Page 48 of Twisted Hearts

“A few scratches, bumps, and bruises. Nothing life-threatening, though,” he replied.

A long pause followed before I climbed atop the seat to be closer to him. I rested my head against Aaron’s strong shoulder. My hand rested on his chest as my ass hung off the center console. Our heart rates pumped as fast as the pistons under Aaron’s hood, still amped up from our out backexperience.

After our breathing finally slowed to steady breaths, the words, “I’m sorry, Aaron,” fell out of my mouth.

While steering the truck through the last of the wooded terrain, he caressed my wrist before pulling my hand to his lips to place a quick kiss to the back of it.

“What are you sorry for?” he asked, glancing back once more through his cracked back window.

“Unless you know who those guys were, it’s my fault that you had to kill them. They were probably after me, and now your life is in jeopardy. I can’t let anything happen to you because of me.”

“This is not your fault,” he voiced with stern certainty in his tone. “Those guys could have been after me as much as they could have been after you. You remember what happened at my house a few days before you left. Chuck, Clint, and Dutch weren’t there to hold hands and be friendly. My life teeters on the edge of death every day. I’ve been hanging on to death’s fucking coattails since the day I was born.”

He had made a good point, but every instinct within me said those guys had caught up to me because I’d stayed in Florida too long. Aaron’s voice interrupted my thoughts.

“When I do find out who the fuck that was, you’d better believe they are going to figure out that I’m not some backwoods redneck they can run all over.”

I believed him. Anyone who carried around a fucking grenade launcher had undoubtedly seen more action, death, and destruction than I could have imagined.

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