Page 22 of Redwood Blaze
Never.
Ever.
TEN
MILLIE
I come back insidefrom getting a little fresh air and my phone’s buzzing on the table. I grab it and slide the bar to accept.
“Hello? Rusty… I mean, Callum?” I say, my heart beating faster.
I would always stop my heart from doing it’s little speed up trick when he would come into my office. Mostly with willpower, but some out of necessity so that I didn’t have a cardiac event and need to go to the hospital. The man is sheer sex appeal and my heart knows what it wants.
“I fucking knew you’d go slumming with a hot —fuckin’— shot. You always did have a thing for them.”
But the voice on the other end isn’t Rusty.
“Well, you would know, asshole.”
I know what I’m doing isn’t smart. Antagonizing the monster only leads to the monster growing.
“Like this piece of shit, Ass Supe Russ? I guess he’s your new beau, right?”
My heart sinks. I thought maybe he stole the phone from the office, but he’s with Rusty?
“Where’s Rusty?” I ask much calmer than the spike in my blood pressure should allow.
“Laying on the ground. The dumbass should remember the first rule?—”
“Never take off your hat,” we say together.
There was one thing I’d forgot to mention to Cole and Rusty. The fact that my ex was an ex-hotshot as well. I’d dipped my pen in the company inkwell more than once, which is probably why I fought trying to write another story with anyone for so long and especially with another hotshot.
“Did you… have you…” I can’t bring myself to say it.
“He’s fucking alive, but he won’t be when the backburn line I set makes it to him. Unless…”
“What? Unless I what, Gideon?” I’m not sure what I’m willing to do, but I know what I’m not willing to do.
“Oh, you can call me Blake now.”
My stomach crashes. That was my partner back in Diamond Ridge.
“What did you do to Blake?”
“Paid him a little visit. You didn’t think that I came to all of this information all on my own, did you? He’s probably nursing a bigger goose-egg than this piece of shit will have, but your guy, Russ, went down easier than Blake. That motherfucker fought me.”
“Gideon, I swear to God, I’m going to hunt you down and?—”
“What? Hunt me down?” he chuckles brutally. “That’s classic. Fuck, Mill, you run so far and fast that I’d think you were a damn marathoner. You’ll just run, like you always do.”
“What do you want?”
“You. I want you to grovel.”
“For what?”
“Bitch… forme! Let me know how much you need me.”
