Chapter 35
THIRTY-FIVE
COLE
L ana ignores me—because of course she does—and starts pulling shit out of her pockets. I use the flashlight on my phone to see what she’s doing more clearly and see her throwing some stuff on the ground. A few receipts, three knives, a condom, a mini first aid kit, a lighter and… lighter fluid?
“Are you fucking Mary Poppins or something? How much shit do you fit in your pockets?” I grunt.
She smirks. “Just the essentials.”
She sprays the bodies on the ground with the lighter fluid, and rather than being quick about it, she pauses on one of the guys who were a few feet away from the fight, staring down at him with a frown on her face.
“You know him?”
“I knew all of them, but he was someone I would have actually considered a friend.”
Okay… some friend he was.
She shakes herself out of whatever thought loop she was stuck in and pours the rest of the fluid on him before grabbing the lighter.
She lights it up and throws it down on the guy she was fighting—Dominic, I think she called him—before taking a couple of steps back so she’s standing beside me.
I didn’t notice it at the time, but she must have trailed the fluid between them because as soon as Dominic’s body goes up in flames, a line of fire reaches the other two guys, and they burn up too.
She crouches and begins picking up everything she dropped to the floor while searching her pockets. I grab the gun that was discarded on the floor and hand it to her.
“Now what?” I ask.
“Now we leave.”
“Leave? We just leave them here where anyone could find them?”
She sighs, and I know she’s got to be tired and in pain.
“Look, Cole. I lit them up to get rid of any of our DNA. These guys are professionals, they don’t have fingerprints or dental records or anything that could ever identify them, so when they’re found, the cops will be running around like headless chickens trying to figure out who they are, and they’ll never be able to identify us as being here.
There’s nothing to worry about, okay? Trust me. This isn’t my first time.”
That really isn’t as reassuring as she thinks it is.
“Come on. If we follow this trail by the river, it leads to the woods near your cottage,” she mutters, and that makes me pause.
It’s really that fucking easy, huh?
“How do you know that?” I ask as I follow her between the trees, still using my phone to light up the ground .
“Because I’ve walked it before,” she admits, and the pieces click into place.
“That night, when me and Logan found you in the trees near our place, it’s because you came this way, isn’t it?”
“Yup. Now stop your yapping and get walking. I need a shower.”
The walk back to campus is silent other than the snapping of twigs as we walk, and it doesn’t take as long as I thought it would to get back to the cottage. I’m about to cross over the backyard to enter my place when I realize that Lana is still walking.
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“I’m going home.”
Not on my watch.
“The fuck you are. You’re going to get your ass into my place.”
A growl rumbles from her. “I’m not in the mood tonight, Cole.”
“Oh stop with your bullshit. You look like death, and you’re covered in blood. What’s going to happen when someone sees you like that in your building, huh? The least you can do is shower here before heading back to your dorm.”
She stands only inches from me and crosses her arms over her chest. She’s glowering at me, but that’s nothing new, and I know she’s internally battling with herself on what to do, so I make the decision for her.
She’s weak, so she doesn’t see me coming when I charge her and grab her around the thighs, picking her up and throwing her over my shoulder before heading across the backyard and into the house.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” she whisper shouts as we head past the kitchen and towards my room. Thankfully, the guys are nowhere to be seen this time around.
“Taking charge.”
She wiggles in my hold, but my grip on her is too tight for her to fight me right now and she mutters, “Asshole,” under her breath.
Yeah, I’m an asshole. An asshole who just shot and killed a man for her. You’d think she’d be a little more grateful.
I lie on the bed with my arms crossed beneath my head as I wait for Lana to finish showering.
I stripped down to just my boxers when we got in here, and she adamantly refused to let me in the bathroom with her, so I’ve just been lying here, staring at the bathroom door for the last ten minutes, waiting for it to open.
I’m gonna give her another five minutes before I break the door down to check she’s actually alive in there, since God knows what damage that asshole Dominic did.
I have so many unanswered questions, so many pieces of the puzzle that is Lana James, but none of those pieces fit together in a way that can make sense.
She knew those guys, and it was obvious that she was surprised that they were after her, but I can’t make sense of why they would be, and the conversation they had just doesn’t make sense to me.
From what I can gather, it all came back to her father. That, and her father is dead.
Where was she before she came here? Who was she? They called her A, so is Lana even her real name? Have I been getting to know her, falling for her, and it’s all been a lie ?
The bathroom door flies open, and she stands in the doorway wearing nothing but one of my T-shirts that falls to mid-thigh. Fuck, it looks good on her.
“I asked to borrow some clothes and all you gave me was this?” she says and dramatically tugs on the end of the shirt.
I lift one shoulder in a half shrug. “It’s all you need. Now, get in here.”
“I’m not staying here, Cole,” she says with a sigh, and I roll my eyes.
“Just get in the damn bed, Lana.”
She thinks it over for a moment, and I take a minute to catalog her face.
She has a cut running along her left temple, and I can see a black eye forming on that same side.
She has a busted lip, and bruises marring her skin, but other than that, she seems fine and I don’t think she has any long-lasting injuries.
Still, it pisses me off that she even has minor injuries. If she didn’t knock me out with an elbow to the head, I could have helped her sooner.
But no, she’s too damn stubborn and hardheaded for that.
Lana climbs into the bed beside me, making sure to put as much room between us as possible, and I scoff.
“What, scared I’ve got cooties? I hate to tell you this, little menace, but we’ve fucked already. Sharing a bed should be the least of your concerns right now.”
“I don’t snuggle,” she grunts.
“I don’t kill people,” I retort. “Guess what, baby? Today has been a clusterfuck, so get your ass over here and cuddle with me.”
I don’t give her a chance to refuse. I reach over and pull her to me, and she tenses as her body lines up against mine and her head lands on my chest .
Her entire body is stiff for a few moments before she relaxes into my hold and goes lax against me. I stoke my fingers through her still-damp hair, twirling a lock around my finger.
“You shot someone for me,” she whispers, her voice featherlight in the otherwise silent room.
“I did,” I murmur softly.
She tilts her head up to look at me. “And are you… okay?” she asks, her eyes searching mine.
I am, actually. I didn’t even think about what I was doing when it was happening, but now that I’ve had time to reflect on it, I actually am okay with everything that went down.
It was always going to end with one of them dead, I just made that decision for them.
We might have had a rocky start, Lana and I, but like hell would I let some guy kill her.
I’m pissed at myself that I didn’t wake up sooner and she got hurt, but other than that, I really am okay.
“I’m fine, little menace,” I say, and she frowns for a beat before nodding.
“Are you?”
“Some cuts and bruises won’t kill me, Cole. I’ve had a lost worse.”
And I hate that you have.
“You need to start giving me some answers, Lana. Starting with who the fuck Dare is.”
Who is this guy that’s just giving her orders?
Who is she to him? And who the fuck is he to her?
Jealousy curls in my gut, and I hate it.
I hate everything about this fucked-up situation and this fucked-up day.
The only good thing that’s come out of it is me having Lana in my arms right now, which never would have happened if tonight didn’t transpire the way it did.
“You’re jealous,” she states, her eyes shining with mischief, and I realize my emotions must be written all over my face.
Why can’t I hide them from her the way I do with everyone else?
“I’m not jealous,” I lie. “I just want to know who the guy is that tells you what to do and who you actually listen to. You’re the most stubborn person I’ve ever met, and if I did that, you’d put a knife to my balls like the little psycho you are.”
She laughs softly, and it’s kind of… sweet, melodic and so unlike her usual self that it makes me pause. It makes me realize that there’s so many sides to her that I haven’t seen yet. So many sides of her that I want to get to know.
I have a feeling that there’s not one living person who knows Lana James in her entirety, and I want to be that person.
She can hide herself from everyone else, but I want her to show me all of her. And only me.