Hold on to Me (11 page)

The accusation in his voice brought Simone’s gaze up. And the stark mixture of surprise and anger in his features told her he hadn’t been fully awake when he’d started kissing her.

“I—” She looked down at the earring in her hand, her mind flipping back and forth between a logical explanation and shock over what she’d found. “I came to talk to you.”

“That wasn’t talking.” Mitch grabbed his shirt from the floor and quickly tugged it on. “What kind of games are you playing? You haven’t fucked with my head enough for one week?”

Animosity radiated from him in waves, and Simone’s mouth fell open, an explanation hovering on her tongue. But then she looked down at the earring in her hand again. “I… What is this?”

His gaze snapped to her hand, and surprise flickered over his features, followed by a shot of guilt, which was quickly masked by a scowl. He rested his hands on his hips and glared at her. “Nothing that really concerns you, now does it?”

Everything inside Simone went cold. Ice cold. He’d fucked someone else, right here in this bed, hours—maybe even minutes—ago. Only two days after their breakup.

Her chest felt like it closed in on itself. Pinpricks of heat stabbed at every inch of her skin. She couldn’t breathe. Didn’t want to feel. Shaking, she pushed quickly to her feet. “Well, it’s nice to know you’re not pining away for me. Clearly, you’ve already moved on.”

She dropped the earring on the floor and rushed for the hall. He stepped in the way of her path and braced his hand on the doorjamb, blocking her exit. “
I
moved on?
I moved on?
You’re the one who dumped me. And now I’m the one who’s supposed to feel guilty about that?”

She wasn’t thinking clearly. She knew that. Her emotions were way too hot for her to remain calm and rational. The reckless college girl who’d fallen into an affair with Steve, gotten pregnant, and given up her life on a whim was threatening what was left of her sanity. “Get out of my way.”

“Why?” His eyes narrowed to thin points, and a vehemence she’d never seen before reflected in their depths. “You came all the way over here in the middle of the night to tell me something. Go ahead and say it.”

Emotions bubbled up inside her—anger, heartache, disbelief—but the one that won out was betrayal, even if a tiny voice in the back of her head said she had no right to feel that way.

She whirled on him. “You have no
idea
what I was willing to do for you. You have no
idea
what I’ve been through. I came here to explain, but there’s no point now.”

She ducked under his arm and rushed down the hall toward the door and freedom. Somewhere deep inside, she knew she was being irrational.
She’d
broken things off with
him
. Whatever and whoever he’d done since had nothing to do with her, and yet even though her head understood that, her heart was having a really hard time accepting it. Because for her, things hadn’t been over. And she doubted they ever would be.

“Hold on.
What you’ve done for me?
” He grasped her by the arm and swung her around to face him in the entry hall. Moonlight spilled in through the sidelights by the front door, illuminating his enraged features and disbelieving eyes, the T-shirt molding to his muscular chest, the loose-fitting jeans and his gorgeous, bare feet against the hardwood floor. “You’re the one who ended things. You’re the one who said you didn’t care. As I recall, your exact words were, ‘I don’t love you.’ So why the fuck would I believe you’d do anything for me when I already know you just don’t give a shit?”

She wanted to lash out, to make him hurt the way she was hurting, to tell him he was right, that she really did no longer give a shit. But before she could get the words out, the glass in the far sidelight shattered, sending shards flying through the entryway.

Simone screamed. Mitch threw her to the ground face-first and covered her with his body. Pain echoed through her hipbones and hands and anywhere she hit the hardwood. But the sound of something small and hard digging into the siding, the door, shattering windows and pinging off metal echoed all through the house, distracting her from the pain.

She pushed against him, but he held her firmly to the ground. “Stay down,” he growled. “Those are bullets.”

Bullets? Simone’s adrenaline shot up.
Bullets?
Fear clamped a cold, hard hand around her throat and squeezed. Bullets meant...she’d been wrong. They
had
been following her.

The flight-or-fight response kicked in, and flight won out. By a landslide.

She struggled against Mitch, this time with every ounce of strength she had. “We have to get out of here. They found me. Move. Right now,
move
!”

She managed to shove him off her, pushed to her feet, and sprinted away from the gunfire, down the hallway toward the back of the house. Mitch muttered a curse but grasped her arm just as she reached the back door.

“Hold on. You don’t know who’s out there.” He pulled her tight against him and sank back into the shadows, peering over her head out the slider in the back room he used as his gym. Exercise equipment surrounded her. Gunshots still echoed from the front of the house, but through the glass, the backyard looked empty.

His heart beat fast and hard against hers. He had one arm around her shoulders, one at her lower back, holding her still. Shaking, she chanced a look up at his face and saw his intense gaze sweeping over the backyard.

“I think it’s clear,” he whispered, still not looking at her. “Sprint for the park. Don’t stop. Don’t look back. No matter what. You got it?”

All she could do was nod. But that guilt swept in again. Guilt for hurting him, guilt for dragging him into this, guilt for making such a mess of everything.

He let go of her, then quietly slid the door open, and whispered, “Go.”

“What about you?”

“I’m right behind you.”

Simone’s entire body vibrated with fear, but she nodded, looked both ways. When she hesitated, Mitch nudged her from behind. “Go now.”

She wanted to grab him, to drag him with her, but his gentle push forced her out the door before she could. And once the cold air washed over her, that flight response kicked back in. Her muscles burned as she streaked across the backyard. She didn’t even register the fact her feet were bare until she hit the bark dust on the far side. Since Mitch didn’t have a pet, there was no fence to slow her down, and she ran from his property into the safety of the trees of the park without slowing. Behind her, a voice rang out, followed by the ricochet of bullets hitting the dirt, then a hard thunk, as if someone or something had gone down.

Terror brought her feet to a skidding stop. She turned and looked over her shoulder. She’d run so far and so fast, she could only just make out the dark shadow of Mitch’s house through the trees.

He wasn’t behind her. She scanned the forest. Nothing moved in the dim light. Her adrenaline shot up even higher, and horror vibrated in every cell.

Oh, shit. Mitch
. Her heart leapt into her throat.
Mitch!

She fought from screaming for him. Looked through the trees again, her blood turning to a roar in her ears. Quietly, she picked her way back the way she’d come, moving slower this time, searching everywhere for him, hoping, praying…

He couldn’t be dead. They couldn’t have gotten him. This wasn’t supposed to happen. A hard lump formed in her throat. Tears burned behind her eyes.

And then she saw it. The dark silhouette of a body, lying at the edge of his property.

A scream rose up in her mind.

“
Mitch!
”

M
itch’s head hurt like a motherfucker where he’d been nailed, and his right arm was on fire. He darted around trees and bushes, heading the direction Simone had disappeared.

Rocks and twigs dug into the soles of his bare feet. He made it twenty feet into the cover of the trees, when he realized Simone was yards from him, heading back toward the house, running in the wrong damn direction.

“Son of a bitch.” He cut to his right and zeroed in on her. He’d taken one guy down who’d been lurking in the backyard, but from the sounds of gunfire that had died down at the front of the house, there were bound to be more in mere seconds.

He grasped Simone around the waist with one arm and covered her mouth with his other hand. She gasped and jerked against him. Pulling her back into his body, he tugged her into the shadow of a tree and whispered, “Stop fighting me, dammit.”

She immediately ceased struggling. Her hands closed over his forearm at her waist. “Mitch,” she mumbled against his fingers.

“Who the hell did you think it was? God Almighty, you’re gonna get us killed.”

Her fingers closed over his against her mouth, and she tugged his hand away. Whipping around in his arms, she placed both hands on his face, feeling for him in the darkness. “I thought that was you on the ground. Oh my God, I thought—”

“We have to get out of here.” Mitch didn’t look back. Didn’t want to see the guy he’d dropped or wonder whether he was alive. His stomach rolled. “Now.”

There was just enough light for him to see Simone nod. She didn’t put up any kind of fight. Didn’t try to tell him what to do. As he pushed her ahead of him into the darkness, her words inside when the gunfire had started pinged through his mind.

“
They found me
.”

He kept looking over his shoulder, but no one seemed to be following. His adrenaline slowly came down the farther they moved away from the devastation, but with every step, questions churned in his brain.

Her strange behavior lately, the fact that even after six months he knew very little about her past, the way she’d acted when those bullets started flying… It all started to make a sick sort of sense. She was involved in something—something bad. And she’d sucked him into it without any kind of warning.

Confusion slowly gave way to an anger that he couldn’t seem to contain. Thanks to her, he’d had his heart ripped out, his mind fucked with, he’d been shot—if the burn in his arm was any indication—and now his house was full of holes.
And
she hadn’t once said she was sorry. For
any
of that shit.

They didn’t stop until they reached the far side of the park behind his house. A small strip mall with a Laundromat, copy store, and barber shop faced them, every window dark. Barefoot, Simone stepped off the curb and waved toward an approaching taxi.

“I don’t have any cash,” Mitch mumbled. He patted his pockets. Shit, he didn’t have his wallet, cell phone, not even shoes.

“I’ve got it.” The cab slowed and came to a stop. Simone whipped out her ID from her back pocket, a credit card, and cell phone.

One of them was prepared. Not that that made him feel any better. What the hell was she involved in? And why had she been at his house? It obviously wasn’t because she wanted him. She’d made that more than clear the last few times he’d seen her.

She climbed into the cab and gave the driver her address.

And that was all Mitch could take.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he asked in disbelief, shutting the door after him.

“I have to get to Shannon.” Her voice rose as the cab pulled away from the curb. “She’s at home with a babysitter.”

Screw that
. Mitch plucked the cell out of her hand and dialed. Holding it to his ear, he gave the driver a different address.

Simone’s mouth fell open. “What are you—?”

“Hey, Simone.” Ryan picked up on the second ring, trying to mask a groggy voice. “I didn’t expect to hear from you.”

“It’s not Simone. It’s Mitch.” And this was a call Mitch never expected to make. “Listen, you gotta get someone over to Simone’s house right now and pick up Shannon.”

“Why?” Ryan’s voice tightened. “What’s going on?”

Mitch shot Simone a look. He wasn’t about to be softened by the worry in her eyes. Not after what he’d just been through because of her. “Because my house has so many holes in it right now, it looks like Swiss fucking cheese.”

“What? What are you talking about? What the hell happened?”

In the background, Mitch heard his sister ask, “What’s going on?”

Mitch rubbed his throbbing forehead. “I don’t know. Simone showed up at my place, someone followed her, then all hell broke loose. She’s obviously involved in some kind of shit she never bothered to tell me about, and we barely got out of there alive.”

Simone stiffened next to him, but Mitch was beyond caring at this point.

“Holy shit,” Ryan muttered. “She’s with you?”

With
him? No. Simone had made it perfectly clear she didn’t want to be
with
him ever again. “We’re in a cab heading toward your building downtown. It was the only place I could think that had security.”

Ryan was the CEO of a multinational pharmaceutical empire, and he owned an entire building downtown where his company was headquartered. “I’ll call John at the front desk and let him know you’re on the way. And don’t worry, I’ll get someone to pick Shannon up right now.”