.
I can’t hide my smile. “My little kitten has claws,” I say once more, leaning my head back against the headrest and thinking of the little woman who’s filled my every thought since I met her.
3
Kayan
It’s been days since I shot Z. Freaking days. And I can’t get that infuriating man out of my head.
Okay, so he’s really not all that infuriating. But what he turns me into certainly is. I am not some timid little creature who needs to be watched over. I am definitely not the type of woman who allows a man to make her feel small and meek, no matter how tall and gorgeous he is… or how giant his biceps are.
I catch myself sighing dreamily at just… how… giant those damn biceps are, and shake myself out of it.
I’m not that kind of woman. Have never allowed myself to be that way, not even when I was young. I had to build up walls, grow thick skin, because my parents were, and still are, emotionless assholes. All they care about is their image.
On the outside, they are the perfect couple, with their perfect two-story house in the perfect neighborhood, with their perfect daughter, and their perfect freaking pets—a giant salt water tank of exotic fish that impresses anyone who comes over, which they pay someone else to tend to.