Still Not Over You(66)

Kenna.

I’ve never known fear like these thorns that cage me now, driving deep into my flesh.

She’s unconscious, the same ashen gray as Milah, her lips just as blue. Fuck!

Dallas again. The asshole must've gotten her. She’s so horribly limp when I lift her up, shaking her. So light, like she’s already gone, and this is just a husk left behind.

I’m choking, my eyes blurring, as I check her sluggish pulse, then lean down and press my ear over her chest, listening for the faint beat of her heart.

“Kenna,” I gasp raggedly, struggling around the thickness filling my throat. “Kenna. Wake up. Baby, Reb, please, wake up. Wake up!”

The last two words rocket off my tongue, sheer panic, ripping me in two. I've lived the past three decades of my life learning self-control, discipline, learning to stay calm. And right now that's falling to shit because the only woman I've cared about is dying in my arms.

No response. No whimper. No movement. Nada.

She’s as still and silent as the dead, hanging in my arms, this rag doll without the fire and spirit and laughter and sweetness I love. This is my fucking fault.

I took her wide-eyed, trusting innocence that believed in me so much and I ruined it. I brought my poison to her doorstep, and injected it in her veins. Dallas may have done the deed, but she's here, collapsed, dying because of me.

This is all my selfishness, my shittiness, and it isn't fucking fair.

I should be the one lying here barely breathing, clinging to life. She doesn't deserve any of this.

I clutch her to me with one arm, fumbling for my radio with the other hand. But before I can find words, a raw, roaring scream of sheer anguish pours from inside me, ripping out of my chest. I trail off, gasping for breath, then bark into the speaker.

“I need help, help, get someone the fuck up here now!” I snap off. “Kenna – she’s – I’m in the hall near the manager's office, send the paramedics – James? Riker? Skylar? Anyone?”

A sharp bang cuts me off. There’s a crackle of confirmation from my radio, but I barely hear it as I snap my head up, toward the door that just rocketed open.

Instinctively, I clutch Kenna closer to me with a lion-like snarl – I’m full animal, protecting my mate. Protecting her as much as I possibly can after I'm the reason she's in this state.

And I have every fucking right to be worried, when Dallas comes strutting in with that smug, hateful smile on his lips, his arms spread as if he’s presenting the grand finale to this terrible carnival show he’s undoubtedly arranged right from the start.

“Landon!” he nearly purrs. “How's it hanging? The two of you couldn’t be playing this any better. Who the hell knew you were such a fine actor? Ready to play Romeo to your Juliet?”

Everything goes red. Every last bit of humanity in me vanishes to leave a raging, rabid beast.

“You!” I snarl, and launch myself at him.

He doesn’t even dodge. It’s like he’s asking for it, as my fist swings in.

I catch a glimpse of myself reflected in his eyes – teeth bared, face crazed with fury – before his head snaps to the side with a satisfying crunch and the painful reverberation of impact shakes up through my knuckles and into the bones of my arm. He staggers back, reeling, before catching himself with an almost incredulous laugh and touching his bleeding lower lip. His fingertips come away red, and he stares at them, looking all too pleased.

I clench my fists, sucking in heaving breaths. I want to fucking kill him. I want to fucking kill him now, but first I need to know what he did to Kenna and how to fix it when I can feel the silver thread tying her soul to mine growing thinner and thinner by the second.

“Talk,” I spit. “What did you do?”

“What you gave me room to do, you careless, overconfident fool. So noble.” He smirks, swiping his lower lip clean with his thumb. “You play the wounded animal, the tortured soul, but deep down you believe so much in people’s inherent goodness that you just don’t watch your back. You even trusted me to watch it for you.” He arches a brow, cracking his jaw in a back-and-forth motion. “Have to say, the bloody lip will be the perfect finishing touch.”

It takes everything in me not to launch at him and wrap my fingers around his neck. “To. What.”

“To the dramatic little story of a Juliet gone wild. And her brass balls Romeo who died heroically, trying to stop the man who discovered her attempt to cover up a jealous murder by committing suicide.”

My eyes widen. This fucker arranged this, and then used Kenna’s convenient arrival to cap it off.

He poisoned Milah to get to me, to shove me out of the game, and he’ll kill Kenna and me both to seal the deal and tie up any loose ends.

Like father, like son.

Apples don’t fall far from the tree, and these apples are rotten to the core.

I fling myself at him, operating on instinct – only to stop short like my leash gets yanked as a sleek black Beretta materializes from inside his suit. It pins me with the killing black eye of its muzzle, rooting me to the spot with it trained between my eyes.

“Don’t make this difficult, Landon,” Dallas says almost pityingly. “You always have to make everything so damn complicated. For once in your life – relax.”

“Bastard!” I snarl. I’m already calculating, looking for a moment of inattention, a second to get him in a hold and disarm him.