Page 70 of Explode
“Baby, are you okay?” Kai asked, grabbing my face in both his bigpalms, and making me look into his worried eyes.
Tears welled as the realization dawned on me that he was okay. Hewasn’t bleeding out. I wasn’t desperately trying to stop blood from oozing from bullet wounds. He was alive and breathing, and a pang of relief shot through every inch of me.
“I’m fine,” I said, pulling my face out of his grasp.
He took a step forward. “You’re not fine. You’re as white as a fuckingghost, and you freaked the fuck out back in that room.”
“I said I’m fine,” I snapped, blinking away the images of Kai’s bloodiedbody, my pounding head getting worse by the second. “Can we please go?”
My voice broke as tears threatened to fall, but I turned away, unableto look at Kai anymore. He wanted to argue, I knew him well enough to know he wanted to stand right here until I admitted that I wasn’t okay, but thankfully, Ash saved the day.
“Kai, we should get going. We’ve got a long flight ahead of us. Youguys can talk about this later.”
Kai’s dark eyes burned into me for a few seconds, before he shookhis head. “Fine. Let’s get out of here.”
He grabbed my hand, gripping it tightly as he marched me back to thecar. When we got in, instead of getting in the front like he’d done on the way to the clinic, Kai sat in the back with me, holding my hand and stroking my knuckles like he used to do.
I refused to acknowledge how good it damn well felt.
When we reached the airfield, night had fallen, and the jet was readyand waiting. My head thumped, but true to his word, Kai led me to the bedroom at the back of the plane. He told me to get some rest, and that he would be back for me when we were due to land. With that, he left me alone.
I didn’t hesitate to dive under the covers, enjoying the comfort of thebed now that I wasn’t handcuffed to it, and within minutes of my head hitting the pillow, I was fast asleep.
In the blink of an eye, Kai was gently waking me up. My eyes flutteredopen to find him watching me with a wary expression on his handsome face.
“We’re coming in to land, Star. How’s your head?”
I sat up, pleased the migraine had gone. “It’s okay. Have I reallybeen asleep for the whole flight?”
“Yeah,” Kai replied, giving me space to stand. He led me out to theseating area and gave me a bottle of water which I gratefully sipped, watching out the small window as Ash landed the plane on a small runway surrounded by hills and thick trees.
“Where are we?” I asked as the plane rolled to a stop. The longer Istared out the window, the more certain I was that this was not the airfield we took off from. Although, I couldn’t be sure.
When we left Forest Point a few days ago, it was dark. Now, themorning sun was rising, which didn’t make much sense to me, there wasn’t a huge time difference between Jacksonville and Forest Point, and if we’d only been flying for five hours, it should still be dark.
“There’s something we need to do before we head home,” Kai saidcryptically, before taking my hand and leading me to the front of the plane where Ash was coming out of the cockpit.
I didn’t bother to ask any more questions. Now I was awake,emotions flared to life, but I pushed them away. Whatever shit we had to do in wherever the fuck we were, I’d go along with it. The sooner we got it done, the sooner we could get going again.
Kai nudged me forward with his hand on my lower back once Ashopened the plane door, and stepped out onto stairs that had been placed against the plane. Following like a little puppy, I walked down the stairs to a waiting car, surprised to find a man standing next to an open door.
Although I’d never seen him before, if I had to guess, I would havesaid he was an Apollo merc. He was the same build as all the guys who worked for Apollo, and he had that mean motherfucker look about him.
Ash shook his hand, and he nodded to Kai and me in greeting as Kaiushered me into the back of the car, clambering in next to me, and once again taking my hand. Ash jumped in the front passenger seat, and the man got in the driver’s side. Within a minute, we were turning out of the airfield onto a road.
I stared out the window, wondering where in the fuck we were going.Or rather,whoin the fuck we were going to see. I wasn’t sure my brain could cope with any more twists and turns in the Max Thorne saga.
Lost in thought, I tuned out the conversation that had started betweenAsh, Kai, and the driver. I rested my forehead against the window and stared out at the passing scenery but I wasn’t really looking.
My brain was in overdrive, my body wound tighter than a coiledspring, not helped by the flutter of butterflies in my belly every time Kai’s thumb brushed over my knuckles, or when I felt his heated stare burning into the back of my head.
We had only been driving around twenty minutes when the driverpulled the car off the road, turning onto a dirt track, and it was only then that I paid attention to where we were going.
The dirt track was surrounded by acres of fields, and as we crestedat the top of a small hill, a huge farmhouse came into view in the distance. It was a beautiful house, surrounded by even more fields, and in one of them, several horses were grazing in the morning sun.
Whoever lived here wasn’t shy of a few dollars, that was for sure.
“Who lives here?” I asked, curiosity getting the better of me the closerwe got to the house.
