Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 69772 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69772 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
“What are you doing?” she asked. “I thought we were going to watch the game?”
I snarled at her. “Get the fuck out of my house. And the next time she calls, or talks to you in some way wanting me, you make damn sure she gets to talk to or see me. This is your only warning.”
When I got out to my truck, her car was speeding away from my apartment.
The drive took me three minutes max.
When I got there, I saw a bunch of neon green and blue on one curb, and black and yellow on the other.
All of them were on their bellies with their faces on the asphalt, looking pissed as hell.
Half of them looked like they were kids.
Goddammit.
My brain, however, didn’t focus on my job.
No, it wanted one thing, and one thing only.
Shayne.
I looked around for the incident commander, finding him talking to Boseman.
“Shayne Rodriguez,” I blurted out. “Where is she?”
Boseman and the incident commander pointed, and I was sprinting toward the ambulance where the shock of black hair was hanging out of the back of it, hanging stick straight, right off the end of a bench.
My heart rate soared as I watched her turn toward me and stare.
Alive.
She was alive.
“Shayne,” I breathed when I got to her.
She was hanging off one of the benches in the ambulance while another man took up the middle on the gurney.
A paramedic was bandaging up Shayne’s wound.
“You’ll need to go get this checked out,” the paramedic was saying to her. “You don’t need stitches. You’ll need antibiotics, though. You’re filthy. Who the fuck knows what you were crawling around in.”
My stomach pitched again.
Crawling.
God, she must’ve been so scared.
I reached for her hair, unable to stop myself, but she jerked herself away.
“Don’t touch me,” she ordered.
I froze, hand mid-air, and stared.
She sat up, pulled her leggings up high over the wound, then reached for something on the ground.
She caught up the material of what looked like a sweatshirt, then tossed it to me.
“Here,” she snapped. “I’m not going to need this anymore.”
Then she stood up, obviously unfazed from having just been fucking shot, and hopped down onto the ground beside me.
I reached for her again, but she yanked her arm away before I could touch her.
“I called you,” she whispered, sounding hurt that I hadn’t answered. “I called you, and called you, and called you.”
And I hadn’t answered.
I closed my eyes and said, “I’m sorry. I was showering. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
She sniffed. “Well, I’m sure Elliette can tell you that I was calling, seeing as she answered twice, and hung up on me once.”
I stiffened.
“She didn’t…”
“She fucking did,” she disagreed before I could finish.
I was going to say ‘she didn’t tell me you called.’
I wasn’t about to defend her.
Not with something this serious.
However, before I could say anything more, she started to walk away.
“Shayne, please wait,” I pleaded.
The tone in my voice, the desperate need that was practically pouring out of every syllable, had her coming to a halt. She didn’t turn, though.
“This time, Quinn,” she insisted with a seriousness I’d never heard before, “I need you to stay the hell away from me.”
I opened my mouth to argue, to tell her that everything would be okay, but she held up her hand. “It’s time I focus on myself for once.”
Without another word, she turned around and disappeared into the crowd of people.
Part Two
Shayne + Quinn
Netflix should have a category called ‘easy to follow while looking at my phone the whole time.’
—Quinn’s secret thoughts
QUINN
1 year later
I saw her in the parking lot of Trader Joe’s eating a rotisserie chicken.
She sat there, her eyes far away, as she munched on a chicken leg.
When she was done with it, she tossed it in the lid that had one other chicken bone in it and moved to the breast meat.
Like she used to, she’d peel all of the skin off and toss it to the side. Then, she’d leave it for me.
Now, I was fairly sure she would’ve stabbed me with a sharpened chicken bone before letting me have anything of hers.
“What are we doing here again?”
I looked over at Boseman and said, “You know why we’re here.”
“A team bonding exercise would usually take place at a restaurant. Or a fuckin’ bar. Not a grocery store,” Boseman groused.
I snorted. “We’re taking a fuckin’ picnic. And you know they have healthy meals here we can take over to the park before we start our team bonding.”
Except, my eyes never left the woman two cars down from my own.
“Who is that?” I heard Ameer whisper.
Boseman didn’t answer.
Neither did I.
“That’s her, isn’t it?” Assman, my newest member of the gang division, asked.
I looked at Assman, whose actual name was Berger Assman, and shrugged. “Why do you ask?”
“Because you’re looking at her like she’s hung the moon, not like she’s a weirdo for eating an entire rotisserie chicken in the parking lot of a grocery store,” he pointed out.