Summer glanced at my neck. “You need to stop the bleeding.”
Ronan looked at me and Harm looked toward the generator.
My cabin shot to shit, dead bodies staining my property, no fucking power—it all accumulated. But the rage I’d been holding back at her for coming after me for a third fucking time is what sent me over the edge. “You left the control room,” I accused, biting out each word in a lethal warning.
Her face red from the cold, her hands hidden in the too-long sleeves of the parka, she still twisted them. “They were closing in on you.”
“YOU LEFT.”
Recoiling, she reached for her parka. “I-I didn’t know if you needed more guns.” She unzipped one pocket then the other. “Or bullets.” Pulling out one of my Berettas, then two magazines for the Glock, she held the gun and mismatched ammo up and her voice went quiet as fuck. “They were shooting at you.”
Harm walked off.
Glaring at her, I spoke to Ronan. “You got chains on?”
“Yes,” Ronan answered.
“Bring the Escalade up,” I ordered. “You’re taking her home.”
MY STOMACH BOTTOMED OUT AND Ronan took off.
“I’m not going home,” I protested as stupid, traitorous tears welled.
“Yes, you are.” Shade pushed past me and aimed for the side of the cabin.
Shoving the gun and bullets back in my jacket pockets, I scrambled in knee deep snow that had drifted up against the house. Like an idiot, I followed Shade to the generator as he yanked a little door open.
“Please,” I begged, as his blood continued to darken his jacket by the collar. “Let me stay. I want to stay here with you. You can come inside and I can help you with your neck.” I got it, he was pissed at me, but I didn’t care. I wanted to be with him, and he needed to take care of the bleeding. He had that first aid kit in the safe room. I was sure there was stuff in there I could use.
A few yards away, the guy they called Harm stood over one of the two dead bodies lying in the snow and shoved it with his boot.
“It’s a graze wound,” Shade bit out.
“We need to stop the bleeding,” I protested.
Whipping around to glare at me, Shade’s face contorted with fury. “We?” he asked incredulously. “There is no we. You were supposed to stay in the control room, while I handled shit.”
Intimidated, hurt, angry, worried, I stuttered. “I-I can put some Band-Aids on it.”
“Band-Aids?” he practically roared, as snow fell all around us. “I don’t need any goddamn bitch stickers, and I sure as fuck don’t need an insubordinate teenager coming to my fucking rescue!”
I flinched.
Harm picked up the dead body and put it over his shoulder.
Then I got angry. Really fucking angry. “Now I’m a teenager?” What an ass. “How convenient—I was a woman when you were fucking me.” In a spectacular display of self-righteous anger, I managed to turn on my heel without face planting in the snow.
But I didn’t even make it a foot.
Shade’s huge gloved hand wrapped around my neck, and he spun me back around. “Do not make this about anything other than the fact that you can’t fucking follow directions to save your life.”
I smacked his hand away. “Really? Because calling me an insubordinate teenager was keeping it solely about me following directions? And you’re welcome for bringing you more bullets, you ungrateful jerk.”
“They weren’t even the right goddamn magazines for that gun,” he yelled as a black Escalade, identical to the one in the garage, pulled up in front of the cabin.
“Well sorry I’m not G.I. Jane or fucking Cara the Psycho, or whoever the hell else you wish I was! I was just trying to help.” Fuck him and his stupid bullets.
“What the hell are you talking about?” he roared. “I didn’t say shit about you being someone else!”
“No, you just called me a teenager, AGAIN.” Which hurt more than any other part of this stupid argument. Just thinking about it made my next words sound weak and pathetic instead of accusatory. “And you never even acknowledged me saying I wanted to stay with you.”
Shade growled in frustration as Ronan approached.
“Perfect!” I threw my hands up. “Your manservant is here so you can foist me off on him.” Just like my father always palmed me off on my stepmother and André Luna.
“Fucking Christ, woman. I’m not foisting shit. The cabin’s shot to shit and there’s no goddamn power!”
Angry as hell, hurt, and totally out of