I wonder if they’ll tell him what I did. I wonder if they’ll count killing me as punishment enough, or if they’ll decide he has to die too. That’s even worse to think about, and I bite the inside of my cheek, trying to hold back the tears that burn my eyes.
What really hurts is that Sloan is the one who’s going to do this.
I’d be terrified if it was Gavin, but at least he’s someone I don’t know. Someone who doesn’t give a shit about me.
I tried to hate Sloan from the moment I first met him, and I had every reason to. But without even trying, even while trying to do the exact opposite, I started to care for him. Something was building between us, something easy and natural when we let it be. Like on our date, when we were so wrapped up in each other, and afterwards when he looked at me with those sad eyes, wishing things could have been different.
I thought he was starting to care about me too. But he’s too much like his father. His duty will always override everything else, the same way it did for Gavin when Sloan was a kid. He’s following right in his father’s footsteps, and there’s nothing I can do to stop him now.
Even though I know it was faked, I can’t stop replaying the image of him shooting my dad. It’s like that scene is repeating itself now, only this time, instead of being on the other side of the street, watching from behind the corner of a building, I’m the one staring down the barrel of Sloan’s gun.
I can’t decide if it’s better or worse knowing that this time, it’s not an act. It won’t be faked.
This time, the blood will be real.
The tears I’ve been suppressing finally fall, leaking from my eyes and down the side of my face, spilling to soak into the ground under my head. I don’t even bother to blink them away. There’s no point.
I don’t take my gaze off Sloan as his finger slides over the trigger of the gun, and a soft, sobbing breath spills into the quiet air around us when I open my mouth.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper hoarsely.
I don’t know why I want those to be my last words to him, but I do. Maybe I hope he’s sorry too. That there might be some chance for the fucked up shit between us to be untangled. That we can fix this. Somehow.
But he doesn’t say anything.
There’s nothing but silence and the harsh sound of his breathing.
And then he fires.
1
The gunshot reverberates in my ears, making them ring and sending my brain into a dazed spiral for a second.
My heart is still pounding, and as I process the fact that I can still hear things, including the shrill, piercing ring in the silence left after the gunshot, I realize I’m not dead.
I blink in surprise, and then Sloan rolls me over onto my back roughly, still straddling me to keep me pinned down.
His face makes it clear that he’s still pissed at me. The coldness and blankness I saw on his face as he led me here is totally gone, leaving all of his emotions bare and plain on his face.
I can see everything. Anger and pain and confusion. His chest heaves as he stares down at me, and his eyes are like a storm, swirling with his pain like it’s threatening to consume him.
“You’ve fucked me in the head,” he mutters, and it sounds so bitter, dropping into the silence of the forest around us as he grinds each word out. “Goddamn you, Mercy. I’m fucked.”
It hits me then that he really did mean to kill me with that shot. When he aimed the gun at me, he wanted to shoot me, but he couldn’t do it. Something made him move the gun at the last second, sending the bullet firing harmlessly into the ground nearby, instead of into my head.
Sloan grits his teeth, and his expression is still a riot of emotions. He adjusts his grip on the gun and points it at my head again, and I watch as he squares his shoulders, determination filling him. This time, though, I don’t say anything. I don’t do anything, even though my bound hands aren’t pinned under me anymore.
I just hold his gaze, looking into those storm cloud eyes as tears leak from my own, spilling down my cheeks.
We stay like that for a second, just staring at each other, neither of us moving as the tension builds around us. It feels like I forget to breathe for a second, holding perfectly still, and then all at once, the tension breaks with a snap.
Sloan drops the gun into the dirt. His lips curl back in something almost like a snarl, his eyes hard and wild.
Then he leans down in a sudden rush to kiss me.
It’s like everything between us explodes from that one action. I suck in a sharp breath as soon as his lips meet mine, surging up as much as I can to kiss him back.
This kiss is just like most of the others between us. Nothing soft and gentle or full of tender feelings like the ones I’ve traded with Rory and Levi. No, kissing Sloan is always a fight, always a battle, and this is no different, even though it’s harder to tell what we’re fighting against this time.
His mouth is hot and demanding, and he kisses me wildly, teeth pressing against my lips, his tongue soothing the sting of bites just seconds after. I’d reach up and grab on to him if I could, but with my hands bound, all I can do is kiss him back, giving as good as I get.
He presses his tongue into my mouth, and mine meets it, tangling and teasing, deepening the kiss until I need to breathe. Even then, we don’t move far away from each other. There’s nowhere for me to go anyway, and he doesn’t give me any space at all, diving back in for another kiss as soon as I’ve caught a few breaths.
His gun is right there on the ground beside me. I could try to grab it and kill him.
I should.
I know I should.
Sloan is so fucking hot and cold that he could kiss me one minute and then kill me the next. He has his orders, after all, and I have no way of knowing how set on them he is.
But I also know I can’t do it. I can’t kill him. He couldn’t shoot me, and I wouldn’t be any more capable of it than he was.
Even when I thought he killed my dad, I had feelings for him. Ones I tried to deny, because I thought he had no heart if he could just kill a man like that, but now?
Now I’m well and truly fucked.
He’s shown that he does have a heart, and it might be hard to reach, but it’s there. He’s not the monster I made him out to be in my head at all. And I do have feelings for him. Feelings I can’t deny anymore, no matter how much I might want to. And honestly, I don’t even know if I still want to.
It’s all a confused mess, but I don’t really have time to work it out.
Sloan’s still kissing me, still on top of me, pressing his weight against my body, and it’s so much easier to go with that. To give in to the desperate way I want him.
His mouth trails from mine down my neck, leaving sharp, open-mouthed kisses as he goes. My chest heaves as I gasp for breath, and Sloan bites the crook of my neck and shoulder before coming back to kiss me again.
I welcome him easily, kissing back, pouring all of my fucked up feelings into the kiss the same way he is. It’s heavy and loaded down with all of our need and our anger and our sadness, but that doesn’t make it any less hot for some reason.
Sloan gropes at my sides, fingers digging into my hips as he holds on, and I catch a low growl against my mouth. I answer it with a soft, almost pleading noise of my own, and when he pulls back, I can see that heat is edging out the torment in his eyes.