GUN IN MY HAND

CHAPTER 19: ALL FAIR

I'm back (and I'm not coming alone 😈😏)! My eye is getting better, not sure it's completely healed, I'll find out tomorrow. But in the meantime, I wanted to post this chapter to thank you for all your love and well-wishes!! You really are my little rays of sunshine and shooting stars illuminating my days (even when I can't see you)! I love you all 😘🤩🌠🌞❤

'Take a breath, take it deep

Calm yourself, he says to me

If you play, you play for keeps

Take the gun, and count to three

I'm sweating now, I'm moving slow

No time to think, my turn to go'

"Dorothy! You're already back! Why something tells me it isn't for me?"

I smiled as I met Pete's twinkling gaze above his glasses.

"Neither for the guns?" He cocked an eyebrow, putting his magazine down as he seemed to find much more interest in the blush creeping up my cheeks, and I averted my gaze away to the shiny items behind him.

My lips pulled from one side to another as I twiddled my fingers and contemplated the various guns, small and big, semi-automatic and automatic, yet my mouth quickly came back into a shy smile as I shook my head no.

"Blade! There's someone for you!"

Was I this obvious? Did it look a little too clingy? Was it too soon? Those were questions that hadn't occurred to me before coming here, but they all arose with Pete's chiming tone, and they were all I could think about with the sharp tone that replied from behind the door,

"What the fuck? I'm busy right now! Tell those fuckers–"

As two large expanses of crystalline replaced the voice, more questions surged inside, and some tumbled out of my lips.

"Oh, you're busy? I'm sorry, I shouldn't– I can come back another time?"

The rush of power I'd felt today was long gone, but it was a new kind of emotion appearing with the blood running to my cheeks, the signals putting my muscles into movements, and in-between, the thoughts going in every direction.

Yet when my fingers reached the handle, it was all stopped – okay, maybe not the blood boiling to my cheeks – with the hand on my wrist turning me around.

"You're not one of those fuckers. I have time for you." Blade dipped his head down, diving his blue eyes into mine, although it felt more like I was drowning in them from so close.

The sharp tone had been replaced with rolling out syllables, and the surprise on his features with that famous sly smile, all this abrupt contrast faster than I'd spun around.

My head was still spinning – all the questions from before included, along with new ones, and those sparks from his touch still on my wrist – when he pulled away with a shrug.

"I was actually making something for you."

I furrowed my eyebrows as I was more than lost, and when he lifted his left hand, the black string poking out of his fist didn't give me more clue. Yet it was enough for my heart to jump, and it rocketed as Blade slowly opened his fingers.

One by one, the finest branches designs gave way to two small wooden items linked with the string.

I couldn't name it. It was unique and as intriguing as the inks on the other side of his hand. The two items were a mix of sharp angles and smooth, polished curves, something between beads and cubes, and they were perfectly similar.