Page 69 of Hell In A Handbasket
“I imagine a world where you never even leave our apartment, except to buy groceries for my next delicious meal. Someone who never has an opinion differing from mine. Never has a side fucking hobby that eats away at the lining of my stomach.” I lean in and kiss her trembling lips. “I’ve thought about it.” But then I shake my head. “Got bored really fucking quickly.”
“Really?”
“Mmhm. Turns out I prefer you exactly how you are, even when I worry about you. Though, you mistake my worry for a bad thing. You think my micro-scheduling is a bother for me?”
“It’s not?”
I make a sound in the back of my throat and twine my fingers with hers. “No. It’s my pleasure. I do these things because I want to. Because I fuckingneedto. It’s how I find control and peace in a situation that used to terrify me. Now let’s go home.” I swing my arm over her shoulders, still joined at the hands, and lead her through the gazebo opening. “We’ll swing by the lake and wash my cum off your legs, then we’ll?—”
“Bravo, Detective.”
Horrified, I snap my head up and stop on our watchful crowd. Jen and Corey. Jess and Kane. Troy and Ellie. Fletch. Jay. My brothers. And in the front, Sophia fucking Solomon, bringing her hands together in a slow clap. “Bravo. Enthusiasm. Passion. A little fast for my tastes, but I understand the circumstances made longevity difficult.”
“Oh my God.” Minka drops her head forward and slams her face into her palm. “Just kill me already.”
MINKA
They all watch me. They stare.
This is worse than realizing they listened to Archer and me fuck, because I slide a needle into my arm while Archer mixes my diluent, and though I sit in my bed cubby, partially hidden under my sheets and with my curtains mostly shut, Jess whips them open again and rests her chin on her hand.
Bright blue eyes follow every single step I take, from releasing my tourniquet and allowing the rainbow elastic to fall away, to taping my butterfly needle into place and connecting the other end to a syringe filled with room temperate Factor VIII.
“So you bleedtoomuch?” Jess nibbles on the inside of her cheek and studies me with laser-level concentration. “Do you get a lot of nosebleeds and stuff?”
“She doesn’t bleedtoomuch,” Cato inserts. “Butifshe bleeds, her blood doesn’t clot like ours. The factor helps with that.”
Close enough. I gesture his way as though to corroborate.
“So if you were the one who got tossed off the side of a building and you scraped your knee, it would keep bleeding until you injected the medicine?”
“Her knee wouldn’t be the problem,” Felix explains. “A fall like that would probably mean she’s bleeding internally. Maybe in her brain, too.”
“So how do you know?” Jess glances downwards… at her knee, maybe. “Everyone has regular bumps and bruises. I grew up with a skate ramp in my backyard, which means we fell alot. We fell hard, and often, at high speeds. How do you know if you’ve just hurt yourself, like a regular hurt, versus the internal, more serious kinds that need medical attention?”
“She probably didn’t have a skate ramp in her yard, Blondie.” Kane crowds into the narrow walkway with everyone else, his chest pressed to Jess’s back and his chin atop her head. But dammit, his dark eyes, almost pitch black in the low light, warm my skin. “She was born with this, so she probably chose hobbies that didn’t include wheels and crotch rockets.”
“She chose vigilantism instead.” Sophia rests her back against the outside wall of my cubby, checking her nails instead of my infusion site. “Can anyone tell me Webster’s official meaning for irony, please?”
“Shut up.” I roll my eyes and slowly begin pushing diluent into my veins. But Archer, my hero, my guard, muscles his way through the crowd and stands, front and center. He uses his impressive width to shield me from watchful eyes, then he takes the syringe and does the work on my behalf.
His stare is sweet. Stony. He’s intent and adoring.
Still, Jess leans around and finds a newin. “So, have you ever had internal bleeding and not known it?”
“No.” I lean against the window and rest my chin on my chest. I’m too tired for anything else. “It hurts, just like it would hurt for you.”
“But it happens to you more often?”
“No,” I sigh. “Because I don’t ride skateboards and motorbikes and do dumb things that might lead me to being injured.”
“Except for the vigilante stuff,” Soph quips. “And honestly, you’ve gone kinda soft on that. It’s been ages since you got your hands bloody.”
Archer glares and bares his teeth. “That’s how we like it, Solomon.”
“I’m just saying! We’ve got a vigilante who never kills, and a mind reader who doesn’t read minds. A mafia kid who doesn’t partake in mafia activities. An enforcer who shares his bed with an FBI agent. And a don,” she adds nonchalantly, “who hasn’t sold a single woman in all the time he’s been at the head of the table.”
Felix glowers.
