Slap Shot(51)

“But you’d wait for me, wouldn’t you, you’d wait for me?”

“It would be an awful long wait, Laurie, you know that. You’d get life for murder.”

I sensed more movement behind Rick and flicked my gaze around his shoulder. Three burly security guards stood in a row by the door. I didn’t feel any relief. What could they do? My fate was in Rick’s hands. If only he could persuade her to move the gun from my head. I didn’t care what he had to say, he could promise her anything. I just wanted her to believe it.

“Laurie, come on, put the gun down, you know it makes sense.”

“No. No and get off me.” Laurie had also seen the security men. “Get the fuck off me or she gets it. Now!”

Rick lifted his hands in the air, his eye contact with her not breaking for a second. He swiped his tongue over his bottom lip.

I wanted to fold onto the floor, my legs were like noodles. I didn’t think they could hold me up much longer. But I didn’t dare collapse, that might be all the excuse Laurie needed to pull the trigger.

“Take the gun from Dana’s head. It’s me you’re mad at, not her,” Rick’s voice lowered to a persuasive rumble. “Point the gun at me, not at her, Laurie. Come on, me not her.”

In an instant she released me. The hard end of the gun disappeared and I watched in horror as she jabbed it into Rick’s bare chest.

“No,” I cried, wanting to grab for it, my arms twitching. But I couldn’t, I couldn’t grab it and guarantee she wouldn’t fire straight into his heart.

“That’s it, good girl,” he said, “That’s better.” There was relief in his voice. He must be the only man in the world who could speak with relief when a psycho aimed a gun at his chest at point-blank range.

“Now we can talk about us,” he said.

“Yes,” she said quietly. “We have to talk about us.”

“You know what I think we should do first though?”

“What?”

“I think we should kiss. Do you remember that night, Laurie, that night when we had so much fun, we kissed and kissed, do you remember? Do you remember that, Laurie?”

My guts clenched, I was going to vomit, fear and disgust rivaling for supremacy at the sight of the gun pressed into his chest.

“Kiss?” she asked.

“Yes, let’s recreate the magic. Kiss me again, Laurie, like you did back then.” He leaned forward, the gun digging harder into his curls of chest hair and denting his flesh. He ignored it.

I wanted to step away, I wanted to collapse. I wanted to fling myself into his arms but I just stood, frozen to the spot—my head dizzy, tears flowing down my cheeks.

Laurie tipped her head. Her breaths were ragged, her stench overpowering.

Rick smiled at her, his eyes so black and intense. “That’s it, Laurie, kiss me.”

She stepped forward, touched her cracked lips to his in the briefest of kisses then pulled away.

“Is that it?” he asked, acting as if he didn’t have a gun against him and she was a wonderful, desirable woman. “That’s not the passionate, sexy kiss I remember. You can do better than that, come on, show me. Show me what I’ve been missing out on.”

In a sudden flurry, she lunged upward, threw her arms around his neck and sucked onto him, her high-pitched squeal of crazed pleasure filling the room.

Then it all happened so fast my mind couldn’t keep up with my eyes.

Rick spun Laurie around so her back hit his chest. The hand holding the gun was flung into the air, his fingers wrapped around her wrist.

An explosive bang blasted around the restroom. White plaster rained down from the ceiling as a bullet hurtled upward.

I screamed. Laurie screamed.

“Fucking bitch,” Rick shouted, stepping forward and ramming Laurie’s writhing body against the wall. The impact of her chest banging into the tiles sent a grunt from her lungs and the gun skittering under a cubicle door, spinning as it went.

The security men ran in, the dark navy of their uniforms instantly peppered by the snowy debris in the air.

“Stay the fuck away from me,” Rick snarled into Laurie’s ear. “Got it?”

Her face was squashed up against the tiles, her cheeks puffing in and out as she breathed and her eyes squeezed shut.

He loomed over her, teeth gritted, every single tendon and muscle in his back, shoulders and arms taut and prominent and coated in both sweat and plaster. “Because if you ever, ever come near me or anyone I care about again,” he snarled, “then you won’t just be going to prison. I’ll see to it that you lose function of all four fucking limbs and that’s if I’m feeling generous that day, got it? You fucking got it, bitch?”