18
Kane
If Cocaine Doesn’t Kill You…
Sunlight burns through my eyelids and sears my retinas. Trying to escape it, I turn my face away and groan at the ball of fire sitting low in my gut. A vomit-coated tongue and furry teeth play havoc with my gag reflex as I come toward consciousness.
Fuck Abel.
Fuck that asshole for cutting his coke and testing it on us.
Grunting, I lift my legs to test them. So fucking heavy. So weak.
Blinking away the heaviness in my eyes, I turn to my side and drag my legs up the bed until my knees touch my chest.
I haven’t felt this bad since I had the flu two years ago.
A single man with no folks and no woman, I was left to die all alone until Jay turned up all fresh faced and stupid grins. He brought soup and declared we were basically fuckin’ homos. He fed me, helped me shower, then went out and fucked away his ‘gay-ness’until he could come back the next day and do it all over again.
I should call him.
He ingested the same coke I did.
I bring my hand up and rub it along my stubbled jaw. Licking my dry lips, I pray for a bottle of water, just a sip. Just enough to wash the dead animal from my mouth.
I feel her eyes on me – the blazing glare burning into my already tender head. When I turn, I come eye-to-eye with pure fucking rage.
Her blonde hair is messy and knotty as she sits with her back against my apartment door, her knees pulled high as her shaking hands point a gun right at me.
“Blondie…” My voice cracks. “Hey, beautiful.”
“I’ll kill you, Bishop.” Her usually plump lips press into a thin line that promise death. Tears slide along her cheeks as the shaking in her hands intensifies. “I kept you alive last night just so I could kill you when you woke.”
I drop my pain filled legs over the side of my bed and work to sit up. “Blondie.” Clearing my throat, I clamp my eyes shut until the room stops spinning. “Can you come over here? That’s a long way to walk, and I dunno if I can do it without falling on my face.”
“No.” Lifting the gun higher, she aims at my chest rather than my knees. The shaking intensifies to the point even my foggy brain stops and realizes she might actually shoot me. “No, Kane. I can’t come over there. My ass is numb, my legs are numb, my hands won’t stop shaking. I kept you from dying approximately six-hundred times last night. I stuck my fingers in your throat because you were choking. I held you while you had seizures, and I’m pretty sure I saw your brain leaking out of your ears. Nobody has ever traumatized me the way you did, Kane. Nobody has ever made me worry like you did, and that includes the guy who had his fingers in my pussy two nights ago.”
The shaking in her furious voice hurts my gut more than the poison ever did.
“Jess…” Rubbing a hand over my eyes, I shake my head and pray I don’t vomit anymore. “I’m sorry. I didn’t do it on purpose.”
“Your fever broke about four this morning. And when my eyes were finally closing, when I was sure that I’d wake again if I heard you choke, someone was trying to break into your apartment. It’s now,” she checks the phone by her leg, “nine. I’ve been sitting against this door for five hours, because your pots and pans weren’t fucking working!”
She climbs to her feet on shaky legs, drawing my attention to her pale flesh. My eyes run up her body – her feet, her legs, an inch of sexy belly.
Then I stop on the still pointed gun.
“Actually…”Poke the beast. Go for it, Kane. Because obviously you aren’t done dying.“The pans aren’t there tostopanyone from coming in. They’re there tolet me knowif someone’s trying to get in. So really, they did their job.”
“I heard dozens of gunshots overnight.”
Lifting my head, I meet her gaze with a single eye. “Yeah? That happens a lot. Lots of bad people in this area.”
“Yep.” She takes a step closer. “Gunshots. People knocking on doors. I was offered three separate whore jobs in the five hours I sat at the door.”
“You’re very beautiful. I’m not surprised.”
“Pretty sure I heard a baby being born. A woman being raped. Die Hard the movie on someone’s TV three blocks away.”