“Je vais bien,” I say—I'm fine—even though I'm not a hundred percent sure that's true. A quick glance down at my bare feet, at the drops of red on my toes and the drywall dust sticking to my skin like powdered sugar, is enough to make my head spin. “Cops,” I say, because that's suddenly all I can think about. I have no idea how long it's been since I left Cliff and Solène, but if they haven't already called the police, then one of the neighbors most certainly will. “Cops,” I repeat, but I can hardly hear the sound leaving my lips. All that goddamn ringing.
A second later, Ewan, the expressionless guy that spent a few days as our acting bodyguard, appears at the top of the steps, moving over the bodies like they're piles of old laundry instead of cooling corpses. I pull my arm from Gill's grip, clamp a hand over my mouth, and close my eyes. I didn't kill them, but I did shoot them. And hell, it doesn't make it any easier to know that my lover shot them dead.
I open my eyes as Gill murmurs something to Ewan and then returns his attention to me, laying the fingers of his tattooed hand against my cheek. His skin is warm and comforting against my face, even if his black T-shirt is wet with blood. I lean into the touch and meet that sharp, penetrating gaze of his.
“Solène?” he asks me as I flick my eyes to his mouth and read his lips. “Dad?”
“In the attic,” I whisper and Gilleon nods, his expression softening as he takes a step closer to me, sliding his fingers under my chin and tilting my face up to his. “Regina …” he begins again, but I shake my head, the pounding in my brain very quickly becoming a migraine. Right now, I think I'm in shock. Seems to be my go-to method for dealing with scary shit.
“I'm okay,” I promise, looking into Gill's face. There's so much there—guilt, love, fear, anger. “I am, really. I just … need a minute.” I take a deep breath and start to ask about the police again when Gilleon leans down and closes his mouth around mine, diving deep, tasting me. He could've died just now. If I'd hesitated, he'd have been shot.
My hands lift up of their own accord and curl in Gill's T-shirt, blood smearing across my fingertips as it drips down the side of his face and onto my curled fists. I raise myself up onto my toes to deepen the kiss, relief and fear ricocheting through me like that bullet would've done if I'd been hit with it. I could've died, too. I almost did.
Gill pulls back, gazing down at me with such a tender expression on his face that for a moment, my eyes blur with tears. I blink them away and my ears pop, making me grit my teeth as the ringing seemingly rises in pitch. My hearing returns just enough for me to hear Ewan say something about Aveline.
Oh God.
“Is she okay?” I ask Gill, my heart racing for a million different reasons. He nods at me, but the grim look on his face tells me that it's bad. Or that this isn't over. Maybe both.
“She will be,” he says, a strange note in his voice as he watches Ewan check the pulses on the bodies in both stairwells. “And Regina,” he begins again. I try to cut him off, but he says it anyway. “Thank you.” A small, sad smile. “I think you might've just saved my life.”
Gill leans close and presses another kiss against my mouth. With a last lingering look and a brush of fingers against the nape of my neck, he moves by me and into Solène's room. I can tell he wants to say something else about my involvement in all of this, but … I guess I really did save his life. Well, maybe. Knowing Gill, he'd have probably finagled his way out of the whole situation. Still, he knows better than to think he can chastise me, even if my being involved scares the ever living crap out of him.
“Don't worry about the police,” Gill adds, finally answering my question as I follow behind him, his voice already wrapped up in his thoughts again, plotting, planning, calculating. That's Gilleon. “Max has an in with the police chief. They'll write this off as illegal target practice in the backyard.”
“He … holy shit.” I run my fingers through my hair and studiously avoid looking at the stairwell. Like at the hotel, I imagine that these bodies, too, will disappear. I don't want to know about it. I don't. One quick flick of the eyes and I see splatters of blood that I hope to Christ I'll be able to un-see.
I shiver and focus on Gilleon's broad back instead, on the muscles that always feel so good beneath my fingertips. After our date, I knew I wanted to live with Gill, love Gill, but now? Holy crap. I want to marry him and have fucking babies. Okay, maybe one baby. Maybe. Anyway, I want a dog and a cat and a studio downstairs. I want to sleep next to Gill every night and let him smile at my mussy hair every morning. If I'd have lost him, really lost him this time … I can't even think about it.