Kayla

 

Nobody notices the scared woman crawling on the floor, even if the scared woman is the one who started the mayhem. When I round a corner, away from the gunfire, I jump to my feet and charge into the back room, where I hear Cormac’s screams despite the far louder wailing of gunfire. My ears would pick out those screams even if I was standing next to a volcano; they are tuned for them.

 

They’ve put him in a cardboard box in the corner of a room with no windows. The first thing I do when I find him is to bar the door and find myself a weapon, settling on a long pipe of metal leaned up against the wall. I take it, practice swing it a couple of times, and then pray that I don’t have to use it, because if I have to use it that means that Xander and his men are dead and that Connor’s men will be coming for me. Then I go to the box and crouch down, stroking Cormac’s cheek with my finger; I can’t pick him up because I need my hand free for the pipe.

 

“Hush,” I whisper. “It’s okay, little angel. Everything is going to be okay.”

 

He grabs my fingers, nuzzling them with his nose, and stops crying for a moment. But then the gunfire gets even heavier, so loud it shakes the room, and he throws his head back and lets out another scream. I can’t stop myself. I toss down the metal pipe and lift him out of the box. I can’t sit here while he’s crying like that. I clutch him to my chest, kissing him on the cheek, holding him like he’s full of helium and I don’t want him to float away.

 

“Hush, little baby, don’t say a word …”

 

I sing to him as sweetly as I’m able to, standing on the fringe of a battle zone. He keeps crying, but the space between his sobs gets larger and he squeezes onto me tighter, as though as scared that I’ll float away as I am that he will. I wonder, idly, if I should try and find a way out of the building, maybe the back entrance, but the idea that I’ll walk out that door only to be met with a bullet—a single bullet that ends two lives—is too much to handle. And then I wonder if I should leave Cormac here and go searching for an exit, but that idea is too much as well. I can’t leave my baby, not now, now when I’ve got him back and I know he’s safe because I can touch him. I won’t replace secure reality with anything lesser.

 

Slowly, the gunfire slows down and then stops entirely. I put Cormac back in the box and pick up the pipe, going to the door, readying myself. Connor or Xander; that is the question.

 

The person on the other side of the door approaches slowly. It sounds like they’re checking every corner, the way their footsteps resound off the tiled floor, and then the knock comes at the door. “Kayla?” For a moment it’s difficult to tell whose voice it is. I didn’t realize how badly my ears were ringing until I tried to focus on something other than a baby’s scream. I try and focus now, attempting to block out the ringing. “Kayla?” It could be Connor’s. He’s tricking me. He’s putting on a voice that sounds like Xander’s so that he can get me out there and then do horrible things to me, like he’s done horrible things before. Maybe this is paranoia but it’s not unlike the tricks he played on me when we were together.

 

“Xander?” My voice is far shakier than I thought it’d be. It comes out like the warble of a bird. “Xander, is that you?”

 

“Yeah, it’s me. Open up.”

 

“But …” I drop the pipe. My hands are shaking. My breathing is coming too fast. “You might be Connor.”

 

“What? I’m not …” He lowers his voice. “It’s me. I promise. It’s over. Connor is dead.”

 

I put my hand on the door and open it slowly, and then pull it open so fast I almost dislocate my shoulder when I see Xander standing there, face spattered with blood. He takes a step forward, staring down at me. He makes to put his hands on me but then looks at the blood and lowers them. I go to the box and get Cormac, cradling him to my chest.

 

“Get us out of here,” I tell him.

 

He nods. “Follow me. I’ll take you out the back way where it’s less …”

 

Bloody, is the unsaid word, hovering on his lips and then disappearing.

 

“How are your men?” I ask, as we climb into the car. Sirens ring around us, the police are on their way, but Xander doesn’t seem even mildly panicked at the prospect. I guess being an Angel has its perks.

 

“Mostly okay. Maxwell caught one in the arm and another fella caught one in the leg, but that stunt you pulled …” He starts the car and pulls away from the laundromat just as cop cars round the opposite corner. “That was genius, Kayla. Real goddamn genius. It gave us the time we needed. We won. We fuckin’ won.”

 

I hold Cormac so that we’re face to face. “I’m just glad you’re okay.” I kiss his nose. “I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t, little man.”

 

“You never have to worry about that again,” Xander says. “I can promise you that.”

 

“Can you promise that you can promise?”

 

We share a smile.

 

When we get home we wash again, but this time we keep Cormac with us, and then we put him to bed in the bedroom and lock the window and sit in the living room, making sure nobody can get to him even though Xander tells me that none of this is necessary anymore.

 

“He’s dead,” he says, bringing me a glass of water. “I put the bullet in him myself.” He drops onto the couch next to me. “I … the bastard admitted that it was him. I mean, I knew it was him, but in this business when you say a man did somethin’, what you mean is he either did it or he gave the order. But Connor did it, with his own hand. He burned my goddamn little brother.” He lets out a shaky breath. “It’s a strange thing to get back from a fight and not have a drink. I don’t think I’ve ever done it before, since I was fourteen years old.”

 

“Do you want one?” I ask, placing my water on the coffee table.

 

“I could lie to you and say no, the thought ain’t even crossed my mind.” He places a hand on my knee, still giving me the same thrill it did the first time he touched me. Only a few days ago, I remind myself, but it seems so much longer. The period after Arsen’s death, the period of nothingness, that seems like the few days; this has been months. “But I won’t do that. The truth is, my body’s screaming at me for a shot of whisky. And that’s what my mind is tellin’ me, too, just a shot, just one shot … but I know the truth. You’ve let me see the truth. I can’t just have a shot. It ain’t possible for me, at least not right now, and I want to be here for you and the kid. So even though I want a drink I ain’t gonna take one, no way.”

 

I place my hand atop his hand. “Thank you,” I whisper.

 

“Don’t thank me.” His voice cracks. He tries to laugh it off, but there’s a single tear in his eye. “I don’t know what to make of this, is the truth of it, ’cause when you look at it one way, we barely know each other, but when you look at it another, I love you more’n I’ve ever loved anyone in my entire life. Make sense of that.”

 

“You love me?” My voice cracks, too. More than a single tear slides down my cheek. “Do you mean it?”

 

He grabs my hands with his, cupping them, enveloping them. “Of course, I do,” he says. “I love you so much I ain’t gonna touch whisky for ten goddamn years, twenty, thirty. I don’t need it when I’ve got you.”

 

“I love you too,” I tell him, jumping to my knees and leaning into him. “So much.”

 

Our kiss is softer than we’ve ever touched before, a bare brushing of the lips, as much emotion as physical touch. Then he lays me on the couch and pulls my pants down, but he does it slowly, kissing my belly and then my inner thigh, stroking his finger against my pussy. Both of us are breathing with the heavy animalism that marked our last lovemaking, but we’re both too emotionally charged to just rush into it. We take our time. I lift my legs, looking up into his face, and he looks down into my face, a connection that, for a moment, transcends the physical.

 

Then he leans over me and it becomes crushingly physical, his cock pressing against my bare pussy, sliding deep up inside me as our eyes stay locked on each other. I grab his back, feeling his immense muscles, the impossible strength of him. He promised to protect us and he did. He’ll never let anything happen to us.

 

“Oh, oh …”

 

His cock is fire-hot, pushing slowly inside of me and then pulling slowly out. I feel every tiny movement, every shift in the massive eleven-inch presence of him. He leans down and kisses me softly on the lips and I kiss him back, completely losing myself in the immutable moment, in the realization that this is my man now, that I never have to worry again because no matter what, I have Xander and Xander has me.

 

“Fuck,” he whispers. “Oh, fuck. You’re so fucking beautiful.”

 

“You’re so fucking handsome,” I counter, kissing him again and again.

 

When the orgasm comes, it’s soft and velvety, a blanket instead of a hard force. It wraps me up and warms my entire body. Cormac kisses my breasts as he buries himself inside of me, so close we could be one person, collapsing endlessly against each other. My pussy tightens, twists, but it’s more than mere pleasure. It’s like my body is giving parts of myself to him, and he is doing the same: literally, now, as he arches his back and thrusts one final time inside of me, looking down at me in the final moments of pleasure, the light touch of a smile on his lips.

 

He rolls aside and I rest my head on his chest, both of us breathing softly.

 

“Goddamn, Kayla, but I really do love you.”

 

I kiss him one final time. Then my eyes fall closed, sleep taking me.