Page 161 of Falling in Reverse

His grip is hard enough to hold me but not aggressively to keep me from squirming away from him. He gets us behind a black car, dropping us down to the fender as the pinging of bullets ricochets off the metal.

“I need to get—” Cairo propels me back against the vehicle with his forearm, earning a huff of released air from hitting it so hard.

“You don’t move,” he instructs me, extracting a silver gun from behind him. “I’m not babysitting you and getting shot in the process.”

“That’s my friend,” I quickly enlighten him. “She’s?—”

“I saw what happened,” he grumbles, clearly not concerned. “You move, I’ll fucking sit on you, Little T. Don’t fuck with me right now.”

“Don’t worry yourself about me,” I clip back. “No one asked you to play the hero.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t give a shit what you want right now.”

Fuck this.

Crawling to the other side of the car, Cairo’s hand slides between my legs and grips tightly onto one of my thighs. “I swear to fucking God, woman, I will break something on you to get you to focus on something else.”

“I’d love to see you?—”

“Get in the car,” he hastily commands. “Now.” He releases me and opens the car door, then a pair of keys are shoved into my palm. “I swear to God, you leave me, I’ll kill you.” I glimpse over my shoulder at him. “Can you get us out of here?”

“Yeah.”

“Keep your head down. Get in and hit the gas.”

I crawl inside, careful to keep close to the interior and console, and stick the key inside the ignition, but I don’t start the car yet. Noticing that besides the shouts and yells that seem a distance away from the fight that was brewing earlier, there are no more gunshots.

“Let’s go,” Cairo demands. “That motherfucker has AKs.”

“The gun?”

“No, he bought letters of the fucking alphabet.” He smacks my ass that’s still hovered over the console, and I jolt forward, still keeping low and under the window with the slight stinging left behind.

Of all dudes, I can’t believe he just touched my ass.

Who the fuck cares, dude?

Cairo impatiently turns the car on, and with my butt in the seat and my head down, I hit the gas. The passenger side door is still open, but Cairo’s safely inside doing the same.

And that’s when the peppering of hot bullets rebound and hit off the car. I’m not that much of a fucking idiot to peek my head over the dash and find where I’m going, but with Cairo’s door open, I find the solid, yellow line of the road and hug it tightly to stay off the grass and small ditch below.

The car picks up speed pretty nicely, throwing yards between us and Matteo’s guys, but the car does take some damage.

“I need to find my sister,” I bark out. “We need to call 911 because Nessa?—”

“Obviously, Matteo doesn’t have her because he was too busy trying to win you over.” He doesn’t say that like he’s jealous, but unimpressed.

“She could still be hurt.”

“If you have this kind of faith in your man, Astor, you should dump him.” He slams the car door. “This shit was child’s play.”

I steal a look at him, watching him readjust himself in the leather seat and rubs the stubble under his lips.

“I need to go back and get my friend. She was shot, Cairo.”

“She was dumb enough to walk closer to us,” he mutters. “You really need to reevaluate your life.”

“Stop judging me and help.”

---