Page 31 of Wandering in Darkness
“Oh, one hundred percent,” I agree.
Antonio still has the ability to look shocked over this even though he said it. “He knows my mother! How dare he happily murder me off!”
“Evidently, not well enough… or maybe he doesn’t like her,” I say.
The SUV crawls down the lane while Antonio questions life in general… or maybe he’s trying to prolong our lives by driving so slowly.
“Cal,” Grayson says.
Oh? So he’s going to grovel and try to get me to like him again? Tough shit. That’s never going to happen. “Do you hear something? It sounded like a dying cockroach,” I comment.
“Uh… yeah,” Antonio says.
“Cal, what the absolute fuck are you doing here?” Grayson growls.
I whip around in my seat to face him, ready to fight. So much for groveling; a fight must be what he wants. “What the fuck amIdoing here? I was trying to sleep when you sent me a shitty fucking text about picking up your dog that wasn’t there!”
“He wasn’t… fuck. I asked the neighbor girl to take him out. I told her I was going to be gone for a bit… I bet she took him home with her. Sometimes she takes him home to play with when I’m out. I didn’t clarify that you’d be there to pick him up. She probably assumed when I got home, I’d swing over and grab him.”
I unbuckle my seat belt as Antonio looks over at me.
“Cal, what are you doing?”
I leap into the back seat and grab him in a headlock. “I fucking drove three hours in the middle of the goddamn night absolutely fired up about the idea that I might run into your irritating face. Only to show up and you aren’t there and the dog isn’t there and you forgot to tell the neighbor girl I was picking him up? And then I end up having to see your face anyway!” He quickly breaks through my hold and tries to pin my arms down.
“Why are you so angry? You know I didn’t know what he was doing.”
“Yet you fucking left me! You listened to him!”
I smack his pretty face two times before he pins my arms down. With some struggle, I’m confident I could get out of the hold, but why bother when my legs work perfectly fine? I swing my leg up and try to wrap it around his neck. He’s a bit surprised by this and can’t seem to get out of it as the car stops and the window rolls down.
“Everything alright back there, Blake?” a woman asks as she peeks in to where I’m trying to strangle the irritating man with my leg.
“Why the fuck did you stop?” I ask Antonio.
“She waved for me to!”
“We’re good,” Grayson calls as he gives her a friendly wave. When she doesn’t look overly convinced, he pushes me off him. The only reason he can is because I willingly let him do so. “Just a… fun little tussle. I was testing him to see if he really was a bodyguard. Looks like he is. Funny, huh?”
“Hilarious,” she says. “I’m supposed to take the guide dog to the one guy. He’s such a sweet doggy. Looks like I got the better job. Have fun now. Hey, strange bodyguard, if you do murder him, you might be better off pretending someone else did it, alright? Ned seems to like this one.”
“Got it.”
“Thank you, Emma. That’s just… phenomenal advice,” Grayson says while I climb back into the front seat. I make sure to kick him a little as I go until he grabs my ankle, causing me to fall face-first into the passenger seat.
“I will murder you,” I snarl.
“I really don’t think you will.”
Antonio starts driving, clearly not caring at all that the vehicle might soon only have two occupants.
“Sit down and put your seat belt on,” Grayson says. “It’s not safe.”
“Oh, you care now?”
“I’ve always cared. This whole thing… all of it… was such a fucking mess. I fucked up. I’ve told you again and again that I fucked up, but you refuse to listen.”
Buckling my seat belt, I snap, “Just tell us where we’re going, and then we’re getting out of here. And I’m getting out of your life.”
