Page 15 of Gunner

Me.

What the fuck is she doing here?

“Gunner?” Bullet steps in front of me, blocking my view, and I want to shove him away and pull him right into me for cover at the same time.

I take another step back and another, until the bricks of the warehouse are just about crunching into my spine. When I said I was on the outskirts, I meant as far away from other people as possible, but now I’m trapped.

She doesn’t know. She won’t recognize you. She’s here because she’s part of the community.

She’s been here for years, and she’s never come to anything the club has hosted before. Why now?

“Gunner? Seriously, I’m going to—”

Bullet’s voice drowns out as a wash of red coats my brain.

Diletta turns her head, looking this way and that. She threads the assembled bodies with nimble ease, dainty little lemon earrings swinging from her lobes. She clears a few bodies, getting closer, revealing a container of cookies that she’s clutching in front of her. The gold locket around her throat glints in the sun. With those cookies, she looks so sweet and harmless, doing her usual best fifties housewife impression.

She’s flawless. So fucking beautiful bathed in the golden sunlight that it hurts. A monster like me shouldn’t even sully her with my fouled eyes. That’s the way I’ll always feel about her. She’ll always be an angel and I’ll always be a beast.

Like my thoughts are sending up a smoke signal, she turns and stops dead.

Our eyes clash. Tangle.

What little oxygen I’ve gathered punches straight out of my lungs.

I can’t move. My vision narrows. I know it’s serious and it’s real because black spots start forming along the edges. She’s straight dead in the center of that tunnel.

Bullet’s saying something, trying to get up in my face, but I can’t hear it. I don’t even see him.

I’m too captivated by the goddess stalking confidently in those towering heels right for me.

I could pretend I don’t know her. Say I recognize her from the shoe store.

For the first time ever, I can’t justescapeinside, hollow myself out, and shut down.

She’s just parted the sea of people around her and honed straight on me like our souls have been communing for a lifetime. Like we’ve played at this exact moment of meeting for thousands of years, thousands of times over. Our bodies are different, but our spirits are twisted together. They haven’t forgotten.

It’s absurd.

I shake my head to clear the fog and the ridiculous spell just as she steps in front of me. Her eyes scrape my arm and for just a second, I wonder why, before I realize she’s staring straight at the line of still healing stitches.

She holds out the round plastic container of cookies, clear on the bottom, a blue lid on top. “Here. I made these for you. Now you don’t have to creep outside my window watching me bake.”

Well, there goes that. Jig’s up, motherfucker.

Her face says that she knows and she’s not going to be talked out of it. Diletta always was too smart. She knows me as her stalker, but that’s only half the truth. I might have screwed up monumentally, but I won’t slip further. Never again.

She’ll never know that it was me who saved her life all those years ago.

Chapter 7

Diletta

Ishove the container of cookies out in front of me, but the living statue of a man doesn’t move. I’ve shocked him. It’s so obvious given the absence of emotion, feeling, anything and everything.

Even though I have the upper hand right now, I’m the one who is surprised when he turns his eyes on me. Cold, blue flames glance over my face, searing me with their heat. He stares and stares, until the man beside him with the dark hair and trimmed beard, excuses himself uncomfortably. That silent stare goes on and on, an otherworldly communication just for me. It sets off a tidal wave inside of me that washes out my insides, making me feel watery because of how hard my heart is pounding. Coming face to face with this man is unreal. The adrenaline crawls up my throat.

I’ve never had anyone look at me the way this man is looking at me right now. There isn’t a word for it. Like he’s known me for years. The real me. The me that I never allowed anyone to see, even when I had a chance.

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