Page 58 of Taking Savannah
The line goes dead. Carmelo takes a corner hard enough to press me against the door and the pain in my arm spikes from the jolt before it settles back to the throb that's going to be my companion for the next several weeks.
My little vixen might claw me to pieces.
She's going to be livid. She's going to drag me to a room and curse at me in combinations of profanity that would make a sailor blush. She's going to punch my good arm and then hold on to me until her hands stop shaking and her breathing evens out and the fear turns into the anger that lives on the other side of relief.
I'm looking forward to every second of it.
Because the woman who loses her shit when I get hurt is the woman who told me she loves me, and the woman who told me she loves me is the woman I'm going to marry.
My life is insane. I wouldn't trade a single piece of it.
Carmelo pulls into the compound. I get out and my legs hold and I walk through the door under my own power because I made a promise and the promise was one piece and I'm delivering on it, hole and all.
Her voice hits me before I see her face.
"What the FUCK happened to your arm?"
Chapter Eighteen: Savannah
Hewalksinwithblood running down his arm and a grin on his face, and I want to kill him more than whoever shot him.
"What the FUCK happened to your arm?"
"Slight disagreement with a bullet. The bullet won." He leans against the doorframe with his good shoulder, and his left arm is wrapped in a belt that's soaked through dark red, and his face is pale under the tan, but the grin is there, the stupid fucking grin. Carmelo is standing behind him with blood on his knuckles and an expression that says the other guys look worse.
"Get in here." I grab his good arm and pull him toward the bar because it's the closest room with a counter and a first aid kit and enough light to see what I'm working with. "Sit down."
"I can just call Russo—"
"You can get your ass to that stool. Sit. The. Fuck. Down."
He sits. The grin fades when the movement jolts his arm and pain flashes across his face, fast, gone before he thinks I catch it. I catch everything. That's my whole problem. I catch every wince and every flinch and every time this man tries to hide the fact that he's hurting.
Carmelo stands in the doorway. He looks at me and I look at him. I nod at the unspoken understanding of two people who both care about the idiot on the stool and are both furious at him for different reasons.
"Go clean up," I tell Carmelo. "I've got him."
“I’ll call Russo.” Carmelo nods and disappears down the corridor. His boots are heavy and even and there's blood on them that doesn't belong to Emilio, which means whatever happened in that parking garage ended badly for the people who started it.
I pull the first aid kit from under the counter and set it on the bar. My hands are shaking. I can see the tremor in my fingers as I open the case and pull out gauze and antiseptic and the medical tape. I hate my hands for shaking because I am not the woman who falls apart when a man gets hurt. I am the woman who holds the bottle and lets other people fall apart.
But my hands are shaking and the blood is dripping down his arm, the belt wrapped above the wound is soaked and his face is pale and the bottle cap in my pocket is pressing against my thighand I want to hold it but both hands are busy trying not to drop the antiseptic.
"I need to take the belt off.” My voice comes out normal, which is a lie my mouth is telling my brain. "It's going to bleed again."
"I know."
"This is going to hurt."
"Also know that."
I unwrap the belt. He was right, through and through, the entry wound in the front of his bicep is a neat hole about the size of my thumbnail, and the exit in the back is ragged and bigger and uglier. The bleeding restarts when the pressure comes off, not gushing but trickling, and I press gauze against both sides and hold.
"Press here." I put his good hand on the gauze. "Hard. Don't let up."
He presses. I wet a cloth with antiseptic and start cleaning around the wound, wiping the dried blood off his skin, working outward from the edges. His arm is warm under my hands and the muscle twitches when the antiseptic hits raw skin, but he doesn't make a sound, which pisses me off more than the wound itself. Making a sound would mean acknowledging that this hurts and God forbid Emilio Di-fucking-Angelo acknowledge anything that isn't a joke.
"You promised one piece," I say.
