Page 41 of The Disputed Legacy
“Are you all right?’ I asked again, breathing heavily through the growing ache in my arm where I’d been hit. My knee screamed in pain too, likely from banging it roughly when I dove to cover Oscar.
“We weren’t shot,” Willow said, “butyouwere.” She set her hand on my side, urging me to face her.
I glanced at her, but I couldn’t turn off this need to scan the place and pick up any details that I could. The sooner I got out of here and back home, where the soldiers could assist me and look into this, the better.
But I couldn’t leave Willow yet. Not when she was gripping my shirt to force me back. She tugged, urging me to look at her and Oscar. I did, and I hated the fear on their faces. I couldn’t stand the sight of blood from little nicks and scrapes from all that broken glass.
I shook my head, hating the reality that she didn’t belong in my world. My fantasies about making her my woman and bringing her home to meet my family were laughable now.
She was a civilian, an ordinary, normal woman who existed outside the sphere of violence that made up so much of my life as a Mafia man.
“I need to get out of here.”
“You’re hurt!” she protested.
I nodded, ceding to her point. “But I can’t stay. I need to get out of here before?—”
Sirens sounded in the distance. She froze, perking at that noise.
“The cops are coming.”
She’d said it in a hushed whisper. But it wasn’t a comment of relief. She spoke like she was threatened by the police arriving at this crime scene.
“I need to go,” I repeated, caught in the secrecy of my identity and held back from explaining why I’d bolt now.
“No. You’re…” She shook her head, towing Oscar with her. “I won’t stay here. I don’t want— They can’t…” She licked her lips, frustrated as she stumbled over whatever the hell she was trying to convey to me. “I won’t stay here. And I can’t leave you like this. After… after…” Opening her eyes wider, she seemed to struggle to breathe.
Fuck.She was on the verge of hyperventilating, in shock.
I grabbed her hand and shook it once to jar her back to her senses. “I need to go, Willow. Stay and get help and?—”
“No,” she exclaimed, twisting her arm so she was now holding my wrist. “I won’t. I can’t. Come with me. Just come with me and let me help you.”
Dammit, she was killing me with her need to worry about me. Stepping back, I nearly fell. A deep grimace took over my face as I bore through the agony of landing on my foot in just the wrong way that made my knee throb. “Willow, I…” I shook my head again, needing her to hear me. “No cops.”
“No cops,” she said quickly, appeasing me and not giving me a chance to argue. “Just let me help you.”
Oscar darted out to get on my other side. Flanked between them, both of them pressing against me and urging me to walk with them, I wasn’t given another chance to argue.
The sirens drew closer.
And they urged me to go faster.
“Please, hurry,” Willow said. “Please. We need to get out of here and, and…”
“Okay.” I nodded, confused by her urgency to reject help from the cops and probably the EMT services coming withthem. Someone nearby must have called in the shooting, and the “cavalry” was coming. “Okay,” I repeated, hoping to keep her further from the brink of panicking and hyperventilating. As long as she kept her cool, I’d work with whatever she wanted. It should’ve alarmed me how easily she went with what I said and didn’t insist on letting any cops or paramedics tend to me, but I was also grateful that she didn’t push it. “Let’s go,” I agreed.
We did.
With their help, we hobbled away from the diner, leaving the destruction and heading toward wherever Willow thought I might be safest.
17
WILLOW
“No cops.”
He’d said it, not me. It was the one thing that stood out to me as Oscar and I did our best to get him to our home. Taking Saul there was the only idea I had, and with my mind not running at full speed with the adrenaline rush of all that had happened tonight, I was sticking with whatever came to me.
