Page 151 of Broken Vows

“I was supposed to fire a few rounds. Throw you in the car and tell Maverick you’d been handled.” My shoulder gives a hard throb, like it wants a say in the conversation. “Then you did what you always do— you fucked up a perfectly good plan.”

I glance down at my ruined shoulder.

“You actually shot me, you asshole. Fucked my entire arm.”

Drew stares at me for a long moment, the gun still in his hand.

“For what it’s worth,” he says, “I hoped it didn’t kill you.”

“Wonderful. You hoped I didn’t die when you shot me. Real fucking sweet of you.”

“You pointed a gun at me. What did you expect?”

“I’ve pointed plenty of guns at you before.”

Uncertainty flickers across Drew’s face.

There it is.

He had believed it. Maybe not all the way. Maybe not with the thinking part of his brain. But somewhere deep and stupid, he believed I could pull the trigger on him.

After twenty years, the prick still didn’t know better.

“If I was ever going to shoot you,” I say, “it would’ve been on that St. Cloud job.”

Drew’s mouth twists. “Fucking St. Cloud. Never going to hear the end of that one, am I?”

“No.”

Drew watches me for another beat. Then, slowly, he lowers the gun.

There it is—my chance.

Rush him. Disarm him. Put that gun to his head and pull the trigger.

I’ve spent weeks telling myself I would. Every time my shoulder burned. Every time my hand wouldn’t close. Every time Ray looked at me like I was half-broken, I told myself I’d find Drew and put a bullet in him.

I even meant it sometimes. Or thought I did.

But now he’s standing in front of me, bleeding from the forehead because Doris took him out with a broom, looking at me like he still doesn’t know he is to me, and I don’t move.

“Why’d you take this job?” he asks. “You don’t do this.”

“Because my medical bills were fucking eye-watering. Turns out getting shot is expensive.”

His mouth flattens.

“Ray paid them. So when he came to collect, I didn’t have a lot of room to say no.”

That, at least, he understands.

I sink down onto the floor, back against the wall, too exhausted to stay standing. My shoulder is burning, and I don’t have enough left in me to pretend it isn’t.

Drew watches me for a beat, then his mouth twitches.

“So,” he says. “Got yourself a girlfriend. Only took you twenty years.”

I give him a flat look. “You looking for another head injury?”