hear me?” I asked.
He snickered. “The fuck you think I am? Deaf?”
“Just making sure. Sometimes, rage can cut off the senses.”
“I’m not angry. I’m hurt.”
I nodded. “I know you are.”
Hannah whimpered. “Ash, I’m sorry.”
David growled at her. “You shut up, spoiled little bitch.”
I nodded. “Yeah. Shut up.”
Hannah’s eyes widened as the whole of my crew looked at me as if I’d lost my damn mind.
“She really is, though,” David murmured.
Sympathize with him. “She can be, yes.”
Hannah scoffed. “Are you kidding me right now?”
I shot her a look that told her I meant business. “Hannah. Cut it out.”
She stared at me for a long time before she nodded her head. And I hoped to heaven on high she understood what I was trying to do.
“David, I get it. I mean, I’ve only been with her for a few weeks, and I already get it. I can only imagine what you had to put up with to love her for this long,” I said.
He shook his head. “She’s impossible sometimes, you know? Always bucking up. Never listening. Why can’t she just keep her mouth shut and do what she knows is good for her?”
“Because she’s stubborn. And sometimes, that stubbornness overrides her good senses.”
Hannah turned her head away from me, and it broke my heart.
“Finally, someone who gets it!” David exclaimed.
I slowly took a step toward him. “I get it. I promise, I do. We can even talk about it more, if you’d like. All you gotta do is—”
He snarled. “Oh, I see what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to get me to get up so you can swoop in and take her for yourself. Well, I don’t care how difficult she is. I don’t care what kind of a bitch she can turn into. She’s my bitch. She’s my woman! And she’s coming with me!”
Link stepped up beside me. “David, the police are on their way. We’ve got you—”
I looked over at him. “Stand down.”
My president slowly looked over at me with rage in his eyes.
“What did you say to me?” he asked.
I sighed. “Link, let me deal with this. Back up.”
David nodded. “Yeah, idiot. Back the fuck up.”
And as I watched Link fall back behind me, the canister of bows on my back scratched around my spine.
“Do you know what she tried to do to me?” I asked.
David blinked. “What?”
I snickered. “After one whole day of being together in bed, she tried to storm my work and act like we were a couple. Can you believe that?”
He shook his head. “She’s a real trouble sometimes. Did that to me, too. And I was stupid enough to think she really did like me that much.”
“I bet you had plans for the both of you, too. Didn’t you?”
I saw him shift his weight before Hannah breathed a sigh of relief.
“I had a lifetime full of plans,” he murmured.
I took another step forward. “Why don’t you tell me about them? Your plans? Maybe if she hears you talking about them, she’ll start to enjoy it.”
“I already told her. She didn’t give a shit.”
“Be vulnerable with another man. Women like that kind of shit. They eat it up.”
He blinked. “Seriously?”
I snickered. “I’m the definition of ‘bad boy.’ Women flock to men like us that can be vulnerable and in touch with our feelings. Come on. Give it a try. What do you have to lose?”
I watched his gaze drop to Hannah before he lowered his knife. I mean, he pressed it against her neck again, but it wasn’t nearly as hard as before. I didn’t like the sight of her blood dripping against her skin. I didn’t like the fact that he still pinned her to the ground. But he was no longer in fighting mode, and that was a start.
“Keep going, you’re doing great,” Knuckles murmured.
David sighed. “I had plans to propose to her. In Italy.”
My eyebrows rose. “Wow. Hell of a proposal. I could’ve never come up with something like that.”
He snickered. “Yeah, well. Took a lot of researching to put it all together. I had it all planned out, though. Maxed out my credit card for the ring. Opened up another credit card just to put our two-week Italy trip on it. Hell, I even reserved us a penthouse hotel suite right on the edge of wine country. She always talked about going and exploring the vineyards of Italy someday, and I wanted to be the person who took her there. I wanted to take her on a fucking trip