Page 36 of A Shot at Love
Without saying a word, Gemma crossed to the bathroom.
“Are you okay?” he asked again.
Gemma folded her arms across her chest, cast a quick glance his way and nodded. She moved into the bathroom and closed the door behind her.
The room was no larger than a cabinet. A single shower stall covered with a plastic liner scattered with dots of mold took up most of it; a child-sized toilet and sink completing the windowless room. Two, threadbare, once white towels, were haphazardly folded on a wall rack. She shivered at the thought of who had touched them before her. Gemma turned the sink water on, then sat on the closed toilet lid. Her legs were shaking in a disjointed rhythm, her hands now following suit.
This made the second attempt on her life. A life that, up until three days ago, had been normal, happy, and safe. Happenstance had placed her on a city street while a heinous crime took place and turned her world on its axis.
It wasn’t fair. She’d done nothing wrong, but fate didn’t seem to care.
She dropped her head into her hands and let the tears finally come through. The running water would silence them from the man on the other side of the door—a man she refused to let see her as weak. More times than she could remember Gemma’d locked herself in a bathroom, running from her mother’s angry shouts and her father’s profanities, seeking refuge from the war raging through the house. The sound of her father’s deep and menacing voice as it bellowed over her mother’s shrill and emotionally raw one was a sound Gemma could still hear in her dreams to this day.
No longer a child, Gemma now faced her fears with fortitude and resilience. Locking herself away in a bathroom wasn’t who she was any more. She wanted her life back. Her normal, happy, and safe life.
She ran a finger under the running water to gauge the temperature and then tugged one of the threadbare towels from the bar and wet the edges. When she pressed the cooled cloth to her closed eyes she sighed.
No, she wasn’t a child any longer, and the need to hide from fearful and upsetting things had long since passed. Her life was her own, her choices, her desires, her every action, hers alone. Staring at herself in the faded glass mirror, she took a deep breath and raised her chin. She wasn’t going to allow a madman to play with her life.
No. Fucking. Way.
She was taking back her life. Starting right now.
She heard Ky talking when she turned off the water. The walls truly must have been paper thin because she could hear every word distinctly.
“No, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Ky said in that same firm, intractable voice he’d used on her. “Because there’s obviously a leak.”
He was quiet, apparently listening.
“Let me take care of this. I have an idea.”
Gemma opened the door to find him at the window, peeking out, his cell phone at his ear. He nailed her with his intense gaze the moment he saw her. A quiet gasp broke from her when she caught the heat in his eyes as they zeroed in on her face. She’d come to recognize the subtle changes in his expression over the past few days. The way he looked at her now she’d categorized as his cop face. Eyes flat and filled with icy calm, mouth set into a determined, take-no-prisoners line that brokered no arguments. Chin firm, jaw immovable.
A different look from when he’d shoved her under the kitchen table and thrown his body over hers to protect her from the hail of bullets. Then he’d looked like a warrior, eyes glazed with the heat of battle, focused and hard, intent on his attackers, his full mouth drawn into a tight and narrowed line, preparing to defend, to kill. One look at his steadfast expression, one feel of the furnace of scorching heat pouring off him as he covered her body with his, and Gemma had likened him to a god of his origin, preparing for a battle of epic size.
Her fingers itched to film him just this way.
“Yes. Soon.”
He never stopped looking at her as he ended the call.
“Are you okay?”
“You don’t have to keep asking me that.” She moved into the room, her gaze locked with his. “Who were you speaking to?”
Ky’s eyes tightened at the corners as he considered her. After a moment, he slipped the phone into his pocket.
“My boss.”
