Chapter Fourteen – Zane
I groaned with pain as I extended my leg over the bathtub, the blood still dripping from the bullet wound in the back of my thigh. It could have been a lot worse than this, and I knew it, but it was far from pleasant.
My jeans were frayed around the entrance point to the bullet. I was lucky it hadn’t hit an artery—a few inches either side, and I could have been dealing with something a lot more serious. I pulled off my jeans and ran the water in the bath until it was at least slightly warm, then sank my bad leg into the water to clean it while I figured out what in the name of holy fuck I was supposed to do next.
Everything that happened since I’d woken up had been a mess. A complete and utter mess. From the moment she had woken me, with the shaft of light through the window, I had known something was wrong—but her getting me out, insisting that I ran? That wasn’t what I’d expected. Even with everything that had happened between us, I figured she would turn me over to the Dogs the first chance she got. They were her people, after all.
I had sped across the city, keeping a close eye on my rearview mirror, expecting to see Dogs swarming me the first chance they got. I didn’t know how much of a chance I stood of getting out of there alive, but none of them seemed to give chase, much to my relief. I doubted I had shaken them off completely—they seemed like the types who would come and track me down and make me pay one way or another, but for now, at least, I could breathe a sigh of relief.
I had checked into this dingy hotel with the last of my money. I never had much in the way of savings, and I had been relying on what I was pulling with the Dogs to get me what I needed to survive. I had half-expected the hotel to turn me away on the spot when they’d seen the state I was in, but the receptionist had just looked me up and down, then slid a key across the counter toward me with a bored expression on her face. I figured they saw a whole lot worse than me, all things considered.
I had stopped by a pharmacy on the way here to get some stuff to tend to my wound, and as I cleaned off the tweezers I had purchased under the slightly scuffed tap, I couldn’t help but think back to the time she had tended my wound for me. When we had first arrived at my brother’s place and she had been so careful cleaning off the blood from the glancing blow I’d received from the knife, she was so tender with me. She touched me like she really cared. I couldn’t recall the last time someone had made me feel that way.
I still didn’t know why she had done what she had done. She had gotten me out of there when she had no reason to even try to help me. Even in the midst of everything we had shared, I had thought it was just a play for her, just a game, something she was doing to pass the time until she could return to her real life.
But what she had done today, that proved to me that it had been real. And real... real wasn’t something I had been prepared for. I didn’t know how to feel about it.
But I knew what I had to focus on right now, and that was getting this piece of bullet out of my leg, where it had shattered into my skin. Not a bad wound, but it smarted like hell. Once I was satisfied the tweezers were clean, I turned my attention to the wound in my thigh, twisting it around so I could get a better look at it. It wasn’t going to be easy to do this myself, but there was no way I could afford to go to a hospital to get it removed. Besides, they would want to know what had happened to get me shot in the first place, and I didn’t exactly want to go spilling all of that to them. Neither I nor the Dogs were persona grata in the real world.
I pressed on both sides of the wound to try and draw the speck of the bullet that had embedded itself beneath my flesh a little closer to the surface, and in amongst the gore, I could see a glint of metal. I poised the tweezers over the hole and took a deep breath, trying to prepare myself for what was coming next.
Gritting my teeth, I shoved the tweezers into the wound and moved them around until I had managed to get a grip on the bullet. A shock of pain ran the length of my leg, and I bit down on my teeth, keeping the yelp that wanted to escape me from spilling out. The last thing I needed was for anyone else to know what was going on here. God only knew what kind of connections the Dogs had across this city. They wouldn’t be satisfied with just shooting me in the leg, I knew that much.
I pulled the bullet out and tossed it onto the floor below in a puddle of blood, then pushed my leg beneath the warm water to clean it and soothe some of the pain. I knew I should have been focused on getting it covered, but right now, I just needed something to take the edge of.
As I breathed hard, trying to bring myself back down to Earth, I couldn’t help but let my mind wander to her again. What would she want, after all of this? Now that she was out of my grip, would she change her mind about me? Would she decide that I was nothing more than an asshole who had taken her and used her? Would she want revenge? Would she be the one to lead the Dogs to me, to destroy me...?
I didn’t know. But I could still remember, all too clearly, the tone in her voice when she’d urged me to leave, begging me to get out of there, like it was the only thing that mattered to her. I wasn’t sure she would have been able to fake that. Or to forget it so soon after what we had shared together.
I pulled my leg from the water and grabbed the bandages from beside me. I wrapped a generous length around my thigh to stem the bleeding. It hurt like a motherfucker, but at least it was done.
But everything else? Shit, everything else was just beginning. And I didn’t know what kind of chance I stood against the Dogs.
Or how I was going to do it without Chelsea by my side.