Taming Cross

by Ella James

  A close shot makes me jump; Meredith stumbles. She cries out as red blooms across her right shoulder. I rush her from behind, scooping her up with my right arm and throwing her over my shoulder, realizing belatedly that she's a sitting duck behind me, so I shift her to my front and hug her to me with my arm.

  “Hold on,” I yell into her ear. “I've got to shoot again!”

  I find him in the narrow, jolting frame of vision over my shoulder. I aim for his throat but I’m running and firing backwards, so the shot goes wild. He somehow manages to shoot—

  SHIT! I wait for pain that doesn’t come, then look down and understand: It's my left hand. The fucker is spurting blood, but I can't feel it. Whatever.

  He gets in one more shot, a crazy shot he fires with crazy eyes, and as he does I notice the handle of vodka sticking out of his pants pocket. I spot a bush and throw Merri behind it, and as I do, the bullet lodges in the sole of my shoe. I can tell because the bottom of my foot feels hot and I can feel a bump. I take one step toward him, aim, and fire two quick shots at his leg. The first misses. The second hits the bottle, shattering it. The man screams and falls to the ground, and I put two more shots in his head.

  They’re grizzly, disgusting shots, and the fallout is something I'll be seeing in nightmares. Merri shrieks, then comes zipping toward me like a beautiful, girl bullet. She throws her arms around me and says, “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God oh my God he's dead! You killed David! That's Jesus's boyfriend. Oh my God.”

  Jesus's boyfriend?

  “Evan, we need to move his body! Your gun is loud! Someone might have heard!”

  “Yeah.”

  “OH MY GOD, YOUR HAND!”

  Merri grabs my left arm, and I flinch, not because it hurts but because it's weird when people touch it. It makes me feel...uncomfortable. But she doesn't let go. She gets a death grip on my wrist and holds the hand up to inspect.

  It's a bloody mess, but it looks like the bullet punched out that little flap of skin between my thumb and forefinger. I've studied the anatomy of the hand enough in the last six months to know it's bleeding heavily because the radial artery is nearby. I'm feeling dizzy, but it doesn't hurt. I use my right hand to steal my left one out of Merri's grasp and whirl her around so I can see the back of her right shoulder.

  “He got you, too.”

  I want to rip her shirt away so I can really see the wound, but I can't do that one-handed...not unless I use my mouth to hold her collar steady.

  “It was just a graze,” she says, fingering the bloody spot. The circle of blood hasn't grown much larger than a teacup saucer, but... “You’ve been shot before?”

  “Of course,” she mutters. She turns to face me with her hands on her hips again. The look on her face is somehow a mix of gentle, frustrated, and sad. “Can you help me move the body? I don't think there's anywhere good to hide him out here, but I'll open the back door and we can leave him in the laundry room.”

  “The back door?” I frown at the dirt mound, and that's when I realize... “That's a house!”

  “Yeah.” She winces as she moves her right arm. Then she shocks me by pulling off her shirt.

  Holy Jesus H.

  If I was dizzy before, I almost pass out when I see her creamy skin. My eyes jet to her huge tits, spilling out of a silky-looking sky blue bra, and travel down her soft, slim belly to the waist of her pants. Oh fucking hell, I want to kiss her there. She looks so soft.

  She steps closer to me, sending my adrenaline boner into overdrive, and rips the shirt in half, using one half of it to wrap around my hand, right where the gunshot was.

  “Will this hurt?” she asks, looking into my eyes before she ties it.

  “I can't feel the hand.”

  “Well that's a good thing.” She's breathing heavily as she ties it. I brush her hair off her forehead to check her eyes.

  “I'm not in shock,” she says. She touches my cheek. “Are you?”

  “I don't think so. I don't need your help with David, either. I can drag him in if you open the door.” I might need her help, but I won't take it. I can't stand the thought of this beautiful woman touching a corpse.

  “Are you sure? ’Cause I don't mind.”

  I nod. “I'm sure.”

  “You need to keep that left hand elevated. When we get inside I'll sterilize and do a proper bandage.”

  I nod, because my head has started hurting and I'm feeling kind of off.

  “The back door is right here.” She points to what looks like regular dirt, then lifts a tiny, dirt-colored plastic flap and punches in a code. Some dirt falls away, revealing a plastic-ish, dirt-orange door. She opens it somehow—I can't see from where I'm standing—and I turn to get the body.

  I try not to look at him as I grab one of his legs, using all my strength to drag him through the square doorway. I’m hoping Merri’s gone further inside, but she’s right there as soon as I stumble through the door. She presses something on the wall, the way you might with a garage door, and I can hear the door sliding shut as we maneuver the dead guy into the first room on the right.

  It’s a surprisingly normal looking laundry room with a stacked washer/dryer combo, a little brown rug, a shelf of laundry supplies, and a framed photo of two men embracing, holding martini glasses.

  Merri and I settle the dead guy face-down on the rug, and my gaze returns to the framed photo. The bald guy at our feet is smiling in the arms of a well-worked-out Hispanic man with shoulder-length hair and a Hollywood-worthy smile.

  “That’s him,” I mutter. The infamous Jesus Cientos.

  Merri nods.

  I glance down at the floor, where blood is pooling. “This shit is weird.”

  She nods and grabs a towel off a shelf.

  “Let’s go out into the hall now.” She leads the way, lightly touching my back as I step by her. Then she stuffs the towel underneath the door.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The inside of this place looks just how I remember, which is not really a surprise. Jesus and I picked out most of the décor online. From Pottery Barn, of all places. It was shipped to an empty building in Camargo, the next town over, and Jesus and David loaded it into a truck and brought it here and set the place up themselves, one weekend when Jesus pretended to be away with me. I stayed in the basement suite all weekend, cross-stitching some pillows Jesus wanted for the guest room and feeling buried alive. The basement of an underground bungalow feels really, really underground.

  When I snap out of my memories and look at Evan, I find him holding out one of Jesus’s freshly laundered wife beaters. He's holding onto it with a dryer sheet because his hands are painted red. I wonder when he picked it up.

  I slip the shirt on while he casts his eyes back at the door, and then I lead him into the half-bath behind the next door down. We wash our hands with pear-scented soap from Bath and Body Works.

  Evan seems to be breathing hard. He looks kind of wide-eyed and is moving slowly. I wonder what the odds are that he was wrong earlier, and he really is in shock, but then I brush the thought away. This is his job.

  Still, when we walk back into the hallway, I look him up and down and ask, “Are you okay?”

  This makes him laugh. I laugh a little too. “Stupid question I guess.”

  “Thanks for asking,” he says.

  I'm leading him down the hallway, past the wine cellar and into the mouth of the kitchen, where I'm slightly amused to see surprise transform his face.

  His blue eyes are wide. “Am I hallucinating?”

  “Nope.” I pull out a chair at the weathered, white-washed breakfast table and move one of the blue and white breakfast mats so he doesn't get it dirty; old habits die hard. “Have a seat, I'll get the first aid stuff.”

  Jesus's love nest is half underground, and it’s got central air. It feels good in here—probably seventy-three degrees, Jesus's preferred temperature—and the refrigerator is appropriately cold, so the antibiotic shots are still in good condition.

/>   I find the first aid kit in one of the cabinets near the stainless steel refrigerator. There's an additional briefcase full of surgical supplies in the pantry. When I get back to the breakfast area, Evan has his right elbow on the table and his face propped in his hand.

  Despite the shell I've tried to build around myself, I feel a bubble of concern form in my throat. Maybe it's the way he put himself between David’s bullets and me. I was running so hard I almost didn't notice, but I glanced behind me and there he was, with both arms out. I don't care who you are or what your job is, that's pretty heroic.

  He doesn't move as I approach the table, so I get the perfect chance to really look at him. His shoulders are so wide, it's almost a little ridiculous, like he might be wearing football pads—except of course he's not. Beneath his sweaty, blood-splattered black t-shirt, I can see every ripple of muscle, from the exaggerated roundness of his shoulders to that delicious indention that runs down his spine between smooth slabs of muscle. I'm checking out the bicep of his left arm, wondering how he keeps it so in shape if that hand can't move, when I notice a wicked-looking scar along his collar-line.

  I've rehabbed enough kids to know that it's a surgical scar. Because I'm curious, I come up behind him and put my hands on his shoulders. This does freaky things to all my girly parts, and then he moans and I'm pretty much slayed right where I stand.

  “I'm sorry,” he says hoarsely. It's half-chuckled, like maybe he's embarrassed by his reaction.

  “Don't be sorry.” His back feels warm and hard through the soft, damp shirt, and his shoulders are super tense. I give them a squeeze, and I'm rewarded with another moan, this one deeper than the last. I swear, I can feel it vibrate way low down in my belly. He’s practically lying on the table now, his head resting on his forearm so I can drink in all I want of his satiny dark brown hair and those strong shoulders, that lean, tough back. Just above the waist of his jeans, his shirt is stuck to his skin, so I get a peek of the top of his underwear. The skin they cover looks so soft and smooth... I can only see an inch of it—

  Ridiculous.

  I direct my wandering eyes back to his scar as I work his trapezius muscles. I see not just one scar, but several. One vertical along his cervical spine, just above where I think his C4-C6 ought to be, and another perpendicular to that, going from the middle of his spine at what I think is C5 level and heading around to the left side of his neck. The scars are thick. Still pink. This must be how he lost the use of his hand.

  As I knead his shoulders and he makes delicious sounds, I wonder why on earth anyone would send him on a mission alone to rescue someone from a Mexican cartel. Sure, there are bad-ass seeming things about him, but twice we've crashed on the bike because he can't balance us with his left arm.

  Don't get me wrong—I'm grateful. At this point, enough has happened that I'm grateful for Evan's help. I just don't really understand the situation.

  I'm still hard at work on his shoulders when I notice the red pool under his left hand, which is lying on the table.

  “Evan!” He shoots up so fast his head hits mine. “Ouch.” I rub my sore nose.

  He turns to face me. “What's wrong?”

  Still covering my nose, I nod at his hand. “You’re bleeding.” I blush so furiously, I feel like there’s a cloud of heat around my head. Sure, it's been a while since I've been around a guy, but this level of oblivion really is embarrassing. Unforgivable. What’s wrong with me?

  “Hold your arm up,” I tell him.

  He does, and I take a seat beside him with the first aid stuff in hand.

  I grab his left elbow, which is propped against the table, causing him to lean a little closer toward me. I scoot closer to him, too. With my hand around his bicep, I look into his blue eyes.

  “So you have no feeling in your hand?” He blinks, and I take that as affirmative. “What about your arm?”

  “The bicep up,” he says without expression.

  “Okay, that's good, because you would feel some of this in your wrist and forearm I think.”

  I let go of him and clean my hands with alcohol towelettes, then untie my bloody shirt scrap and reveal his wound again. It looks darker red this time, which means some of the blood is finally clotting.

  “I don’t think it hit anything important.”

  The radial artery runs into the hand, and its location in the wrist is not too far from where Evan's wound is—but if he’d hit it, there would be even more blood. At least I think that’s true.

  I open then unfold two big gauze pads and gently guide his hand down onto them. Instead of spreading out, his fingers stay semi-curled. I study his hand for just a second, admiring the shape of it, before I notice him scowling.

  I have the strangest desire to tell him, You have nice hands, but that would just be weird, so I swallow once and try to keep this as professional as I can.

  “I'm going to spread your fingers out the way I want them, okay?”

  He shrugs, trying to look unaffected. “Do whatever you want.” His lips quirk up. “As long as I can get another back rub.”

  I smile a little as I work his fingers into the position that I want them, with thumb and forefinger in an “L” shape.

  Evan huffs his breath out as I let go of him and unwrap some Betadine swabs. I glance into his eyes, offering another little smile. “You ready?”

  His face is hard. “Go for it.”

  I swab around the wound, glancing into his eyes a time or two to be sure it isn't hurting. He looks apathetic. I wonder if he feels the ghost of pain, but as I finish painting the entire wound with orange Betadine, I decide that maybe he's self-conscious.

  I lie his hand down again, and when I'm looking into my lap, fiddling with the antibiotic syringe, I ask, “Are your injuries recent?”

  After a small pause, he says, “Fairly.”

  So I'm right. He sounds detached, and when I look back up, I find him staring at the wall ahead of us.

  I put my hand on his wrist. “I have to give you a shot in the wound, because I think you might have some bone fragments floating around in there. That means you have a greater chance of infection.”

  He shrugs again, his face caught somewhere between stoic and irritated. “Okay.”

  “When you get home, you might need a cast or something.”

  He snorts, as if to say, Yeah right.

  I make quick work of the injection, and when I'm finished, I set the syringe to the side and start applying bandages. I'm starting with something that has some sticky to it, so while it's soft over the wound, it adheres to the skin around it, keeping out germs and water. It seems to take me forever to get that on. He can't help me by holding his fingers straight, and when I ease his arm up, with his elbow on the table, the hand flops forward. He stiffens again.

  I'm not much for awkward moments, so I decide to be straightforward. “This makes you uncomfortable, huh?”

  He screws his face up, looking at me like I'm slow. “I can't feel it.”

  I flit a glance at him. “That's not what I mean.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I can see him working his jaw, and I wonder if I've crossed a line. Then I remember him saying, “I'm sorry that this happened to you,” last night before I went to sleep. I didn't want his pity, and maybe he doesn't want my prodding either, but we're stuck together for at least another day, so tough titties.

  “I'm saying you feel awkward about it. You don't like being injured.”

  “Would you?” His mouth draws tight.

  “I wouldn't,” I say. “I'm sure almost no one would.” I wrap my way around the hand a few more times as I think about my own screwed up state. “No one wants to be anything less than strong and capable. Vulnerable means you have to trust other people. If you're anything like me, you don't like that one bit.”

  “Damn straight,” he mutters, and I smile a little.

  “May I ask what happened?”

  “You can ask,” he tells me. His mouth is pulled into a smirk
, but it looks strained.

  “And if I ask, will you tell?”

  He mulls that over, then he says, “Maybe we can make a trade.”

  Oh, crap. I guess I walked right into this. I tie the gauze off and keep my poker face on, hoping he'll forget I asked.

  “Keep that elevated. I'll be back with some ice.” I saunter off, remembering as I approach the refrigerator that I have my own wound to attend to. I guess he'll have to do that.

  When I get back, he's getting to his feet, opening an alcohol towelette as he moves. “It's your turn.”

  While he cleans the small spot on my shoulder, I pick at the place mat and think about how weird it is to be here without Jesus and David. How weird it is that they’re both dead. Then I think about the last week I spent with them, in Mazatlán, at Jesus’s favorite costal mansion, and I feel nauseated.

  It’s really good that Evan breaks the silence. “Does anyone else know about this place?” he asks.

  “I'm not sure. It's a big secret that Jesus was gay, and apparently he's been with David for quite a while. They’d been together about a year when I left, and since David was here today, I have to assume they were still together when you shot Jesus. This place was built the year before I met Jesus, and as far as I know, the only other people who know it’s here are the three guys who built it.”

  “So we need to get moving,” he sighs.

  “No. Jesus killed them.”

  “Oh.”

  I heave my breath out. “Right. So Jesus brought me in to help him with some things, and of course David, but I'd be surprised if anyone else knew.”

  “How sure are you about that?”

  “I don't know.” I freeze. “Why?”

  “Just wondering.” Something cold trails across the wound on my shoulder. I feel his breath on me, and I can tell he's not just wondering. There's a reason that he asked. I'm opening my mouth to ask him what that reason is, when abruptly he squeezes my shoulder. “All done.” And that's the end of it.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN