Chapter 18 #2
I grip his wrist. "You can't kill him unless you have no other choice. He has a wife and daughter. And it's Pugli. What was he supposed to do?"
"I wasn't planning on it." He frowns, staring at nothing. "You know what, I'm gonna be right back."
"Killy—"
"I'm just getting my stuff. With what you've told me, I'm not leaving you alone anymore."
"Please don't leave me alone, Killy," I whisper. "I'm scared. I can't even freaking shift positions without screaming. I can't help you, and I'm just…I'm helpless and scared."
He cups my face in gentle hands, nuzzles his forehead against mine. "I've got you. I won't let anything else happen to you."
"Or you."
Silence.
"OR YOU," I snap. "Right?"
"You're all that matters to me, sweetheart."
I grab his wrist, squeeze hard. "Killy, it goes both ways. You're all that matters to me, so if you die, I'm fucked. I'll never love anyone the way I love you. And we haven't even gotten to really enjoy being in love yet. So you have to promise me nothing will happen to you."
"I can't promise that," he says to me. "But I can promise that I will fight like a fucking caged tiger to stay alive so we can get that month alone and naked on the beach."
"I thought it was a week."
“I’ve revised the estimate up to a month. At least." He nudges my lips with his. "Close your eyes. Relax. I'm gonna grab my stuff. We have a few hours to dawn."
I try to stay awake until he comes back, but it's futile. I'm still so, so weak. This sucks.
I wake up for a moment, and Killian has found a weapon-cleaning kit somewhere, somehow.
He has half a dozen pistols stripped to their components and arrayed on the floor around him, and is methodically and obsessively cleaning each piece.
He must feel my gaze, because he glances up at me, smiling. "Hey."
"Hey you."
He glances out the window. "Still time. Go back to sleep. I've got the watch."
"I know you do." I wince as a dull but intense wave of pain steamrolls over me. "Wish we were on that beach about now."
"Same." He pushes, pulls, and twists a bristle brush through a short piece of barrel. "Soon. You and me, some stiff drinks, no clothes, and a whole lotta O's."
"Something stiff, at any rate." I laugh at my own joke. "Oh god, that hurts. Don't make me laugh."
He snorts. “You laughed at your joke, not mine."
“Yours wasn’t a joke. It was a pretty awesome turn of phrase, though."
He peers one-eyed through the barrel and then starts re-cleaning it.
"I don't really have a plan, by the way.
Did a little scouting around outside earlier, and there's just not much.
This is a fairly small facility in an out-of-the-way little cove on the water.
There's only steep, unnavigable hills behind and the sea in front, and it's several miles over seriously rough terrain to get to town, even if you follow the road, so there's nowhere to run even if you could get out of bed.
I can't trust Dante and obviously not Giuseppe, and I have to assume Doc Lia is gonna be neutral since she's a doctor.
" He shrugs. "So the only option is to hole up here and make 'em pay.
Hopefully they won't try and burn us out since they want you alive and intact. "
"Yeah, barbecued white girl won't sell, I suppose."
"Dude, gross."
I groan as I try to stifle a laugh. "Ah god. Ow, ow, ow. Being on this side of the medical experience is not fun." I wiggle my fingers at him. "Come sit where I can touch you."
He arches an eyebrow at me. "Story, I don’t think—"
"I mean your hair or something, Killian."
“Oh." He finishes cleaning the barrel and then reassembles the weapon in a matter of seconds. "Right."
"Horny bitch I may be, but that ain't happening any time soon, Kills. Sorry."
He steps out of the arrangement of disassembled weapons and sits with his back to the side of the bed, rests his head back against the mattress close enough that I can trail my fingers over his scalp, toy with his hair.
He lets out a soft, pleased groan. "That's nearly as good."
I sniff softly—as close to a laugh as I can get without it hurting. "A little head-rubbing?"
"Consider the head-rubbing joke made."
"Consider it laughed at."
"Non-sexual affection, I mean,” he says, after a second. “Little-known secret about us dudes: non-sexual affection means almost as much to us as sex, just in a different way."
"For real?"
He nods. "Oh, god yeah. Cal and I have talked about this a lot.
I want my dick touched, yes. Like, all the time, any way I can get it.
But I also love just…handholding. I love it when you play with my hair like that, or my ears, or my face.
It's not about thinking that it'll lead to getting my dick touched. Just to know that you care. Y'know?"
My heart melts a little. "This is a big deal to you, isn't it?" I ask, letting my touch idly explore the upper shell of his ear, then his temple, cheekbone.
He lets his head rest against the mattress, nodding. "Yeah. Dunno why, but it is."
I let my eyes close for a moment. "Good thing physical affection is one of the primary ways I show love, then, huh?"
"It's almost like you were made for me."
"Kinda seems like it, yeah."
We drowse, then. I feel Killian twitching a few times, a sign that he's actually falling asleep. And I can't help but wonder how much sleep he's let himself get while I was unconscious. Not much, I'd guess.
I'm on the cusp of sleep myself when the door to the room slams open with a sudden, jarring crash—we both jolt awake.
"They are here!" Dante says, panicked and breathless. "My tio has gone. He took his boat and left while I was asleep."
Killian surges to his feet with a tight snarl of pain, gun in hand, and then relaxes when he realizes it's just Dante. "Fine by me. The bastard sold us out."
"He has no good choices," Dante says. "But still, I am sorry. I do not know he is doing this."
"I know," Killian mutters. "Not your fault.
Not even his. Just very big suck for us.
" He kneels and reassembles the rest of the handguns as fast as possible, his hands a blur of flawless precision; he taps a mag home in one, racks the slide, and hands it to Dante butt first. "Help or run. Your choice."
"I am not that kind of a drug dealer," Dante says. "In my heart, I am only a selling man."
"Salesman?" Killian asks.
Dante nods. “Like The Wolf of Wall Street, yes? I love this movie. Margot Robbie, you know what I mean? I do not know what stocks are, but it look very exciting."
Killian shoves a spare pistol in his waistband and then fills his pockets with magazines. "Dante? Focus. Ever been in a gunfight?"
Dante shakes his head. "No, no way. I am a good boy, okay?
Sure, I sell the erba. But this is harmless, you know?
I help tio on the boat. Sometimes we pick up a package.
There is a…cazzo, I do not know the word.
A thing which float in one place, hmm, out in the big water?
To tell boats where is the deep water and where is the not-deep water. Ehhh…it sound like boy, in English."
"Buoy?" I suggest.
"Yes! One of the buoys. It has the tracciatore so we know where to find it.
There is a package wrapped up to be safe from the water.
We get it. We take it to the mainland. A man is waiting on the dock for us.
We give him the package; he gives us the money.
We do this…one time per month, sometimes two, sometime three, not often more.
This is all. No shooting. No one is hurt.
People smoke too much of the erba; they only fall asleep, sì? No one dies like the bad bad drugs."
"You don't owe us an explanation or justification, Dante," Killian says. "How you make a living is your business. And I tend to agree with you. I also know that there are better, legal ways of making a living. Just saying."
"If I do not die here today, I will look for this job. Tio Giuseppe has betrayed me. I do not work for him no more."
In the distance, I hear a door crashing open.
"Your aunt or whatever she is to you, Doctor Lia. She's gone?"
Dante shakes his head. “No, she will not go. This is her ospedale. If there is to be shooting, she says she must be here after for the fixing."
"These guys don't give a fuck, Dante. They'll kill anyone and everyone and burn the evidence.”
"She knows who this Pugli is. She says they will not kill her. And anyway, I should like to see you try to make Lia do anything she does not want to do."
"Not much we can do now, anyway," Killian responds.
"Killy?" I say. "Gimme a gun."
He snorts. "As if, babe." He extends one to me, but keeps it out of reach, so I have to lift my arm to grab it. "Take it and it's yours."
I glare at him, because I know exactly how it'd feel. "Let's see you show me a Weaver stance."
He just laughs. "Nice try." The levity in his voice is betrayed by the look on his face—worry, fear, and determination. "I can shoot one-handed. You can't even sit upright."
I groan. "Thanks for reminding me that I'm freaking useless right now."
Every now and then, the sound of a door being kicked in floats to us, each one louder.
Killian takes a knee in the corner of the room, and Dante takes a position near him, copying his stance.
Since his left arm is screwed, Killian holds his bad arm tight against his belly, his pistol upright next to his ear like an eighteenth-century duelist.
And all I can do is lay here and watch.
My eyes burn.
A door crashes open mere feet away.
"Clear!" The voice is brusque and rough, and just outside our door. "Last door, chief. Gotta be in here. We've checked everywhere else."
"You're quite sure the informant's intel was current? This is a supply closet, innit?”
The first voice is American, the second British Cockney.
"I'm sure, chief."
"Alright, fine. Best clear the closet just to be safe, but my report is that they're both wounded. I don't see how they can both fit in a supply closet." Ahwl-rih—b-OH-f.