I Fled After Catching My Boyfriend With My Best Friend and Stepbrother, Only to Take a Bullet for a Biker Who Swore I Belonged Under His Protection novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Bullet

Laney shoves the biker out of a drive-by and takes the bullet in her arm; Boone carries her into the bar and asks who knew she would walk out that door.

I did not decide to move.

I ran down the last step and across the wet street with my arms out.

The man with the scar turned his head, and I hit him in the chest with both hands.

He was a head taller than me and twice as wide.

He still went sideways.

The first shot cracked, and something hot punched through my left arm.

I heard the second one hit the brick behind us.

The grey sedan gunned its engine and tore around the corner with its back window still open.

The street went quiet except for my own breathing.

I was lying on the pavement on top of a stranger's leather vest.

"Stay down," he said, and his voice was rough and very calm.

He rolled us both behind a motorcycle and looked me over from head to toe.

"Where are you hit?"

"Left upper arm," I said. "Through and through, I think. Give me your hand."

He did not argue.

I pressed his palm hard against the back of my arm, where the blood was coming fastest.

"Harder," I said. "Both hands if you have to."

"I don't want to hurt you."

"You want me to bleed out?"

He pressed harder.

His hands were warm and steady, with old scars across the knuckles.

I looked at the hole in my scrub sleeve and felt oddly calm.

I had put pressure on this exact wound a hundred times.

I had never been on the table.

"Hank," the man shouted over his shoulder. "Get the kit. And get the door open."

A grey-haired man in a vest came running out of the bar with a canvas bag.

Two other men fanned out along the curb with their hands near their belts and watched both ends of the street.

Nobody screamed.

Nobody called anyone.

"Do not call 911," the man holding my arm said.

"You have a bleeding woman on your sidewalk," I said.

"I know what I have."

"Then you know I need to be seen."

"You will be," he said. "Right now. Inside."

He slid one arm under my knees and the other behind my back.

"I can walk," I said.

"You can't."

"I can."

I tried to stand, and the street swung sideways.

He lifted me before I could finish the sentence.

He smelled like smoke and motor oil and cold rain.

I let my head fall against his shoulder, because my neck had stopped working.

The bar was dim and warm, with a long scarred counter and a jukebox that went silent as we came in.

Everyone inside had stood up.

A bartender with huge forearms was already clearing a table.

"Back room," the man said.

He carried me through a door behind the counter into a small office with a leather couch and a metal desk.

He laid me on the couch and did not take his hands off my arm.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Laney," I said. "Dorsett."

"Laney." He said it slowly. "I'm Boone."

"I know pressure when I feel it, Boone," I said. "You can ease up a little. I need to see it."

He eased up.

The sleeve was soaked dark to the elbow.

Hank came in behind him and dropped the canvas bag on the desk.

He had reading glasses on a cord and a weathered, unsmiling face.

"Let me see," he said.

"I'm a nurse," I said. "Cut the sleeve off. Don't pull it."

Hank looked at Boone.

Boone looked at me.

"She's a nurse," Hank said. "Lucky us."

"Not lucky," I said. "Shot."

Boone laughed once, short and surprised, and the sound went through the room.

Then he stopped, and the look on his face changed.

He put one big hand on the couch beside my head and leaned down.

"That car was here for me," he said. "I come here every Thursday at seven. Anyone who wanted me knew where I'd be."

"I got that part," I said.

"You walked into a bullet that wasn't yours."

"I know whose it was."

"Why?"

I looked at the ceiling, because the room was starting to tilt.

"It was a reflex," I said.

"No," he said. "It wasn't."

Hank snapped on a pair of gloves and cut the sleeve open to the shoulder.

The wound was clean and angry, a hole in and a hole out through the meat of the arm, no bone.

I let out my breath.

"Missed the artery," I said. "I'll need irrigation, antibiotics and a lot of gauze."

"We have that," Hank said.

"I need to hear it," Boone said, and his voice dropped.

"Hear what?"

"Who knew you'd come out that door tonight."

I stared at him.

"Nobody," I said. "I didn't know myself until an hour ago. My supervisor sent me home early."

Winona's text came back to me.

Use the FRONT door tonight.

I pushed the thought down.

Winona had held my hair back when I was sixteen.

She was a liar and a cheat, but she was not this.

"Somebody did," Boone said, and he did not look away from me.

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