Uppercut Princess (The Heights Crew #1)(38)

Magnum’s gaze lowers. I can tell he thinks this is nonsense, too, but he’s too worried about Johnny’s reaction to do anything about it. Maybe I should be too.

I blow out a breath. “Fine. I’ll be fine. No one has to worry about it.” I crawl into the car, and after a beat, Magnum shuts the door on me.

I keep my injured shoulder away from the nice leather interior but lean my head back against the seat. After I sit there for a while, the injury starts to pound. The adrenaline moving through me must’ve dulled the pain. That’s why I didn’t realize sooner that I was this injured. It’s probably a scrape. Or a cut. Or both.

Ten minutes later, Johnny exits the shop, the three girls in tow. I sit up. Through the hazy fog of the dimming package in the car, there are a lot more bags coming out than just the one that held my three outfits earlier.

What the actual fuck?

The trunk opens, and minutes later, it slams. The women move back into the shop while Magnum and Rocket talk outside until the door opens and Rocket scoots in next to me. As soon as the door shuts, he turns, his eyes filled with desperate concern. “I’m so sorry,” he says. “Let me see. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I would never do that.”

Someone needs to explain to Johnny that there’s more than one way to hurt people. Not all of it is just physical, it’s mental, too. It’s a good thing I don’t care about him because if some guy I did care about cheated on me like that, I would be devastated beyond reason. I wouldn’t listen to any sick sort of excuses thrown at me to try to get me to understand why it was okay for me to be cheated on.

He turns me in the seat until I’m facing away from him and lifts the back of my shirt. The divider between the front and the back starts to slide down. Rocket yanks my shirt back down over me. “Not now, Mag! Take us to Kyla’s apartment building.”

The divider starts going up before he even gets all his orders. Once we’re hidden away again, Johnny lifts my shirt with a gentle touch. He sucks in a breath once he reveals the injury. He stays there for the longest time, not moving, but bearing a hole right into me.

“I wish you would’ve told me I was hurting you.”

I try not to laugh. Like it would’ve stopped him. He needed to prove a point, and he did.

He reaches over me to grab a stack of napkins next to a bottle of alcohol tucked away in a compartment. He cleans me up, pressing gently against the cut or whatever I have there while I keep my jaw locked down. There’s no way I’m showing any sort of emotion while he’s doing this.

Finally, he starts to talk. “I know the way I do things can seem confusing. I haven’t had a chance to talk to you much after I—”

“Claimed me?” I throw out there.

He snickers like that’s such a funny way to see it, but it’s true. It’s one-hundred percent true. He saw something he wanted and he did the equivalent of a dog marking his territory. That’s what this is about.

“Yes, but I hope it’s more than that too. The world I grew up in is different from the world everyone else has. We love fiercely. Quickly. If we want something, we take it before someone else claims it.” He stops working on my wound and breathes out. His hot breath hitting my bare skin. “The way you fought did something to me, Kyla. I don’t know how to explain it, but I had to have you. And I will have you. I could tell we were meant to be together.”

In any other world, this might be the sweetest conversation ever. Except, this is the gang world and instead of professing love, Johnny’s professing a claiming. A want. A need. A desire he just couldn’t hold back.

“I promise to never throw things like what just transpired in your face. Like I explained at the store, you’ll have a role fit for a queen. People will fear you. Respect you. Love you,” he says, his voice trailing off as his fingers brush my skin. “That’s all I want. Respect is everything in the Heights Crew.”

His touch passes over my bare back and sneaks around my front. His fingers stretch out, his thumb a centimeter away from my breast. I can tell he wants to touch me. I can tell he wants to move his hand to cup me, but Johnny’s a good little soldier. He might not go against his father after all.

He drops his forehead to my spine and breathes in, his hold tightening around my midsection. “I want you to be happy here. To do that, there are only a few rules for you. Don’t ever disrespect me like you did in there.” His hand tightens again, his nails biting into me. I close my eyes through the pain, focusing on the prize at the end of all this. “You don’t disrespect the Crew, and you honor me and my family by doing what we say and knowing that it’s for your own good or for the good of others. Do you understand?”

Bile rises up my throat. Johnny will never be married to anything but the Crew, and that’s sad. He doesn’t know any other way.

“Kyla?”

I nod.

He sinks his fingers even further into my skin. “I need to hear you say it.”

“I understand,” I say quickly.

Johnny immediately releases his hold on me. “I’ll take care of you. I only ask for a few things in return.” He presses his lips against my bare skin like he hasn’t just asked me to give up myself for him. I would never be my own person with my own thoughts and feelings. Or at least have any I could act on independently. He doesn’t get that. “Hopefully, eventually, you’ll fall for me despite all of this.”