Give Me War - Kate McCarthy Page 0,20
fuckin’ shoot her,” Kermit gasps.
“Move him out of the doorway,” I tell Renny, jerking my head at the muppet now blocking my exit.
“I can’t do that.”
“Do it now, Lorenzo, or you get a bullet just like he did, only I’ll aim it where your heart used to be.”
His eyes narrow. “Don’t call me that. I’m Renny to you.”
“Are you crazy? Out of everything I just said, that’s what you take away from it?”
“That’s the name you cried out every time you came on my cock, so yeah, that’s what I choose to focus on.”
“Renny …” I start, and then stop, trying again. “Ren. That was a long time ago and now is not the fucking time!”
“It wasn’t a long time ago to me.”
What. The. Actual. Fuck.
Kermit shifts and I point the gun back on him. I’m surprised he hasn’t tackled me to the ground already, even with the wounded leg. I thought he would take a bullet and keep on coming like a Terminator, but the man is giant baby.
“Well it was a long time ago for me. I never loved you,” I lie, lifting my chin. “Hell, I barely even remember you.”
I so totally loved him once. But it was a different love than what I have now with Jared. It was reckless and desperate. It wasn’t brave, and it wasn’t all-consuming. It wasn’t my entire world.
Renny’s gaze turns hard, my announcement making him unhappy. Good. I keep going.
“You were fun. A distraction. You made life easier to bear at a time when I was going through something heavy. But Jared…” I allow everything I feel for my husband pour out in my words. “He did something no one else ever did.”
“And what was that?”
My eyes burn. “He didn’t give up on me, even when I tried to fight it. And I tried to fight it because I knew he was it for me the moment I opened the door and he stepped through it, walking right inside my heart like he always belonged there.” Renny’s gaze hardens further. “I wasn’t ready for the kind of forever I saw in his eyes, but now that I have it, I’m never letting go. Never.”
“Are you kidding me?” Kermit gasps, eyeballing Renny as he pushes the heel of his palm down on his gunshot wound, his face red. “She just fuckin’ shot me and you’re arguing about love and that one time you stuck your dick in her?” A growl reverberates through his chest. “Just grab the gun and shoot the bitch.”
A buzzing sound fills the room and Renny reaches behind him.
“Hold it right there,” I bark, shifting the gun back to him, but he doesn’t hold it right there and my finger wavers on the trigger, wondering if I could pull it, if I could actually shoot my ex-boyfriend.
“I have to take this,” he tells me as he pulls a vibrating phone from the back pocket of his jeans with painstaking care.
“Put the phone down, Ren, or I’ll put a bullet in you.”
He ignores me like I’m nothing but a pesky fly in the ointment of his day and checks the screen with a frown.
“Ren,” I warn, though he seems to know I’m struggling to shoot him because he answers the phone regardless of my threat. He puts the device to his ear as if he isn’t in the middle of a crazy standoff with his kidnapping victim. “Yeah?” he says.
Someone speaks, but it’s not loud enough for me to hear.
Renny looks at me as he answers, “Yeah.”
I try again, my voice rising. “Put the phone down or I’ll shoot it from your goddamn hand!” I’m not sure if my aim is actually that good though. Maybe I might miss and get his face. That would be bad.
“Yeah it is,” Renny says into the phone, my threat sliding off him like water off a duck’s back. “How did you get this number?”
He pauses again, listening.
“Yes—”
“Ren,” I interrupt, but he keeps talking.
“—she does.”
More listening.
“Yes,” he says again, pausing. “No. I can’t tell you that.”
The voice in his ear rises, but I still can’t hear the words.
“No,” Renny says. “You need to back off.” Another pause. “You just need to attend the meeting like planned and do what the fuck you’re told to do. Evie stays here. The safest place for her is nowhere near you right now.”
There’s a yell in Renny’s ear, loud enough this time for me to hear it. “Put Evie on the goddamn phone!”
I know that voice. It’s