Page 23 of Gunner

My lips twitch. This woman.

“Let me help you.” She reaches out, trying to take my arm, but I jerk away from her bare hand not wanting her to touch me.

Her jaw juts out. “Fine. Go ahead.”

I have to take slow, shuffling steps. There’s so much black. It’s useful in that I can’t feel any pain from my shoulder other than a dull twinge, but it’s also annoying and embarrassing.

The sharp prick hits my upper arm before I can react. I’m too slow to bat it away. Diletta empties the syringe into me. My eyes fly open, and I give her a glower that could crush a man, but she just glowers back.

“You need to rest. You wouldn’t have let me give it to you otherwise.”

Now she grabs me, her skin hot on mine, both hands around my bicep. She thrusts me to the bed with far more strength than should be contained in her small body. I can already feel whatever she put in there dragging me down. What the fuck has she given me?

As if seeing my panic she says, “It’s just a painkiller. You’re exhausted. It’s going to put you out right away, I knew if I asked you if you needed anything for the pain, you’d be all macho and refuse.”

She’s calm and methodical as she arranges my huge limbs on her crisp, warm sheets. Her touch is sure and gentle.

I try to swing my legs back out in protest, but my limbs are lead. I can’t move.

“Arggh…” That’s as much as I get out before the medically induced darkness takes me away.

Chapter 9

Diletta

I’ve been watching over the man in my bed for a few hours. Gunner. My stalker.

I realize how insane this all is. We’ve reached that line that you can’t turn back from. I’m this man’s obsession and I know so little about him. I know where his MC is located, I rationalized that with myself when I found him outside. I could always call them to come and pick him up—that’s if motorcycle clubs had listed contact numbers. He was a stranger… but he wasn’t acompletestranger. I wasn’t sure why, but there was something familiar about him which unsettled me.

Nevertheless, I brought him into my house and fixed him. I’m sitting right beside him, concerned as hell. This isn’t any level of healthy. It wouldn’t make sense to anyone on the outside looking in. I’m not sure that it even makes sense to me. My concerns over the way I’ve reacted to all of this reached a pinnacle tonight. I might be able to make peace with my own weirdness and lack of sanity, but it might also get me murdered.

Not currently, since right now, Gunner is literally at my mercy. He’s fast asleep, running a low-grade fever. I hope that it’s from the stomach bug he mentioned and not the gunshot.

I took his IV line out as soon as the drip was finished.

How many men have I seen stitched back together over my lifetime before I ever became a nurse? I bet a few peoplewondered why I was surprisingly adept at just about everything, long before I should have been.

I lean forward in the wooden kitchen chair that I’ve dragged to the bedside. I brush my knuckles over his forehead. It’s hot, but not cook-his-brain hot.

I still have no idea what he was thinking, coming here, standing out there in the rain. If he was going to ask me to patch him up, he could have bloody well knocked. Why did I put him back together? It’s my bleeding heart. The urge to care for him, to fix him, was so strong. I made an instant decision.

The most problematic part is that I don’t regret it.

I was just going to get him warm and get a patch on him and send him on his way and let his club deal with him. I didn’t. Maybe that’s the most problematic bit.

In my defense, what was I supposed to do? The second I cut his shirt off and saw the scars, I nearly went into cardiac arrest. My heart hasn’t stopped hurting since.

I study his face now, in the early hours of morning. Dawn is still a few hours away.

Gunner. The name doesn’t suit him. It’s so… token. This man isn’t average. He doesn’t look peaceful in sleep. His face is still hard and fierce. He’s not the kind of man who is ever going to be beautiful unless you know him. I doubt that there’s anyone on this earth who he’d let get close enough to do that.

He let me see his scars tonight. Not that he had much of a choice.

What hell has he lived? Is that why he’s always watched me and never approached me except for in that store, when hethought that man was harassing me? He called me an angel. Was he afraid of sullying me somehow?

My hand hovers above his chest before I know what I’m doing. It feels like an invasion, slipping the sheet down. I inspect the bandage. It’ll need to be changed when he wakes up. I don’t stop. I place my hand over his heart and count out heartbeats. Medical purposes, of course.

His skin feels hotter from under the sheets. I don’t touch more of his scarred, twisted skin than that, and quickly remove my palm after what I figure is a minute. His heart rate is strong and steady. Mine is thundering. Unsteady. I can barely breathe. I feel like I’ve just done something unforgiveable, but then, I’m not the stalker.

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