When he turned to me, my heart sped up. Even weak and bleeding, the man had an irresistible sexual pull that was impossible to deny. I didn’t move. “I can’t leave you here.”
“Sure you can.” He gestured toward my car weakly. “You just walk back to your fancy car, start it, step on the gas, and keep going.”
I hesitated, but shook my head.
For some reason, I grew surer of my decision to stay. Something instinctively told me that while Chris was a dangerous guy, he wasn’t a danger to me. I took another step closer, under the streetlight.
He lifted the gun again, pointing it at me. “Don’t make me make you leave, Molly. Don’t make me threaten you. Just go.”
Then again . . .
“You’re not going to shoot me.” I held my hands up, my heart racing so fast it hurt, because even though I was about ninety-nine percent sure he wouldn’t, there was that one percent that was screaming at me to hurry up and run. “But if you want to, go ahead. Pull the trigger. I can’t stop you.”
He didn’t drop his gaze, and a muscle in his cheek ticked. The gun stayed pointed at me, ever steady, and there was a coldness in him that I’d never seen before that made me fear for my life. Maybe I’d overplayed my hand in an attempt to honor my father’s memory. To make him proud of me.
And I might pay the ultimate price.
“Dammit, Princess.” But he lowered the gun and shook his head. “Why are you so sure I won’t shoot you?”
Princess? Where had that come from? “I don’t know. I just am.”
“Well—” His gaze fell to my hand. “You’re bleeding. Why are you bleeding?”
“What?” I glanced down at it in surprise. Somewhere in between finding the blood smeared all over the store and discovering it was Chris who had done the smearing, I’d forgotten all about the whole reason I’d come to the pharmacy in the first place. “Oh. That. Yeah, I cut myself on the corner of a cubby. I came here to get some gauze and tape.”
“Here.” Chris tucked the gun into his pocket and reached into the other one. Stepping closer, he held out gauze and medical tape. “Take it. I got the last of it.”
I blinked at him, my gaze locked on his blood-covered shoulder and on the red that had seeped all through the front of his shirt and down his hand. He was literally bleeding out, and he was worried about my hand? “No offense, but I think you need it more than I do.”
“I don’t give a damn about me.” He shook it, glowering at me. “Take it.”
Reaching out, I did as I was told. Our fingers brushed against one another, and I gasped at the surge of electric desire that pulsed through my veins. He stiffened, and I wondered if he’d felt it, too. Jerking back, I put a little more distance between us. Far enough that I couldn’t smell his woodsy, manly cologne—or his blood. “Thank you.”
He collapsed against the building, a small groan escaping him. “I have a question.”
I gripped the tape tighter. “What is it?”
“Do you think all people can be saved?” He frowned up at the sky. “That they could possibly change for the better after doing horrible things?”
I thought about the man who had killed Dad. I was pretty sure he couldn’t be saved. For years, I’d tried to humanize the man. Maybe he had a family he needed to provide for, and the only way he could do so was by joining a gang. Or maybe he was homeless and needed a family, so the gang took him in. I’d thought if I did that, if I made him noble in some way, it would be easier to accept my father’s death.
It hadn’t been. It had only made it worse.
So my only answer for Chris was “I honestly don’t know.”
“Yeah.” A small laugh escaped him. “Me neither.”
He glowered up at the stars. His hard jaw was covered by dark stubble that begged to be touched. I couldn’t help but wonder if it would feel soft underneath my fingers, or if it would scrape my skin. And for some reason, I really wanted to find out.
But he was a killer.
Finally, he broke the silence. “Go on. Get out of here.”
I should go. Take my medical supplies, get in my car, and forget all about Chris O’Brien . . . and the fact that he was clearly too weak to take care of himself. But the thing was, I couldn’t stop thinking about his question. If he was wondering if all men could be saved, then maybe he wanted to be saved. Maybe he wanted to be better. I wasn’t a huge believer in fate or divine intervention, but maybe my father had guided me to this alley tonight for a reason. Maybe I was supposed to be here, helping this man.
And he was hurt.
Tonight, Chris had shared his limited medical supplies with me, and he had spent years doing things for me while asking nothing in return. I guess it was a case of like father, like daughter, because there was no way I was going to turn away from a guy in need. No way I could walk away from Chris. Not when this might be the moment that defined his future choices. All he needed was a little push from someone who cared enough to push. And, inexplicably . . .
That someone was me.
CHAPTER 3
CHRIS
I glared up at the darkness above us, breathing heavily, refusing to look at Molly. Orion and his damn righteous pose, and his fucking club, mocked me from the skies. It reminded me again of Scotty and the fact that he was a cop. He’d stood like that in the door to Lucas’s apartment. All authoritative and brave and morally upstanding.
Guys like Orion and Scotty?
They got constellations named after them. People wrote stories about them, sang songs of their bravery for hundreds of years, wrote books about them. They probably always got the girl, too. Girls like Molly Lachlan.
She was everything I knew I could never have.
Wholesome. Beautiful. Successful. Brave. Rich as Croesus, with clean money. Her father had been a doctor, right up until the moment he died in my town. For some reason, that never sat well in the bottom of my gut. And every time I saw her, I tried to atone for that guilt. Even though the guilt wasn’t mine.
Sure, I killed without a second thought, but I’d never killed anyone who didn’t deserve killing. The men I killed were in the same world as me. They knew what risks they ran by living the life, just like I did. We all knew we would more than likely die in a fight for power and that no one would give a damn once we were gone.
I didn’t lose sleep over the lives I took, and I didn’t regret my actions in the gang. It was all I knew. All I would ever know. Unlike Lucas, I didn’t have some deep-seated desire to escape. In my own way, I was cleaning up the city, too, just like the cops.
I killed men like the ones who’d killed Molly’s father.
And the world was a better place for it.
I never took an innocent’s life, and I never intentionally would, but if you were shooting at me, it was damn certain I was gonna shoot back. And I didn’t miss. Scotty was no different. How many times had he watched one of his “brothers” get taken down, and known it was his fault? How many times had he let his cop buddies gun down a man who’d trusted him with his life . . . and how often did he lose sleep over that?
I would wager never. After all, it was just another scumbag crossed off the Boston PD’s most wanted list. So, me and the cops? We weren’t all that different.
I just didn’t have a shiny badge to hide behind.
After giving Orion one last mental fuck you, I turned back to Molly. Even in the darkness, her brown hair somehow managed to shine. And even though I couldn’t see them, her bright hazel eyes were locked on me. They had little gold flecks in them, with a hint of brown. She had, hands down, the most beautiful eyes I’d ever seen.
The most beautiful everything.
For years now, I’d watched her from afar, silently wishing I could be good enough for her. That I stood a winter in hell’s chance of claiming her as mine someday.
But I didn’t, because
I wasn’t.
And we both were all too aware of that.
So why the hell wasn’t she leaving?
“Don’t make me point my gun at you again,” I said, straightening so I wasn’t leaning on the building for support. I didn’t want her to see how weak I was.
“We both know you won’t use it,” she said quickly, biting her lower lip.
I stepped forward, reaching into my pocket. I didn’t have a proper holster since I’d taken the gun off the dead Bitter Hill guy I’d left to rot in an alley. If I needed to scare her to get her to leave safely, I would. But she was right; I wouldn’t hurt her. I would never hurt her. “Listen here, Princess. I—”
She pointed a finger at me, frowning, not even paying attention to the fact that I was literally about to point a gun in her face and tell her to fuck off. “Don’t call me that. I’m not a princess.”
I released my gun, not taking it out of my pocket. “Just go. Get out of here.”
“I can’t do that.”
I held my hands out at my sides, hiding the grimace at the pain that the movement caused when I pulled on my self-inflicted stitches. “Why the hell not?”
“Because you need help.” She stepped closer, still holding the bandage to her chest. “Let me help you.”
I honestly didn’t get her angle. People weren’t inherently altruistic. Why would she want to help me, when I could offer her nothing in return? I wasn’t used to people acting this way, especially women. My own mother had watched Pops beat me my whole childhood, and not once had she stepped in to stop it. Not once had she tended my wounds. But now Molly was here, and she wouldn’t leave me—
And I didn’t get it.
“There’s nothing you can do to help me.”
“I can bring you back to your home,” she said, her voice so musically soft that it made me want to close my eyes just so I could savor it properly. But if I did that, I’d lose the fragile hold on consciousness I still grasped. “At least let me do that.”
“Bitter Hill ambushed me and did—” I glanced down at myself. I was a wreck, covered in blood and sweat and shame. “Well, this to me. They know where I live, so my house isn’t safe anymore. Thanks for the offer, though. Now get.”
She came a little closer, those eyes I loved so damn much studying me. Eyes that deserved poetry and songs written about them, and to be captured on paper for all eternity. “Then I’ll take you to a hotel.”
“I lost my wallet.” I had no idea where, but I had a feeling it had been burned in Lucas’s apartment, along with the two bodies that had been passed off as Lucas and Heidi. As well as the bodies I’d left there—the Bitter Hill men I’d hired to kill Lucas. He’d killed them, instead, but he hadn’t killed me. Why didn’t he kill me? “So, no dice. Again, thanks for the offer.”
“I’ll pay for it.”
I gritted my teeth. “Hell no. I don’t take charity.”
“It’s not charity. We’re frien—” She cut herself off, pressing her lips together. She was right to do so. We weren’t friends. “I mean . . .”
She trailed off, since she clearly didn’t know what “we” were.
I did.
We were nothing. Passing acquaintances in life.
After all, her real friends didn’t bleed out in alleyways because they couldn’t show their faces in the hospital. And they didn’t kill people for a living and not feel a shred of shame for it. The only thing I regretted was what I’d done to Lucas. The rest? Part of the job.
Including the two men I’d killed just an hour before.
It had been a stroke of pure luck that I’d walked away from that. If the gun of the guy I’d been busily choking out hadn’t misfired . . . I’d snapped his neck, taken the gun, and unjammed the bullet from the barrel. If Reggie wanted me dead, he really needed to send more experienced guys my way.
Ones that actually knew how deal with the unexpected.
Because guys like me? We didn’t die easily.
Molly finally found her voice again. “I mean . . . I want to help you. You did all that work around my house, never asking for anything in return,” she finished.
I shrugged. It stung my fresh stitches like a bitch, so I rested against the building again. I tried to make it look as casual as possible. “I didn’t ask for anything because I didn’t want anything. Plus, if they tracked me down, your name might be attached to mine, and you could be in danger. Again, thanks but no thanks.”
“You can barely stand up,” she snapped. I immediately did so just to prove her wrong, because I was a stubborn asshole like that. She scowled. “What about your parents’ house?”
“It’s not safe, and they’re not home.” I flexed my jaw. “Even if they were, I wouldn’t go there after I . . . I can’t face them now that I . . .” I staggered away from her, almost losing my balance. My consciousness was getting more and more fleeting the more I stood there arguing with her, but I didn’t think I was strong enough to walk away. “I just can’t. Your moral obligation has been met by trying to help me, so just get the hell out of here already.”
“No.”
I cocked a brow. “No?”
“Yeah, that’s right.” She stalked toward me. “No.”
“Look, Princess. I don’t know what you see when you look at me, but take the worst thing you can imagine, and multiply that by about a million, and that’s me in a nutshell.” I shoved my hands in my pockets, gripping my gun, but I couldn’t bring myself to pull it on her again. “Girls like you look out of the windows of their mansions in their fancy neighborhoods and think they know what it means to be a criminal, out there fighting for your life. If you did, you’d run for your car as fast as those four-inch limited-edition red-soled Louboutins could take you, and trust me. You wouldn’t look back.”
She blinked at me, then down at her shoes, as if she couldn’t figure out how I knew what they were. I knew lots of things. It was my job to know how expensive easily stolen items were. “Are you finished insulting me yet?”
“I’ve barely started,” I said, sarcasm laced in every word. “I can go all night.”
She stared at me thoughtfully, and for some reason, heat swept through me at her perusal. It wasn’t meant to be seductive, or even sexy, but somehow . . . it was. Because it was her, and I wanted her more than I wanted to get out of this hellhole.
But no matter what she made me feel, or made me want, I wouldn’t act on it. Girls like her didn’t need guys like me fucking up their lives.
She crossed her arms, pushing her breasts higher. “Funny, it doesn’t even look like you could last another minute on your feet.”
If this were any other night, or if she were any other girl, I would show her how wrong she was. I would say something cocky that made her angry but made her want me, too. I was good at it. I knew women like I knew the back of my hand, and I knew how to play them until they were trembling with pleasure—and wondering how they’d stooped so low as to fall into bed with a Steel Row loser. But I had no intention of messing with Molly Lachlan.
So I just cocked a brow.
After a moment, she flushed and said, “Come home with me, to my place.” She reached out and touched my uninjured shoulder. “I’ll close all the blinds, and no one will see you. Let me get you set up in a guest room, and you can rest up. Tomorrow’s another day.”
What is her deal? “Hell no.” I backed away from her, shaking her hold off. “Go home. Forget about me. I already forgot all about you.”
Too bad I hadn’t. And never would.
“Chris—”
I zigzagged down the alley, intending to leave her behind since she clearly wouldn’t leave me. But I made only a few steps before stars swam in front of me and the blackness crept in. “Son of a bitch.”
Blindly, I fell against the wall, luckily close enough that I didn’t hit the ground. The second I
did so, she rushed toward me, her expensive heels clacking on the cement as she came forward. She wrapped a hand around my waist, supporting me, as if she stood a chance in hell of catching me if I fell.
She didn’t. I would crush her like a bug.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she snapped.
“Leaving,” I slurred, the Vicodin I took hitting me. At least it dulled the pain while dulling my brain, too. If someone found me and finished me off, I’d be too out of it to give a damn. That wasn’t such a bad way to go. “Since you won’t, because you’re a pretty little princess.”
“I see the pain meds kicked in,” she said, her tone disapproving. She sounded every inch the kindergarten teacher in that moment, scolding a kid who drew on the table and not on the paper. I had been that kid, and Pops had beaten me till I turned black and blue every time. Didn’t stop me from doing it, though. I was stubborn like that. “With all that blood loss, and the fact that you probably haven’t eaten in a while, you’re lucky you’re still standing . . . mostly. Let’s get you somewhere safe.”
“Don’t feel bad for me. The whole reason I have nowhere to go is because I did something you’d find horrible. Whatever happens to me, whatever alley I die in, it will be deserved, and the world will be a better place because of my absence. So don’t you worry about it.”
“Well, you’re not dying tonight,” she said, her voice tight with anger and maybe . . . worry? I didn’t know what to do with that. People didn’t worry about guys like me. I deserved to die, unloved and unmissed. “You’re coming home with me.”
“The hell I am.” I pushed free of her hold, and she stumbled back. I shoved off the wall and tried to walk away again, but it just wasn’t happening. I wasn’t strong enough, or healed enough, to lose her. “Shit, fuck, shit.”
“Yeah, exactly,” she said, her voice raised. “So stop fighting with me, and get in my car! Now.”
“I’d shoot you before getting in your damn car,” I snapped, reaching for my gun. “So fuck off.”
Dare to Stay Page 3