Chapter Twenty-Eight #2
I shoved Brandi into the walk-in, then I slammed the door shut and flipped the latch.
Brandi pounded on the inside immediately. “Rome!”
I leaned both hands on the door and bowed my head.
One breath.
Two.
Three.
Josie.
I turned.
She was still on the floor with her eyes wide, with her hand still to her throat. I pulled my phone from my pocket and called 911 while crossing to her.
“Emergency services, what’s your emergency?”
“There’s a woman locked in the walk-in freezer at Scoop & Swirl on Main Street,” I said, crouching in front of Josie. “She attacked the owner with a knife.”
Josie’s lower lip trembled.
“Is anyone injured?” the dispatcher asked.
“She has a small cut on her neck. She’s conscious. Breathing.”
“Is the attacker contained?”
“Yeah.” Brandi screamed from the freezer, pounding harder. “She’s contained.”
The dispatcher kept talking. I answered what I needed to answer.
Address.
Names.
Knife location.
No, Brandi didn’t have the weapon.
Yes, she was locked away from us.
Yes, we’d stay on the line until officers arrived.
I set the phone on speaker and placed it on the floor beside me.
Then I reached for Josie.
Slow.
Careful.
“Baby.”
She stared at me like she couldn’t quite see me.
“Josie.”
Her eyes focused and then her face crumpled. I pulled her into my arms and she collapsed against me.
Her whole body shook as I held her tight enough to keep her together because it felt like she might fall apart in pieces.
“I got you.”
She sobbed into my shirt.
“I got you, baby.”
My hands moved over her back.
Her hair.
Her shoulders.
I wanted to check her neck.
Needed to check it.
But for a few seconds, I just held her.
Because she was alive.
Because I was holding her.
Because minutes ago, the woman I loved had a knife to her throat.
My own hands started shaking.
I hid it by holding her tighter.
“What happened?” I asked quietly.
Josie sucked in a jagged breath. “I was washing dishes.” Her voice was muffled against my chest. “The bell rang. I thought it was a customer.”
I closed my eyes. Of course she did.
“She came in and started talking. I tried to keep her calm. I tried, Rome.”
“You did good.”
“She came behind the counter.” Josie trembled harder. “I told her she couldn’t be back there, and she grabbed the lemon knife. I didn’t even think about it being there.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“I should’ve moved it.”
“No.” I pulled back just enough to look at her. “Not. Your. Fault.”
Tears streamed down her face. Her throat had a shallow cut near the side. Not deep and thankfully not life-threatening, but blood dotted her skin, and seeing it made me want to put my fist through a wall.
I grabbed a clean napkin from the nearest table and gently pressed it to the cut.
Josie winced.
“Sorry.”
“I’m okay.”
“No, you’re not.”
She laughed once, broken. “No. I’m not.”
I kissed her forehead. “You’re safe now.”
Brandi screamed from the freezer again.
Josie flinched.
I moved so my body blocked her view of the door. “Look at me.”
She did.
“It’s just you and me.”
Another nod.
The dispatcher said the police were close.
I kept one arm around Josie and one hand on the napkin at her neck.
Sirens sounded a few minutes later, and Main Street was filled with red and blue lights. The first officer came in with his hand near his weapon, with another right behind him.
I stood slowly, keeping Josie behind me. “She’s in the freezer.”
He looked at me, then at Josie. Then toward the freezer door where Brandi was still pounding. “Weapon?”
“Under that table.”
The other officer moved toward the knife.
The first nodded. “Step back.”
I did, keeping Josie at my back.
They opened the freezer, and Brandi flew out screaming. The two officers grabbed her before she got more than a step, but she twisted and fought, hair wild, face red, eyes locked on Josie. “You ruined everything!” she screeched.
Josie trembled against me.
I reached me arm back, and pressed her tight against me. “Don’t look.”
Brandi kept screaming. At me. At Josie. At the officers. At the world.
They cuffed her and dragged her toward the door.
She looked at me one last time. “I loved you!”
I stared at her. “I only love one woman in this shop, Brandi, and it isn’t fucking you. Get some fucking help, Brandi. You need it.”
Brandi shrieked more, most of which did not make any sense, and then she was gone. The bell over the door jingled behind her and the officers.
The shop went quiet except for Josie’s shaky breathing and my heart pumping in my chest.
I looked down at the woman in my arms. Her eyes were wide, her cheeks tear-streaked, and she was just exhausted. Alive, though.
She looked up at me. “You said...”
I swallowed, because yeah, I had. In the middle of the worst moment of my life, the truth had come out. No taking it back now. Not that I wanted to. “I love you.”
Her breath caught.
I brushed my thumb over her cheek, avoiding the cut near her neck. “I know this is shit timing.”
A laugh burst out of her. “The worst timing.”
“Yeah.” I smiled, but it felt rough. “Still true.”
Josie cried harder, but this time, she reached for me. I pulled her close and held her.
“I love you, too, Rome.” She took a shaky breath. “Even though I’ve been trying to stop it since I met you, I love you. Even though I think you’re blind and need glasses, I love you, too.”
“I don’t need glasses,” I laughed.
She sighed and relaxed into me. “That was insane. I did not have being held by knifepoint on my bingo card today.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Me neither, baby. Me neither.”
The paramedics showed up five minutes later. I hated every second of them touching her.
One checked the cut on her neck while another wrapped her scraped elbow from when she fell. The cut wasn’t deep and bruises would come tomorrow.
I was gonna have bruises too. On my fucking soul.
“I’m okay,” Josie said for the tenth time.
The medic looked at me. “She really is going to be okay. It’s up to her if she wants to go to the hospital to get checked out.”
“She needs to get checked out,” I said.
Josie rolled her eyes. “He’s being dramatic.”
I barked out a laugh. “You had a knife to your throat,” I pointed out as if it wasn’t obvious.
“And somehow I’m the calm one in this situation right now.” She looked at the paramedic. “I am fine, and don’t need to go to the hospital.”
“You should just get checked out, baby,” I tried to reason.
She shook her head. “ I am fine, and I’ve accepted that today was just weird.”
“Weird?” I stared at her.
She nodded seriously. “I mean, the past month has been weird if I am being honest. I opened an ice cream shop, got called a fat whore, dated a tattoo artist who apparently hangs out with bikers, got almost taken out by a psycho with a knife, and found out said tattoo artist loves me.”
I blinked. “When you put it like that...”
“Busy month,” the paramedic laughed. “I’m going to go write my report. If you do start feeling anything off, just get to the hospital, okay?”
Josie nodded and gave him a salute. “Got it.”
I shook my head and looked away, laughing under my breath.
Jesus Christ. I almost lost her, and here she was saluting the damn paramedic.
The sound of motorcycles rolled down Main Street. A minute later, Skid, Prez, Cash, and Mack came walking into the shop.
Every one of them stopped when they saw Josie sitting on the floor wrapped in a blanket.
Skid pointed at me. “You left her alone for twenty damn minutes.”
“I was doing inventory, and your phone call came about ten minutes too late. Next time give me more of a heads up when there is a psycho on the loose with a knife.”
“Damn, doll, you were in a knife fight and lived to tell about it,” Cash said as he crouched in front of her.
“It wasn’t a knife fight,” Josie said. Everyone looked at her. She lifted a shoulder. “It was more of a knife hostage situation.”
Skid snorted.
Prez rubbed a hand over his beard. “You okay, sweetheart?”
“I’m fine.”
“You sure?”
“No,” she deadpanned. “I’ve decided to become a recluse and never leave my house again.”
I groaned.
Cash grinned. “Damn, you got a spark in you.”
The cops walked Brandi past the front windows. Her mascara was smeared and her hands cuffed behind her back. She looked like hell. She caught sight of us and started yelling.
Josie stood and leaned into me. “You think she’ll go to prison?”
I put my arm around her, and pressed a kiss to the side of her head. “Yep.”
“For a while?”
“Fucking hope so,” Prez said.
She nodded, and then she sighed. “You had horrible taste in women before me, Rome. What a bitch.”
Cash laughed so hard he had to bend over. Prez shook his head while Mack and Skid agreed in unison.
Even I cracked up. Because yeah, that pretty much summed it up.
“You ready to go home?”
She slid her hand into mine. “I don’t care as long as you’re there.”
“Same, baby.” Fucking same.