Page 43 of Obsession
“Stop snapping orders at me. I don’t work for you. Call your team.”
When I’m in auto mode, I start barking out orders to anyone around me. It’s what I do. So, instead, I send Lars and Parker a quick text.
“They’re coming,” I tell him before I lean down to whisper in Megan’s ears. “I’m going to remove my hand now, Miss Taylor, but I want you to keep your eyes closed.”
She nods her head in a jerky movement before I lift my hand. Her eyes are squeezed shut, and I take off my blazer, wrapping it around her, before leaning down and picking Megan up in myarms. She feels good in my embrace, almost as if she belongs to me.
Mine.
“Eyes closed,” I remind her gently, and she just curls into my arms, burying her face in my chest, not letting out a single sound.
She weighs next to nothing, I think to myself. I’m going to have to take her out to dinner a few more times.
Lars and Parker are running inside the building as I carry her toward the entrance.
"You good, boss?"
“Keep them alive,” I instruct them. “And wait for me. I’m not done.”
Lars glimpses at Megan and then back to me. He flashes an unusual smirk, and I already know what that means. I’ll probably come back to far more injuries than I’ve caused. Lars can be sadistic when he wants to be, and I think he may be forming a soft spot for our new club manager.
So be it.
“If you don’t mind, Vaughn, can you please drive us back to the club? Lars and Parker are a little tied up,” I say as politely as I possibly can, although I’m not used to asking anyone for anything. I am typically the ordering-around type.
“Fine, let’s go.”
“No.” Megan stirs in my arms, and when I look down at her, she’s not looking at me.
“I’d like to go home. Please.”
I stare down at her before uttering, “You’ve been through more than any one person should go through today. I need to check your injuries. Make sure you’re okay. He banged you on the back of your head really badly.”
“He just beat me up a little,” Megan says, her voice almost dull. She’s trying to slide out of my lap, but I tighten my holdon her, unnerved by her flat response to what’s happened here tonight.
“I’d still like to be sure,” I say, but she turns stiff in my arms.
“I thought I wasn’t special?” she retorts. This time, there’s a hint of anger in her tone. “Will you just let me go, please? I can sit on my own, and I know how to treat my own injuries. I’m a fucking pro at it.”
She throws the one thing I regret saying to her back at me, and now she refuses to look at me. I hate it. It’s only when I release her that she scampers to the end of the seat, farthest away from me, hunching next to the door.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I say in the calmest voice I can muster, although it irritates me to no end that she’s afraid of me, of all people.
She wraps her arms around herself and doesn’t answer. For a moment, I wonder if she has a right to be afraid of me. I did just shoot two people repeatedly in front of her. Hell, I am a monster.
“Take her where she wants to go, Vaughn.”
I tear my eyes away from her figure and look outside the window as Megan rattles off an address to Vaughn. I’m not accustomed to experiencing guilt. The amount of blood on my hands is endless. Guilt isn’t something I can afford in my line of work. Yet here I am, feeling pangs of this useless emotion for having created havoc in the life of the young woman huddled in the corner of my car.
It’s not like any of this was her fault. I’ve completely insinuated myself into her life, and this is the result. Not long ago, she was just a nameless, faceless bartender whom I didn’t know at all. But I’m the one who had to know more about her and who approached her despite my own self-imposed rules.
Don’t get involved with staff.
Don’t date staff.
Don’t fuck staff.
So when I tried breaking those rules, and she rejected me? Well, the sting of that rebuff made me lash out at her with very harsh words in an attempt to hurt her. It was immature and very unlike me, but I did it, and now I have to own the consequences of the choices I’ve made ever since I laid eyes on her.