Chapter 8: The Lucky Man

Lorena's POV

Brice laid his notebook on my hospital tray at seven in the morning and said nothing.

I read the page of dates.

I read it a second time, slower.

Then I put one finger on the last line and held it there.

*Somebody has been taking his hits.*

"Forty-one ambulance runs to your address," Brice said. "Not one to his."

"Forty-three," I said. "Two times I didn't call anyone."

He sat down in the plastic chair and waited.

I had promised myself for three years that I would never say it out loud.

The promise was gone now, along with the thing it protected.

"Three years ago I was dying," I said. "I had a tumor, a bed in a hospice and about six weeks."

"A voice spoke in my head. It said I could live, if I stood between one man and everything marked for him."

"It gave me Lance's name and the bus stop where he'd be waiting for the 6:15."

"Everything harmful aimed at him would land on me instead."

Brice did not move.

"I wasn't allowed to tell him," I said. "If he knew, the contract broke and the shield broke with it. I thought he'd die."

"So I made myself love him."

I heard how that sounded.

"Not made myself," I said. "I did love him. For a while it was the same thing."

"Did he ever say thank you?"

"He said I was dramatic."

Brice rubbed his jaw with one hand.

His eyes were wet, and he did not try to hide it.

"Forty-three," he said again, quietly, and wrote it under the other numbers.

I had not planned to reach for him.

My fingers were on his sleeve before I realized.

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