Page 11 of Gunner

She turns her hands into claws and immediately drives both elbows into my chest. I rear back and her nails get me, scoring along my forearms, raking over the fresh stitches. I have a long-sleeved Henley on, but that hurts like a motherfucker. My pain receptors go white hot. I don’t make a sound and the pain channels into adrenaline. If she was actually an adversary, she’d be in serious trouble right now. Wounded animals don’t take kindly to having blood drawn.

She stumbles away, then stops, staring at me, chest heaving, eyes bright and wild.

She’s glorious, my goddess. I drink her in one last time.

I’m breathing harder than I should be too. As I etch the vision of her, riled, flushed, and feral, into my mind, memorizing every detail of her bathed in the gold of the light at her backdoor, it’s not just my wounds that hurt. The only emotion I once felt was desperation-laced fear and that was honed into the sharp blade of anger. For years, it fueled everything I did.

Hauling my ass over the fence and fleeing the yard again, the anger returns, gnawing at the edges of my vision, my mind, my inner organs, but it’s laced with something far more devastating.

I left my blood in that yard a few nights ago.

Now I’m leaving the few remaining scraps of my humanity behind for good.

Chapter 5

Diletta

My heartrate hasn’t settled into a normal rhythm in days. My mind is a mess of intrusive thoughts, and my body feels like ground zero for the nastiest natural disaster to have hit in a century.

“Miss Haley, I have to go bathroom.” Ami, a sweet girl with bright red hair, who is currently covered in paint, tugs at my hand.

“Okay.” I assess the situation. I don’t want to leave my class alone for any amount of time. There’s no telling what twenty-two kindergarteners can get up to when they’re unsupervised for even a second. “You go ahead, sweetheart. I’ll get the door. You run down the hall and don’t worry about the paint marks on the doors. It’s washable and I’ll come after you and clean everything up.”

“Thank you.” She smiles at me so sweetly that my heart melts before she races off through the door and careens down the hall, her flashy light up shoes blinking pink and purple all the way.

Those lights remind me again of the shoe store six days ago.

Christ, it’s almost been a week since I set eyes onhim.

I felt a primal draw to him the way that women who are naturally attracted to dangerous men do. The lizard part of the brain might be sending off all sorts of warnings, but there’s alsoa big part of that reptile thinking that would make a woman want to draw close to a man who is obviously a natural born protector.

“Miss Haley?”

“Yes, sweetheart?” Jason rushes across the room, blue paint streaked all down his face and not in that way that said he tried to do it to himself either.

Oh, dear.

“Tommy threw paint all over me!”

I’m all for creative expression, but Christ on a cracker, was it really my best idea to get everyone working on a self-portrait right before recess? I should have kept that activity for after.

Jenny wails from the back as Jason bursts into huge tears. “Audrey painted all over my paper!”

A maniacal laugh sounds off at that declaration. If there’s ever been a bully in training, it’s Audrey. She has six older brothers. It really shows. She’s rough around the edges and not afraid to throw punches.

I put my hand on Jason’s shoulder and stifle a sigh. I could really use a teacher’s assistant, but the school doesn’t have much of a budget and funds have been allocated elsewhere. It’s my own fault. I assured Linda Evans, the school’s principal, that I could hack it when I was first interviewed. Back then, I was desperate for a job. I needed to fit in, but more importantly, I needed to find something to fill the empty, aching, long hours ahead and wash away the horrific memories of being kidnapped.

We have sinks in the back of the classroom. So I’m thankful for that at least.

“Audrey, would you help Jason wash up in the back, please?”

Audrey jumps up, muttering what is probably curses under her breath, but she grabs Jason’s hand a little too roughly, and takes him to the back. I do my best to get Jenny calmed down and then I walk around, complimenting all the bright blobs and dabs and smooshes of paint that pass as people.

I’m not faking it. I truly, truly am amazed at the creativity that children are capable of. I’m here as a teacher—which scared the shit out of me for the first few days because I’m not legit certified—but being here unlocked something inside of me I never even knew I had.

I’ve always loved kids, but just like my mom doubted her ability to be a parent, so did I. It was one reason my parents had me so late. My mom didn’t want to bring me into a world of violence and terror, but then she got pregnant by major accident at nearly forty-five, and there I was.

There was never a child so cherished as I was.

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