Page 120 of Killer Kiss

Not dead or in prison again.

Eve cried quietly; her heartbreak as ready to pull me under as my own had been.

I’d done this all wrong.

I couldn’t stay to fix it.

“I’m sorry.” It was all I could say as I backed out of the room. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

Sorry that she’d lost Fawn.

Sorry that she’d probably lost Augie too.

Tears streamed down my face as I drove to Augie’s house, not rushing now, knowing I was going to find his body. I’d been unconscious for hours. Riddick had been given all the time in the world when all he actually needed was minutes. If Augie hadn’t gone to the club, and he’d stayed home, waiting for me, there was no chance he was still alive.

My mission to rescue him had become an inevitable body retrieval. Shock or maybe the concussion made me slow and sloppy, the tires hitting the gutter twice, though I couldn’t bring myself to care.

There was no urgency anymore.

Just a sense of this was what I had to do.

My brain shut down, minute by minute, compartmentalizing the trauma and storing it away somewhere else so I could function.

Like a robot, I parked the car in his driveway. The front door was open. Had I done that when I’d left? Not locked it, just making it all the easier for Riddick to waltz on in and end the man I’d fallen so hard for, despite every reason not to.

I couldn’t take it.

Losing Fawn. Losing him.

I didn’t call out. With heavy feet, I forced myself to take the stairs to his second-floor bedroom. Forced myself to enter his room and stare down at his body, still on the bed.

He rolled over and gave me a sleepy, lazy grin. “Hey, sweetheart. You’re back. Didn’t even hear you come in.”

I burst into tears, throwing myself onto the bed with him.

“Hey.” He smoothed back my hair while I clutched at his arms, his skin, making sure he was as real and warm and alive as he seemed to be. “It’s okay.”

But it wasn’t.

In an instant, everything changed. He might have still been alive, but that only meant Riddick hadn’t gotten here yet.

I didn’t know what had held him up, but I wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. I jerked myself out of his arms and opened his closet, yanking out T-shirts and sweatpants and anything else I could get my fingers on. Rummaging through the bottom of the closet, I found a bag and started shoving all his things inside.

He caught my wrists, spinning me around. “Hey. Stop. What’s going on? Why are you emptying my closet?”

“We need to leave.” I needed to tell him everything. Every ugly truth about who I was and the things I’d done and the danger I’d put him in. And I would. But it couldn’t be here, where Riddick would find us. We were sitting ducks, and my heart thumped with the knowledge Riddick could be here at any moment. I spun around, eyes wide. “Do you have a gun?”

He blanched. “Lia, you’re freaking me the fuck out. Talk to me.”

“We need a gun,” I muttered, giving up on the idea of packing his clothes and instead shoving at him to get up and put something on.

He wasn’t moving.

Just staring at me with wide eyes.

Fuck, for all the bad shit he’d done, none of it came close to mine. He was so fucking innocent. I wasn’t letting him die.

I couldn’t survive losing him, too.

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