We did manage to grab the cash, and Landon and I managed to make it out.
Mario didn’t.
Mario also had a wife and three kids, and after what’d happened, neither Landon or I wanted a damn thing to do with that money. We worked through a lawyer we knew, and through a couple of shell companies, he made sure every dollar went to Mario’s widow and kids. But as far as Harry was concerned, the money was his, and we’d “stolen” it from him. We’d heard rumors from old contacts that there was a price on our asses back in Vegas but seeing as we never expected to go back there, we’d let it lie.
The other night, the piper had come calling.
The hitman—and we both knew damn well that’s the only thing he could be—had been waiting for us to close up the parlor for the night. He’d come crashing through the back door, probably trying to make the hit look like a robbery gone wrong. I don’t know if he was slow that night, or maybe he’d heard I was a junkie or whatever and underestimated me. Either way, it was his last fuck up.
I’d put one through him, but he got a round into my side. It was Landon who’d decided to go to Kennedy’s clinic, and when I’d seen her lean over me and I felt that bullet twisting in my side, my defenses had come down. My raw need for her had come blazing out, and I’d just gone for what I’d wanted to go for since the day I first saw her.
I’d kissed her. And a day later, here I’d gone and done it again. I’d kissed her again, and let temptation into my world in a big, big way.
I’d kissed Kennedy McKinnon, and I knew the second my lips touched hers that my world was never going to be the same.
I took another breath, holding it and trying to quell the fire in my veins as I stared at the spot where I’d just tasted those lips again. But the fire wouldn’t quell. Not this time, and not with her. I’d known addiction.
This was bigger.
And I knew right there that this girl was one addiction I wasn’t going to kick. She was one battle I was going to lose. Hopelessly.
Willingly.
Over and over again.
6
Kennedy
“See you tomorrow, Simon.”
Simon barely raised his head up from his perch on top of the front desk to the clinic, glancing at me before tucking back down and going back to sleep.
“Thanks, you have a good night too,” I muttered dryly before stepping out and closing the door behind me. I twisted the key in the lock, yanked on the door to check, and then turned to head to my car.
The day had been pretty standard. Well, let me rephrase that. The day had been pretty standard aside from kissing Caleb. Aside from losing my freaking head and moaning into his lips as his strong hands slid over my body and pinned me to the wall. Aside from running off afterwards to masturbate in the damn locker room to the thoughts of him and his friend both having their way with me.
So, yeah, aside from that?
Totally normal day.
I’d stayed late again, trying to clean up some of my records. So it was dark now that I was heading over to my car in the parking lot behind the clinic. I turned the car on, the engine rumbling to life as I sent a quick text to Lucy to see if she’d had dinner yet. I waited a second, but when no answer came, I figured she was still working. Lucy was always sort of an enigma, but for present at least, she was bartending a few towns over at a local watering hole.
I put the car into drive, and I’d barely gone a single inch when I heard the horrible wrenching sound, followed by a loud pop. I gasped as the car jolted, the front end seemingly dipping a little before I quickly put it into park and turned off the engine. I opened the door and glanced out, and I my stomach sank.
Fuck.
I hadn’t seen the piece of two-by-four board with the nails sticking out of it in the dark. I mean, I had no freaking idea how it’d gotten under my front tire—the front tire that was now very much shredded to ribbons—but it looked like some kind of scrap from a construction site or something. I turned and glared at the two-story building across the street that they’d been renovating for months now and swore under my breath.
Shit shit shit shit.
I groaned as I leaned against the side of the car. Okay, I didn’t live that far from the clinic. But it was dark, and a long enough walk that doing it then sounded like the last thing I wanted to do after a long day. I grumbled, yanking my phone out. Maybe I could call Jackie to see if Stone could come down with the tow truck from Ryker’s garage.