My stomach turned, waves of nausea threatened to overpower me. I might pass out. He looked like he got angrier by the minute. "Well?"
"I didn't even think you liked me." I blurted out.
"I don't fucking like you." He said it like it was the vilest idea he ever heard. "Who would like you?" I hoped that was a rhetorical question, because he didn't want to hear how much Mason liked me. I wanted to kick myself for that giving me satisfaction. I might be about to die who really cared.
"I wanted to fuck you and you didn't fuck me." He said these words calm, but his eyes bugged like they were going to pop out of his school. I wanted to look away from him, but I hoped I could avoid death and listening to him was my best shot. "Where do you get off? You don't want to fuck me, but you'll fuck him?" I stammered out.
I said nothing, and he twitched the gun toward me. I opened my mouth to speak but nothing came out. I made a few spastic sounds before I managed to form words. He didn't look patient. Tears welled in my eyes but shoved them back. "We only went on one date."
"So, what? You should have seen that I am better. You had more than enough time to see that I am better." I looked at him but didn't speak. "Well?" He shouted and pointed the gun at my face.
I spoke the truth without thinking, only wanting to answer him and prevent a bullet. "I got sick and you told everyone we worked with I slept with you." I tried to keep my tone soft. I hoped beyond hope he could see how that would be a problem.
He looked flabbergasted. "Don't you see? You should have fucked me!" He threw his hands up in the air. "I did you a favor by telling everyone you did." His voice got more hysteric. It was enraged but took on a dream like quality. He laughed a little. I couldn't tell if was lucid.
"I took you on a nice date. I treated you nice, even though you're a fucking slut." He looked around the room as if he waited for someone to agree with him. "I treated you nice and you post an ad about wanting to fuck random guys, but you won't fuck me?" He screamed blowing bits of spit on my face.
"How do you know that?" I asked trying to keep the fear and anger out of my voice.
"You leave your email logged in on your computer, stupid." He spit the words at me "To think, I spent dinner on some internet whore who would fuck Mason Sharp." He started pacing again. I was sure that wasn't a good sign. "Do you know who he is? Who his father is? They're criminals. Why would you rather fuck a criminal than me?"
"His father is a criminal, he's not." I shouldn't have said anything, but I couldn't help it.
"I Should fucking kill you for embarrassing me." His hand shook on the gun. My heart was about to explode.
"You're right" I blurted out not sure where I was going, desperate that this not be how I died. "I've been acting like a terrible slut, you are a great guy and it was very wrong of me to do what I did to you."
His hand tightened on the gun, his face enraged. "You're full of shit. You're fucking lying. I should kill you for lying, slut." The gun still shook in his hand, but he didn't point it at me.
"I'm not." I put up both of my hands pleading with him. "I mean it. I didn't know I hurt you. I disrespected you. I'm sorry." I pushed myself up on my knees. He moved the gun toward me, but I put my hands into a begging position.
He considered my words. "You did disrespect me. Now how are you going to pay for it?" My heart sank. I knew where this was going.
"I don't know." I looked down, wishing the earth would open and swallow me whole.
"I think you do. Sluts like you always know what men want." He rubbed his hand over the bulge in his pants. This time he was right, women always do know what men like him want. I stopped the wave of nausea that threatened to turn out the contents of my stomach and earn me a bullet in the head.
He took it out of his pants. I closed my eyes. Either way I didn't want to see what happened next. Why hadn't I thought of him earlier? Why did I come here alone? I said goodbye to myself. Even if I lived I would never be the same after this. "Open your eyes, I want you to look at me." I lifted my eyes to him unable to see through the tears that spilled out.
I heard the door slam open. The noise made both of us jump. I didn't think I was still capable of feelings so intense, but hope coursed through me like flame on gas. I heard feet moving through the apartment. He looked passed me, the gun moved away from me for the first time since I entered the room. "Shit, fucking shit." He shoved his miserable pecker back in his pants. The door opened, and policemen pointed their guns inside.
"Put the gun down." One of the officers told him. The one officer entered the room then, the others stayed outside. Some wild part of my brain recognized that he was here the night Tyler trashed my apartment. "Put the gun down, now." He repeated.
"You don't understand. This fucking slut needs to pay. You should understand." More officers started filing into the room then, five in total if I could see them all. His eyes moved between me, the gun, and the cops with lightning speed.
"I understand you are confused, now put the gun down."
"I'm not confused, she deserves this." He told them. The next few seconds seemed to take years. He took in the cop in his S.W.A.T. gear. He looked at the gun in his hand and then he looked at me, his decision made. He turned his head to the side a sickening smile painted there. He lifted the gun and pointed it at me prepared to end my life.
The officer who told him to stop saw his decision as clearly as I did. The officer fired his gun first. The room was still for a moment. The combination of the shots so loud that it seemed to rob the room of everything else. I saw no blood as the first bullet hit his chest. He fell, his hand folding around the trigger. I saw his face go blank. If he had not been dead before he hit the ground, he died soon after. His hand fell, no longer pointed at my face. I couldn't see the bullet. I couldn't feel it at first either. I felt cold and nauseous. I love him. The words entered my thoughts. Everything went black.
*
I'm not sure where I was, or if where even applied here. I didn't think I alive, but I could think something, I guessed that meant I couldn't be dead. The place was perfectly white. After a few minutes I decided it had to be a room. Someone was with me there, even though I thought I was alone. My mom stood in the corner. It couldn't be my mom though. She a lot older than thirty for one thing, and we no longer lived in this tiny house.
Out of nowhere the scene became clear. I stood in my childhood home. My mom didn't stand like I thought. She laid on the couch. A young girl sat beside her. Her hair was long and brown, tied in messy braids she did by herself. I stood in the corner, a voyeur. It didn't like they could detect my presence. My mother looked lifeless. I recognized this face on myself in recent years. The little girl beside her stroked her hair and told her everything would be alright.
The girl beside her loved her mother. She wanted more than anything to make things better. Her mother told her to go away. At first, she didn't listen, she stayed beside her. Her mother screamed for her to go away. I couldn't tell if was real. I knew it existed in my mind but was it a memory or my imagination?
The girl decided to listen to her mother and stood to walk away. My mother started crying into the couch. Why would my mind take me here? What did I need to know? My mother continued to lay on the couch prostrate. The tears poured out of her face in silence. The girl walked away from her mother and came to stand beside me. It was surprising to realize she knew I was there. "What are you waiting for? I thought we were going to live a better life than this."
"We have been." I told her, confused that she would think that.
"We won't live better until you get help." Her face held too much wisdom for someone so young.
"I don't know what you mean." I told her. We both knew I did.
"Happiness doesn't always have to come at some impossible cost." Her voice was calm.
"I never said it did." She looked deeply into my eyes, the brown matched exactly.
"Not out loud at least."
22
I woke up to the unmis
takable fluorescent light and antiseptic smell of a hospital. I heard beeping that I assumed meant I lived. I was in a lot of pain and for a while I couldn't manage to understand anything but that. I knew I was in a hospital and in pain. For a while I felt sure there was nothing more to know.
A little while later I tried to move my fingers and toes. I came back to myself enough to be relieved that I could. It was a relief to know that while moving felt like an impossibility, I could. My midsection hurt a lot, but I couldn't tell anything more specific than that. I could move my arms but didn't have great control of them. I looked at the IV stand next to me trying to find a button to push for more pain killers. My eyes were to blurry to make enough sense of things.
Eventually, my senses started to clear, and I realized I had not been alone. My first reaction was fear, but my eyes cleared, Mason sat asleep in the chair. I thought about waking him up to find out what happened, but I decided to let him sleep. He looked so peaceful. He was so handsome I couldn't stand it. I loved seeing him this way, relaxed and out of control.
I couldn't remember the details yet, but I knew he had a rough night. I realized I didn't even know what night it was. How long had I been here? Before the panic could set in too deep a nurse entered the room. She looked very pleased to see me awake. I tried to be polite, but I couldn't remember how to.
She questioned me about how I felt. I told her about all the pain. She pushed a button on the IV that helped me almost immediately. I tried to remember which one it was, but everything remained hazy. "Your husband has been so worried about you." She told me with warmth in her voice.
"What?" I asked her startled at the word husband to pay attention to what she said.
"Your husband has been a mess dear, positively beside himself." She touched me in a way that set my body on fire. I couldn't comment on that through the pain. "How long have I been unconscious?"
"You were shot about 30 hours ago. The surgery took about seven hours. You lost a lot of blood. You're lucky."
I looked down at my body still unable to tell where I was shot. "Where did he hit me?" My voice lost strength. It sounded static to me.
"Above your hip. The doctor can tell you more. You need to rest, sweetie." She was right. Seconds later I fell back out.
I woke again to a natural light coming through the window. There was a beautiful sculpted face about a foot from my bed. He looked stern and intense. I pitied anyone who dealt with my "husband" over the last few days. I cleared my throat and his eyes shot to my face. "Claire, hey." He reached out touching my face with the back of his hand. "How are you?"
"Okay, I think. I'm kind of confused. I got shot." He stayed quiet. "Tyler shot me. Is he dead? Is that right, did I see him die?" My voice sounded like it belonged to someone else.
His hand froze on my cheek. "Yes, that's true. I'm sorry you saw that." He took a deep steadying breath "But, I'm not sorry he's dead." His tone remained low and serious.
"Don't talk like that." I told him. I tried to lift my hand to touch his face. My arm felt weak, but I could manage it for a moment. His skin warmed and comforted me. His face was covered in stubble. I quite liked it. My arm fell back to my side exhausted.
"Fine, if it makes you happy. I won't, but I can't help how I feel about anyone who would hurt you." He spoke fiercely.
"And why is that?" I retorted automatically.
He held my face making me look into his lovely green eyes. "Because I am fucking in love with you Claire. I love you and I would rather see a man dead than see you hurt. Unfortunately, in this circumstance we have both." He didn't make a joke, but his tone told me he knew he was being funny. My heart started to fill. The feeling too intense to bear. The skeptic inside me warned me to have patience.
"Really?" I asked, "but, wh-..."
"Claire, I am in love with you." His face was serious and beautiful. There was not a trace of doubt anywhere.
I digested his words. I hoped they were real and not a pain medication induced dream. "You're not... because I got shot?" My voice sounded drained. "I'm like stupid in love with you. It would suck if you were saying that because you feel bad I got shot." My words were mumbled.
"That would suck." He agreed. I was surprised he understood me. "Tell me more about being in love with me while you're still loose from the meds." His smile was so damned charming.
"You've always got something to say, some quip." I pronounced the word like it had an h in it. "Mip, mip, mip." I made a talking motion with my hand. "You think you're so charming, with your handsome face and your body." I sounded a little drunk, but I didn't care. "I'm Mason, I'm so smart, and sexy, and sophisticated. I'll make you cum hard and fall stupid in love with me." My tone mocked him, but the huge yawn undermined it. It was about as refined as elementary school cajoling.
"And you accuse me of having a lot to say." He laughed and leaned down and gave me a gentle kiss. "Hey, Lady." He told me looking deep into my eyes. "I love you."
*
A few days later I could leave the hospital. Mason took me home to my apartment. He paid to have it cleaned while I was in the hospital. He bought a lot of new stuff and it looked nothing like it did before. It looked better if I could manage not to be a brat about it. I appreciated his time and effort.
He stayed with me and took care of me for weeks after the incident. He was there for me in ways I never expected of him or anyone else. I sort of believed him when he said he loved me before, but now I couldn't doubt It. It couldn't be measured empirically which drove me crazy. I was pretty sure we loved each other the same.
That proved to be why I was alive. Mason tried to call me several times with no answer. I don't even remember my phone ringing. He called the library and Emma told him where I went. He called the police, committing a crime of his own. He lied telling them he knew I was in imminent danger. I had only been shot in my side. He stopped much worse things from happening. My assailant died, and I didn't need to worry anymore.
I questioned him multiple times about the situation. How did he know I needed his help? Each time he told me the same thing, intuition. Our relationship was loving and passionate, but I was still me. I'm a person full of doubts. It was hard for me to accept that. There were parts of this that still made little sense. I had a lot to deal with including the implications of my post shooting dream.
I found myself wondering what had been wrong with Tyler? Could someone have helped him if he did survive? I knew he tried to kill me, but guilt still wracked me. I knew I didn't kill him, but the bottom line was his life had been traded for my own. There were times I couldn't live with it. There were times the thought of his falling body drove me insane.
Mason and my work kept me afloat. I also took the advice of my younger self and sought the help of a professional. Sometimes, life is too much to bear without help. I was happy in a real in meaningful way. I loved being his "Boss Lady Librarian." The only flaw there the continued strangeness I received from Wolf.
I went with it. It didn't seem to be an immediate threat to my job at the very least. I would let it go for now and make the best of it. Emma and I grew closer and it felt good to have a friend my age. Things seemed to be moving into place for me.
It was odd to think of, all things considered. With all the upheaval and all that went wrong for me it didn't make sense to wind up in such a good place. For the first time in my life, I was happy to be me. No matter what my flaws were, I could improve. I was worthy of love, and I found it.
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