Life was always an adventure with this one, that’s for sure.
Milkshake had jumped up onto the dash and was sitting between the wheel and the windscreen, so I picked him up and got out, making sure to wind his leash around my hand a couple of times.
We kept it on him when he was in a car because he tended to have ‘happy five minute moments’ where he ricocheted around it or tried to jump out of the window. Once, he’d even tried to squeeze out of it when there was only a two inch gap at the top.
So, yeah, we kept him on a leash until he was contained inside a property. Little furry psycho that he was.
Walking up, Sam hugged me and smacked me on the back. “Good to see you, JTR.”
Over the last almost year, he’d warmed up to me and had finally accepted the change in my relationship with Sasha from the son of his friend to his daughter’s future. That likely had something to do with me pulling him and Ryan away at Christmas and explaining to them that once we were both graduated from our college in Arizona, I was going to marry her. I wouldn’t stand in the way of her following her dreams after she got her diploma, but she’d be starting the new phase of her life with a different last name.
They’d both said yes, which had surprised me, but I hadn’t argued or questioned it.
Incidentally, Ryan had also come up with a nickname for me that involved my initials—JTR. I didn’t get it, he didn’t get it, but he said he was using it, and that was it. Considering I’d programmed his ringtone on my phone as a Bryan Adams song and regularly sent him t-shirts and memorabilia of the singer… I allowed it.
But I’d have loved to have asked his parents what the fuck they were thinking when they called him Ryan Adams. Maybe he hadn’t been famous then?
“Jackson, how are you?” Ryan asked as he joined us, giving me the same hug and back pat that his husband had. “What do you think of the news?”
Pulling back, I frowned at him. “What news?”
His eyes looked from me to Sam and back again. “I thought he’d— Well, it’s just that—” he stopped and sighed, then pivoted and stamped his foot. “Why didn’t you tell him? You said you would, and now it’s even more awkward.”
“I was standing in front of him for five fucking seconds, Ryan,” Sam clipped. “I know you can narrate an entire movie in five seconds, but I speak at a normal speed, and it didn’t seem right to blurt it out before I’d even said hel-fucking-lo.”
“Wow,” Sasha gasped. “That’s some potty mouth you’ve got going on there. What’s going on?”
With his husband still glaring at him, Sam sighed loudly. “Fita Rogers made bail yesterday.”
It’d taken them months to get what they needed to arrest and charge the bitch for a whole host of crimes, but when we’d gotten the call last week to say it’d been announced and had watched it on the news, it’d felt like the nightmare was over.
Yeah, that’s likely because we’d forgotten about something like bail and trial dates. I’d just been so relieved that she wasn’t an issue anymore, and that Sasha could breathe freely once we came back that it’d skipped my mind.
I’d just opened my mouth to reply when the sound of popping began.
Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop.
Before I could look around at where it was coming from, Ryan’s body jerked a couple of times, and two red blooms began growing on his white button-down as he sank to the ground.
Something tackled Sasha and took her down as well, making her cry out in pain, just as glass began spraying from the windows of our cars and the house, hitting the arms I had up to protect my face.
The noise and destruction didn’t stop, even when something grabbed me around my waist and yanked me down to the glass scattered floor.
“Call 911,” Sam barked as he ripped open Ryan’s shirt. “Jackson, see if you can open the trunk of my car. On the right side, there’s a full first aid kit. Remy, tell them he has two holes on his front.”
I was moving to get it before he stopped talking, making sure to stay as hidden by my vehicle as possible, given that we were in the small gap between them, and that’s what was probably saving our lives at that moment.
I heard Remy’s voice barking out a request for the police and paramedics, but it was when he said, “The noise? That’s a fucking bitch called Fita Rogers shooting what looked like an AK-47 at us.”
I stayed focused on finding what Sam had asked me for, but the whole time I was itching to go and shove one of her guns up her ass. Saving Ryan’s life was more important, and with how merciless she’d been when we were all standing up, she’d likely shoot me before I got near her.