Forced Proximity (Bluebell House Duet Book 1)
Forced Proximity: Chapter 24

This was my opportunity to run. If he doubled back to the classroom to search again, he’d replace me for sure. If I wanted any chance, I had to run. Now.

“Evelyn…come out, come out wherever you are!” the masked gunman sang through the empty halls, and I covered my own mouth to stifle my sobs as I made a break for it.

Sunlight hit my face as I burst through the doors, freedom so close I could taste it and then…

Bang!

The sound of the shot registered in my head before the pain, but then the pain was everything.

I’d been shot. He’d shot me.

Warm hands shook my shoulders, making me moan in pain. Didn’t they realize I’d been shot?

“Come on, snap out of it!” a deep, gruff voice ordered.

My eyelids fluttered in confusion. Green eyes framed with dark lashes met mine and my reality blurred. “Ethan?” His eyes widened and my whole body quaked in relief. “Holy shit, Ethan—” then my lips were on his. My lifeline, pulling me from the depths of my trauma yet again.

He seemed startled but quickly wrapped his arms around me, pulling me close as he dominated my mouth with his own, stitching our very souls together with each stroke of his tongue. Rather than just pulling me from the darkness of my own mind, he kissed me like he was drowning, and I was his only hope for survival.

A low moan rolled through me as I reached for his waistband, desperate for more, but he broke away with a curse.

“Brat,” he growled. “Stop.”

Those two words were the equivalent of being struck by lightning, and I jerked away so violently, I smacked my head on the back of the car. The car we’d just spent hours traveling in the trunk of. The car that’d been driven by the man now lying dead in a pool of blood a mere twelve feet away.

“Oh my god,” I gasped, clapping a hand over my mouth. Then, in horror, I realized who I’d just been mouth-fucking like he was the last scoop of ice cream while I was PMSing. “No…”

My gaze snapped back to the dead man, and at the perfect circle between his eyebrows, and at the dark puddle slowly spreading… Nausea ripped through me like a freight train and I scrambled on hands and knees to the nearest bush to vomit.

“That’s a first,” Connor muttered, then gently held my hair back as I upended the full contents of my stomach. The last thing I’d eaten was the Swedish meatballs I’d made for dinner, and I could safely say they were not as good the second time. “You okay?”

I groaned, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. “No.” I was so far from okay, it was almost laughable.

“Okay, well we need to get the fuck out of here,” he replied, casual as anything like he didn’t just execute an unarmed man minutes ago. “Come on. I need to get back in cell range to call this in.”

He offered his hand, and I took it without even thinking about what I was doing, allowing him to pull me to my feet. My knees wobbled dangerously, though, as I took a few steps toward the car.

“Call it in?” I repeated, shivering. “To the police?”

Connor didn’t reply as he opened the passenger side door and gently pushed me into the seat. The car was all black leather and smelled like cigarette smoke. Disgusting. My teeth chattered as Connor buckled my seat belt for me like I was a helpless child, then firmly closed my door.

He circled around to the driver’s side and slid inside.

“Evelyn?” he said after a moment of silence. I hugged myself tighter, trying to control my shivers as I stared out into the woods. Connor gave a frustrated sigh. “Brat, snap out of it. You’re in shock.”

I swallowed hard. Shock? No shit. He’d just killed a guy in cold blood.

“I know,” I whispered, keeping the snark inside my head simply because I lacked the energy to unleash.

Connor grumbled something under his breath, then jerked off his black hoodie and tossed it over to me. “Use this as a blanket. You’ll be fine once we get some distance.” He didn’t wait for me to do what I was told, just started the car up and sped away from the crime scene with dust flying from the tires.

Numb and sluggish, I snuggled into the warm fabric of his sweatshirt as he tapped the climate control to turn up the heating. It took maybe ten minutes, but eventually my trembles did subside just like he’d said.

But in the absence of shock, logic crept its way back in.

“You murdered that man,” I said out loud, turning my face to stare at Connor in disbelief. “You shot him. In the head. He was unarmed and⁠—”

“And he deserved it,” Connor replied, utterly unrepentant. “Don’t cry over spilled milk. He’s done worse to plenty of better people.”

I had nothing to say to that. Absolutely nothing. I just huddled lower in the seat of the stolen car and stared out the window blankly. Trees after trees passed the window, none of it looking familiar in the least. Or all of it. We could be in the next state or just down the road for all I knew of the area.

“Didn’t you need to call the police?” I reminded him after some time driving.

Connor glanced over at me, his gaze dark before flicking his eyes back to the road. “No. But I do need to make a call. Can you keep your mouth shut or do I need to wait until we’re back at school?”

My lips parted in outrage. “I’m not a child, Connor. How far are we from Meadowridge anyway?”

He lifted one shoulder in a shrug, checking the time on his watch. “Five or so hours.” He seemed to debate his options for a moment, then sighed for what felt like the thousandth time. “Just stay quiet, alright? No talking, no noises, nothing. Am I clear?”

I scowled and folded my arms beneath his hoodie. “Crystal.”

“Fine,” he growled, then brought up the Bluetooth phone display on the car’s dash. Using the steering wheel controls, he cycled through to the most recent phone number and clicked redial. It rang for just a few moments before it was answered.

“You get it done?” The voice was vaguely familiar, and it only took me a moment to place it as the tatted guy in the woods. Elijah. I stifled a small gasp, realizing that Connor wasn’t calling for help; he was calling to gloat.

His sharp glare told me even that was too much noise, and I covered my mouth with my own hand to prevent it happening again.

“You could say that,” Connor replied with a dark chuckle. “Sorry about your man, Elijah. He seemed dispensable, though, or you wouldn’t have sent him alone.”

A short silence filled the phone line, then a muttered curse. “You motherfucker. He wasn’t going to kill you, just⁠—”

“I know,” Connor cut him off. “Doesn’t change how dead he is now, though, does it? I’ve warned you once before, Elijah, you’re getting too big for your boots. It’s time you remember your place in the pecking order. One. Dead. Man. At a time.”

Holy shit, he sounded like an actual honest-to-god psychopath.

“Listen…Connor…we fucked up, all right? I can see that now. Between you and me, we got hired for a job at your fancy school and just needed you out of the way for a couple of days. It was harmless, right? Just drop you off across state lines and leave you to walk home. You didn’t need to go killing anyone.” Elijah sounded like he was on the ground, rolled over to expose his belly to the alpha wolf. Submissive and whining.

Connor’s hands flexed on the steering wheel, his knuckles white as he strangled the leather. “What. Job?”

“Nothing to do with you, Connor, I swear. It’s just a little harmless kidnap-ransom shit. Some chick. We just didn’t want you messing up the payday, you know? It’s just business.” More whining. Fucking hell, this was the guy who’d stuffed us in a trunk at gunpoint?

Connor’s jaw clenched so hard, I could hear his teeth grinding and I reached out to touch his arm without really thinking about what I was doing. The touch startled him and his death grip on the steering wheel instantly loosened as he shot me a confused glance.

I withdrew my hand like I’d been burned, unsure why I’d done that in the first place, but Elijah was babbling again on the phone.

“…no need to involve your father, right?” he was saying in a slightly panicked voice. “You killed my guy, the score is settled. Let’s just leave it at that.”

Connor flicked another puzzled look my way, then shook his head like he was trying to rearrange his head. “Make sure your guys are gone from Meadowridge before I get back, Elijah. Anyone I see wearing a Crusades tag will get executed on sight, no questions asked. Am I clear?”

“Absolutely, understood, you won’t see them near the school again,” the wannabe gangster gushed. “And as for telling your father…?”

Connor rolled his eyes and mouthed a silent for fuck’s sake before glancing at me again, thoughtfully. “I don’t see why he needs to know,” he finally decided. “Unless you try to shoot me again, of course.”

“Of course,” Elijah quickly agreed.

Connor ended the call, then gusted out a heavy breath. Silence filled the car with a heaviness that physically hurt, but I refused to be the one to break it. What could I even say when he’d just so thoroughly fried my brain with revelations?

He seemed in no rush to explain anything so we just drove in tension for a while.

Then he glanced my way with a thoughtful squint.

“Do you want to talk about what happened back there?” he asked, shocking the hell out of me.

Eyes wide, I shook my head. “Absolutely the fuck not. Nothing happened, Connor. Nothing. I never ever want to talk about it, and so help me if you tell Andrew—or Ethan—that we kissed, I will cut your dick off and make you swallow it.”

His lips twitched, then curved into a full-blown grin. “Vicious brat. I meant your panic attack. You’ve got some real trauma with guns, huh?”

Oh.

“I don’t want to talk about that, either,” I muttered, my face utterly flaming with embarrassment.

He nodded and seemed content to leave sleeping dogs lie as he drove. An hour later, he slowed and pulled into a gas station that looked like it hadn’t been operational in a hundred years.

“What are we doing?” I asked, fear sparking in my chest. Was he going to kick me out and leave me there as some sort of punishment? He said he’d punish me for being stupid, didn’t he?

Connor shifted the car into park and turned off the engine, then unclicked his belt. “Waiting for your ride,” he informed me, then climbed out of the car.

Confused, I followed and pulled his hoodie on properly to keep the warmth. “My ride? I don’t⁠—”

My question was cut short with the roar of a motorbike approaching, then a blacked-out sleek machine sped into the gas station where we waited. The rider was completely covered in leathers, not a single inch of skin showing, and I stiffened with anxiety as I noted the enormous gun strapped to the side of the bike.

Panicked, I shifted until Connor was positioned as a human shield in front of me.

“Cute,” he muttered with a scoff. “You know bullets would go straight through me and still kill you at this range?”

My throat tightened. “I’m well aware.”

The biker chose that moment to flip his visor open and I instantly recognized the warm brown eyes creased in concern.

“Haze,” I breathed in relief. “What are you doing here?”

“He’s taking you back to school,” Connor informed me, checking his watch again. It was one of those fancy military style ones and I was just now suspecting he had some sort of tracking and or communication installed in it. “I need to take a trip home.”

“To speak with your scary overlord father? I thought you said you wouldn’t tell him?”

Connor shrugged. “I lied. Go on, Haze will see you safely back to the house. I won’t be long.”

I took a couple of steps toward Haze before hesitating. “I can’t. Haze, you…” I flapped my hand, trying to explain the whole don’t touch Haze or he will get violent warning that Brodie had given me without actually having to say it.

“It’s fine,” he rumbled from within the helmet, then reached to the far side of the bike and produced a second helmet, which he extended my way.

“His issue is skin contact,” Connor said quietly, his lips brushing my hair as he leaned close. “Leathers should dull things. You’ll be okay, brat, get on the bike.”

Swallowing hard, I put my faith in both of them and took the helmet from Haze’s gloved hand. Connor helped me secure it on my head, then steadied me with a hand as I carefully positioned myself on the pillion seat of Haze’s bike.

“Hold on to him,” Connor ordered, taking my hand and placing it on the thick leather of Haze’s jacket. “Gravel rash is no joke.” Then he fist-bumped Haze’s leather-clad knuckles and returned to his stolen car.

It wasn’t until the bike engine roared and we rocketed out of the parking lot that I fully processed Connor’s choice of words. Leathers should dull things. Great. Apparently I was guinea-pigging the extent of Haze’s touch aversion while sitting on the back of a high-speed motorcycle.