Lighter Shade of Brown (Urban Fiction) BWHM

Chapter 18

"You crazy, bitch!" Ant rasped through clenched teeth as he struggled to rise from his knees, scratching and clawing at the door frame with one hand, while he clung to the side of his neck with the other. "You shot me!"

"Ohmigod!" Cleo rushed forward to grab his arm to help him stand. "Ant, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean...I was just...and then you...and then it..." Her words fell from her mouth in a tangled mess of fragments, and half ass excuses.

"What the hell was that?" Angela's door slammed open down the hall, the door knob, punching a hole in the hallway wall. "Was that a gun?" She rushed into the hall knotting her robe at the waist, as wrinkles marred the skin on her forehead. When her searching gaze fell on them, she finished her march in a sprint, bumping Cleo out of the way as she skidded to a halt. "What happened?" She asked, as she pulled Ant into C's room and guided him over to the bed.

"I...uh..." Cleo stuttered, pointing dumbly at the carpet where the gun still lay.

"She shot me!" Ant growled, while pinning her with a glare. "That's what happened. And I was gonna apologize. I shoulda stayed my brown ass in my room, minding my own damn business."

"Shot you?!" Angela's head snapped back like she'd been suckered punched by Ali, her bottom lip damn near touching the floor.

"Hell yeah, see?" Ant removed his hand to reveal what looked like a long shallow gash, running horizontally along the side of his neck.

Cleo frowned. The wound looked nothing like what she'd seen on television. In fact, his wound made no damn sense at all. Why didn't it look like a hole? After all they didn't call it a bullet hole for nothing.

"Cleo," Angela snapped without taking her eyes away from Ant's wound. "Run to my room and grab the purple bag I always take to work with me. It's sitting on the chair in the corner." When Cleo took too long to move, Angela spared her a glare, "Go!"

With a quick nod, Cleo spun on her heel and ran out of the room, feeling more stupid than a little bit. What in the world had even possessed her to touch C's gun? Lord. She was going to catch hell when he finally made it home. There would be nothing she could say to keep him from going in on her ass, and she'd have to take it, because she knew she was all wrong. Once inside of Angela's room, she snatched the oversized purple bag off the chaise longue in the corner, and then hurried back to C's room.

"It's a superficial wound. The bullet barely even grazed you." She heard Angela say as she approached the bed. "It doesn't even look like you'll need stitches."

"So that makes it better?" Ant asked with his head cocked to one side as Angela worked on cleaning the laceration on his neck.

"Considering," She answered as she took the bag from Cleo's extended hands.

"Considering what?" Ant tried to turn his head to look up at her.

Tapping him lightly on the cheek Angela forced his head to maintain the cocked position. "Considering you could be dead. Had the bullet gone deeper it could've hit your jugular. Now hold still so I can bandage this."

"Ant, for real. I am so sorry," Cleo said moving around Angela so that she could kneel beside him.

"Man," he said, glaring at her out the corner of his eye. "And what that mean? 'Specially if you would've had my ass stretched out cold on the floor. Think your sorry woulda brought be back then? Man, hell no."

"Anthony, I won't tell you again about your language." Angela warned. "Besides, where did she get the gun in the first place?"

"Where did she get the gun in the first place?" Ant repeated, sarcasm dripping from both sides of his mouth. "Well dog Angela let me think? Because I know she couldn't have found one here in this room. C's is way too passive for that."