Page 19 of Absinthe Dreams
That led me to think, her serial killer stalker piece of shit couldn’t have honestly picked a more inopportune time for me when it came to this fuckery surrounding the doc. Then again, when did the bad guys ever choose the perfect opportunity to be bad guys in which another bad guy like me could black knight to the rescue?
I didn’t have any illusions about what I was to the rest of society, and honestly, it didn’t look like the good doctor, Genesis Bordelon, did either. But whereas most of society saw us rollin’ and clutched their pearls or got that shine in their eye about wanting to do something with or to us to satisfy their fetish of doin’ it with someone dangerous… she didn’t look at us sideways.
She saw us, and now I knew it was due to her upbringing.
She knew the life.
There was something infinitely more appealing to me about that than picking up someone outside of it.
She’d left me curious, and that curiosity had only grown in the few years since our first encounter when I was barely just a slab of busted-up and tenderized meat on a cart to the other doctors and nurses in her hospital.
She’d held a fire of compassion, even for a clear bastard like me, and that’d held me transfixed. It was one of the biggestmysteries that life had held for me, and now it was mostly solved…
That was something, wasn’t it?
She turned around, jumped, and let out a nervous little laugh before saying, “Good morning. Coffee?”
I smiled and said, “Yeah, if you don’t mind. Black, two sugars.”
“You got it.” She turned and opened a cupboard over her head and brought down another mug. She stored hers upside down, which a lot of poorer people like myself did. Even though her digs were nice and clearly roach-free, some habits did die hard.
I sat up more completely and put my feet on the floor, giving her room to sit if she wanted to. My leg was a little stiff first thing upon waking up, but no more than it usually was. It protested some at moving into a sitting position from prone, but thankfully, this morning, it wasn’t very loud about it.
She came over, a mug in each hand, and sat down on the couch next to me, holding out my coffee to me.
I took it, intentionally brushing my fingers against hers in a light, but seemingly innocent touch – but there wasn’t anything innocent about it.
I’d been dreaming of her green eyes for the better part of the last few years.
What should have been nightmares about that night, getting shot to hell and gone, turned into something else because of her. She was my angel in more ways than one. I knew it bone deep. Hell, maybe even deeper than that, maybe something like soul deep.
I was glad she’d called, but with everything going on, I wasn’t sure where to begin when it came to tracking down her little problem. But I damn sure knew that I wasn’t about to leave herside until he dared to show up and I could take care of him once and for all.
Dude had no idea, the hunter had become the hunted. And that in and of itself was the ideal.
“So, fill me in,” she said, taking a light sip of her too-light coffee. She’d loaded hers with creamer, if not sugar.
“On the plan overall, or just for today?” I asked.
She smiled behind the rim of her coffee mug, her green eyes sparkling, and said, “Today. You made the plan pretty clear for overall last night. You’re essentially my shadow until he’s either caught by law enforcement or you.”
I snorted at her mention of the LEOs, and her smile went from just that to a cheeky grin. She knew as well as I did that the cops didn’t give a fuck and weren’t looking. Who cared about a bunch of dead people who were dying anyhow? If it wasn’t in the news and making headlines, they couldn’t be bothered. Between the hospital and the cops, it behooved them both to keep this kind of shit as quiet as possible.
“The club’s sort of in the middle of a… thing, right now.” I groped for the right words that wouldn’t let on precisely what was going on. Her eyebrows went up.
“An inter-club with outsiders’ kind of a thing, or the kind of thing that landed you in my ER like back then?”
“How do you know what landed me in the ER back then was with my own club?” I asked, arching one brow.
She rolled her eyes.
“News travels fast in the underground,” she reminded me. “My dad’s club heard all about how your boys had a schism in the club and were tearing yourselves apart. He told me to be careful and to stay off the streets at night down here.”
“Shit, I guess you’re right.”
“So, it looks like things, uh, worked themselves out.” She intentionally eyed my cut.
I nodded. “Yeah, they did,” I said coolly. We were starting to walk a razor-thin line on what was and wasn’t acceptable for me to be jawing about.
