Page 231 of The Wicked
Forty-three seconds.
“It says I should pull it, but what if…” I swallowed, looking at him. “What if I’m not right, what if, what if I pull it and—”
“Hey, if your gut says it’s right, then it’s right.”
I frowned. “What the fuck is with you and Elio on this gut-feeling shit.”
He frowned, pausing. “What?”
Shit.
I pulled out the white wire.
The beeping stopped, the red timer turned off, and the bomb…
“Holy shit,” I said, staring at it.
“Did it… did it stop?” Devil asked.
“It stopped?” Dog exclaimed from the driver’s seat.
“We gotta wait for the one-minute dramatic silence, or we’ll jinx it,” I whispered, and we all went quiet.
When one minute passed, and we were still conscious and alive, I breathed a breath of relief. “I think we can freak out now.”
The children erupted in screams of happiness.
“Fuck yes! That’s what I’m talking about.” Dog pressed the bus horn. “I never doubted you for one second, motherfucker.”
“Right, you didn’t.”
Due to the cuff, I turned to Devil, threw my arms over his head, and hugged him. “Thank you. But tell anyone about what happened, and I will fucking skin you alive in your sleep, and I promise you wouldn’t even be awake for it. Pass that across to Dog too.”
He hugged me tighter. “You got it.”
After about three hours of legal necessities that we took care of discreetly, asking for our fake names and faces to be kept out of the news because of our supposedly high-profile military mission, we arrived back at the compound, where we had to report back to Angelo and have Dog’s wound properly treated. While he was getting attended to at the hospital in the compound, Devil pulled me aside.
“So, today was wild,” he started, and I laughed weakly.
“Yeah, let’s never do that again.”
“Deal,” he said with a smile, as he looked around before his gaze settled on me once more. “Um, so, about earlier… in the bus… the kiss…”
“Oh—”
“I’m sorry, I know we don’t have that kind of relationship anymore, I just—in the heat of the moment, that was the only thing I could think to do.”
I smiled. “It’s okay, I get it, if it wasn’t for you—we—let’s just say today would have ended very differently, so thank you, for being there.”
“Always, Z,” he said with a smile. “But just to be clear, we’re good, right? This doesn’t… change anything?”
“No, it doesn’t, you’re still my best friend, and I still love you; just maybe next time instead of kissing me, you can suffice with a slap.”
He laughed, shaking his head.
“No, really, it might be more effective,” I said.
“Well, let’s hope there’s no next time.”
