Free Very Bad Things by Jenika Snow Sam Crescent

truth. “I saved
your life, and you saved mine.”
    Her eyes widened, and then he leaned in and kissed her
hard, possessively, and told her without words that she was his, and he wasn’t
going to give her up.

Chapter Thirteen
     
    Fiona sat beside Ryker as he started to drive away
from the cabin. No one had turned up yet while they were leaving. He’d not
taken anything other than a selected handful of clothes. She wore a pair of his
sweats and a shirt. They were covered in his scent.
    “ Should you be driving?” she asked.
    “ Why?”
    “ You drank.”
    “ A couple of shots of whiskey won’t impair my ability to drive.”
    “ Okay.” She rubbed her hands down her thighs, wondering what else to talk
about. The silence unnerved her. She didn’t like the silence or how closed off
he’d become around her.
    She tapped her leg.
    “ What’s bothering you?” he asked, glancing toward her.
    “ Nothing.”
    “ Talk, Fiona. I don’t mind if you need to talk.”
    “ Where are we headed?”
    “ To one of my places.”
    He was vague. This was her future as much as it was
hers.
    “ Do you have a lot of places?”
    “ I’m a killer. I need a lot of places.”
    Blowing out a breath, she stared out of the window.
“Forget about it.”
    She wasn’t in the mood to try to make conversation
with him if he wasn’t interested in talking with her. What else was there to
think about? All she saw in her mind was the disgusting look on Tricks’s face as he looked at her. He was a vulgar bastard.
The worst of the worst and she wanted nothing to do with him.
    He’s dead.
    Great, she was thinking about a dead man.
    “ I’m used to being alone,” Ryker said.
    She turned to look at the man who’d entered her life
and turned it upside down. “What?” She saw his knuckles were white as he
clenched the steering wheel of the car.
    “ I work alone. I didn’t have anyone growing up. I learned to take care of
myself.” He spoke quietly, softly. She didn’t rush him along even though she
wanted to. “You’re the first woman I’ve ever cared about. I can’t let anything
happen to you.”
    “ You don’t even know me,” she said.
    He jerked the car to a stop at the side of the road.
She looked behind them to see cars moving around them. “Do you think I don’t
know our situation? We’re fucked up. It’s crazy, insane, and fucking stupid,
but I can’t lose you. We’re going somewhere safe and quiet. I’m not going to
let anything happen to you.”
    “ Okay.”
    “ You can talk to me.”
    “ We killed two men.”
    “ No, I killed those men. You didn’t do anything.” He cupped her cheek.
“Do not let their deaths hurt you. They do not deserve it. I meant what I said
back in the cabin, they’re not worth your care.”
    He turned his attention back to the road.
    Fiona thought about what to say to him.
    “ What happened to your family?” he asked.
    She frowned. “I told you about my family. It wasn’t a
lie.”
    “ You’ve not been hurt at a young age or abandoned. When you lost your
family, you were old enough to understand why.”
    “ My family died in a plane crash. It wasn’t exactly hard to understand.
They died. I didn’t.” She’d told him this already. Was he only bringing it up
again to distract her?
    “ I’m sorry to hear about that.”
    “ Don’t be. You weren’t responsible for the weather that they hit.” She
looked out of the window.
    “ You’re not crying.”
    “ It has been a long time. I’ve cried enough tears for them. Life sucks at
times, but like you said, there are people who are in a far worse state than
me.” She missed her family all the time. There was nothing for her to do to
bring them back.
    He stayed silent for the remainder of the drive. Fiona
gave up reading the road signs. She didn’t have a clue where they were, and she
didn’t really care. Her old life was gone. She wouldn’t be waiting tables or
worrying about paying bills. Her life was in Ryker’s