Page 125 of Poisoned Promise
“Get thefuckaway from her!” Felix’s voice drifts across the mountains and consciousness stirs in my mind.
“No! I’m gonna kill her and you’re gonna watch!”
That’s Reese’s voice. That twisted bastard. I want to kill him. I want to kill him for covering up Nico’s crimes, for betraying Felix, and for kidnapping my son.
“Don’t you get it?!” That’s Felix again. “There’s no situation where you walk out of this room. There’s no path where you win. You kill her and I’ll kill you slowly. You walk away and I kill you fast.”
“You talk shit like that when I’ve got a gun to your bitch?!”
Reese again. They’re getting louder. It’s like coming up for air the way everything comes back to me in a rush; the throbbing ache of my stretched shoulders, the stinging throb of heat from open wounds and growing bruises, and the strange tickle of something falling around my shoulders.
“I trusted you,” Felix snarls. “I should have known you were nothing but a rat when you kept disappearing but I believed your bullshit about the woman you were seeing. I did the best I could by you and you stabbed me in the back at every fucking turn!”
“You don’t get it! He was my friend too! I missed him too, but you never asked about anyone else because you’re a selfishfucking cunt!” Reese yells loudly, then his footsteps carry him two steps forward.
My eyes snap open.
Beyond Reese’s head, Felix is in the doorway with his gun drawn and Toph flanks his shoulder.
I don’t have time to understand how they got here or why they’re even here.
I just react.
Curling my hands into fists, I grit my teeth and with a yell, I tense my core and lift my legs as high as I can.
Another yell of pain squeezes through my clenched jaw, but Reese doesn’t have time to turn before my legs wrap around his neck and lock tight, his throat caught between my thigh and calf.
Felix instantly surges forward, snatches the gun out of his hand and then punches Reese so hard that the shockwave moves through me.
I tighten my legs further.
Reese chokes and gags. He claws at my thighs until Felix grabs his arms and holds them out of sight, leaving me no obstacle to pour all my fury and hatred into squeezing my legs together as tightly as I can manage.
Pain fades. My heart pounds and adrenaline surges, igniting a heat up and down my legs.
Drool spills from Reese’s lips and dampens my leg so I twist in utter disgust and a sickening crack rises up from his body.
He’s limp in an instant just as tiredness takes over and my grip goes slack.
Reese falls to the floor. Dead.
“Fucking cunt,” I pant weakly. “I hate him. I fucking hate him.”
“Dove!” Felix is suddenly in my face with one arm around my bare waist, pulling me snug against his body, and the other hand against my face. “Oh my god you’re alive. I was so fucking scared you were dead.”
“I’m alive,” I pant, blinking owlishly. “You’re here?”
“I’m here.”
Something clunks and my leg arm goes slack, then drops with only small pain to my shoulder. “You came?”
“I came,” Felix breathes, then his mouth collides with mine and I barely feel when Toph releases my right arm.
Pins and needles rush down my limbs but I ignore them and wrap my hands around Felix’s head, cradling him as close as I can manage while deepening the kiss.
We don’t move.
We don’t breathe.
