Fangs for Nothing(82)

“What?” Was he serious? She couldn’t scale a wall. “I work in an office. I can’t do that!”

“Yes, you can. Put your foot in my hands and hold on to my shoulders. I’ll boost you over.”

Oh God. She wrung her hands for a second, glancing behind her. The man with the shaved head was barreling full force down the street toward them, looking very angry. “Okay.” Closing her eyes, she gripped his shoulders and stepped into his hands. When she wobbled, she popped her eyes back open and made a sound of distress. “Johnny.”

“Yeah? You can do it.”

“Even though we can never date and I’m very angry with you right now, if I die in the next five minutes, I want you to know that it’s entirely possible I could fall in love with you.”

His eyes widened as he stared up at her. Then he cursed and threw her in the air in the general direction of the wall.

Lizette shrieked and flung her hands out for some kind of purchase. Fortunately, if you chose to look at it as fortunate in any way, Johnny’s substantial strength had sent her over the top of the wall, and she landed half on it, half over it. Her fingernails dug into bricks as she started to slowly slide down, his shorts riding up around her waist. “Damn.” She was going down.

She landed on her rump in a courtyard with a loud, “Oomph.” It was not glamorous. It was not attractive. It was not even comfortable. But she was alive and she had not broken any bones. Though there was a killer still after them. He had clearly reached the wall on the street side, cursing and yelling as Johnny dropped to the ground softly. On his feet, of course, not his rear end.

“I’m coming over,” the man said.

“This is private property,” Johnny told him.

“Like you have any respect for private property. You ran naked through every room in my house.”

Um. Okay. Lizette let Johnny pull her through the door at the back of the house and into a bedroom. It was then that she realized they must be at Wyatt and Stella’s place. But that wasn’t nearly as interesting as what the guy had just said. She resisted being tugged and turned back to see his face popping over the wall, a prominent tattoo on his face.

“Who is that, Johnny?”

“Raven. He’s a douchebag.”

“Why does he want to kill you?” She had a sinking feeling about all of this. The good news was that she didn’t think she was really in any danger after all. The bad news was that Johnny had humiliated her once again.

Maybe she was wrong.

“Because I slept with his girlfriend.”

She wasn’t wrong.

Anger rose in her, like volcanic lava erupting. “Excuse me?”

“I didn’t know it was his girlfriend!” Johnny shut the door and locked it. “She said she was single. It wasn’t until a week later that I figured out what was what. I can handle Raven but I really don’t want to get into a fistfight in front of you.”

“So flinging me over a wall is better?”

He shrugged. “Maybe not. I just reacted. Overreacted, I guess, more accurately.”

Which was all he ever did. Lizette made a sound of disgust. She couldn’t believe she had told him she cared about him. Or that he had let her believe she was in genuine danger. “You need to learn to face your mistakes and responsibilities instead of running away.” Given her own reaction with her middle finger, maybe she had no right to call him out on his behavior, but that only proved they clearly were not a positive influence on each other.

“What, you want me to fight Raven?”

“If that is what is necessary, yes. Or perhaps you should just face him man to man and apologize.”

“Fine. You’re right.” He shot her a look she couldn’t decipher and opened the door.

Of course she didn’t want him to actually physically fight with anyone, but she wanted him to at least face the situation he had created, intentional or otherwise. She already knew that it would be impossible for them to have a relationship even if she did live in New Orleans, but somehow in her heart she needed to see that she wasn’t wrong about him—he was a good man, with a kind heart. She wanted to know that she was right to trust herself, and that sometimes emotions weren’t logical, but they were valid.

She wanted to believe in something as romantic as passion and love at first sight, even if it could not be acted upon.

* * *

JOHNNY KNEW IN his gut that Lizette was right, which was really damn embarrassing. She had a way of making him feel like he was a little kid who had pissed in his pants. But he knew that she had a point, one that Stella had been trying to drive home for years—he needed to grow up. He’d been feeling that very sentiment himself since his wake.