Page 135 of Last Man Standing

I snicker and mess up the line of his handsome jaw. “Not supposed to poke patients just because you want them to be awake for you.”

He chuckles. “Yeah, but I already told you I’m a selfish motherfucker, didn’t I?”

His phone chirps with an incoming call, so he digs it out of his pocket and studies the screen. Instantly, his eyes turn hard and swing my way.

“What?” I feel the nervous thump of his heart beneath my arms. Straightening my back, I search his guarded expression. “What is it?”

“I have to take this.” He brings it to his ear with one hand, and sweeps me off his lap with the other. From languid and happy, to on his feet and charging toward the door, he leaves me behind to rub my butt where I landed with a lung-rattling grunt. “Yeah? What happened?”

What happened? The world caught fire, and you promised to stay with me… but didn’t.

“No, I’ll come to you. Give me ten and I’ll call you back.” Ending his call and spinning, his eyes sizzle with grief. With pain. Worse, with undeniable proof he’s about to walk out that door and leave me here. “I’ve gotta go out for a bit, Princess.”

Yep. There it is.

He stalks back across the room and lowers into a crouch in front of me. I still have my pen in my hand. My book, splayed half across my leg. That lock of hair he tucked away earlier, now covering one eye, because he didn’t just move me.

He discarded me.

Cupping my jaw, he plants a dry kiss on my lips and hovers for a beat longer than usual. “Stay here. Be good. I’ll be back in a few hours.”

“Hours?” My pulse thunders wildly against the side of my neck. “Where are you going?”

“Out.” He straightens his legs and turns away.

Just like that.

“Where?”

“Into town.”

“Can I come?”

He strides into his closet and comes out again with two more guns than he had a second ago. “No. You can’t come.”

“Who are you going to see?”

Circumspect, he glances across the room and studies me, crumpled and splayed on the carpet.

Kind of like a length of boiled spaghetti.

“I can’t tell you right now. But I’ll be back in a little while, then we can talk.”

“Ah… no.” I bound to my feet and toss my pen to the floor. I fix my sweater with jerky movements and whip the annoying lock of hair off my face, then I stalk forward and crowd the man unaccustomed to being crowded. “Tell me now.”

“No.” He slips a fresh magazine into the handle of his gun, then the gun into a hip holster just waiting to be filled. Grabbing my chin and yanking me forward, he smacks an infuriating kiss onto the line of my jaw. “Stay here. Be good. Once I get back, I can tell you what’s happening.”

He releases me again and stalks across his room.

Through the door.

Into the hall.

To the right.

Out of sight.

The world is on fire, someone else is calling his name, but instead of coming to me like he said he would, he walks away. Which is, ironically, what he said would happen way back in Lincoln and Nova’s kitchen while I was reeling from yet another soul-crushing nightmare.