Page 132 of Himbo Hitman
“Hold on. Perry, are you meaning to tell me you tried to kill thewrongbrother?”
It takes way too long for me to process what’s happening here.
Thewrongbrother?
It was never me?
Perry goes pale, and I’m not sure I don’t look the same. “I … I …”
Lars turns a glare on Arlie. “How sure are you?”
“Ah … one thousand percent. Reilly hasn’t been mentioned once.”
His wide eyes meet mine. “You’renotin danger?”
“I’m not?” I whip back to Perry’s shell-shocked expression, and I’m smacked in the face with a thought. “You shot my ear offfor nothing?”
“Well …” He looks at the ceiling like it might help him. “Not fornothing, exactly. And I still maintain it’s better than, you know, accidentallykillingyou for nothing, which I didn’t do?—”
“How do you go after someone and not be absolutely certain you have the right person?”
“I was absolutely certain! But I was also, apparently,wrong.”
“Perry …”
He scrambles over the coffee table to get to me. “Mistakes happen sometimes.”
“This is a big mistake.”
“Agreed. Obviously. But hear me out: if it didn’t happen, we wouldn’t have met.”
“At this moment in time, I’m not convinced that wouldn’t be a good thing.” Except then his face falls even more, and the twist in my chest hates it. I want to reassure him.Him.The man who tried to kill me, turned my life upside down, has had me terrified about dyingfor days, and it was all a fucking misunderstanding.
“If it helps, I feel really bad about this,” he says, voice cracking.
“I promise you that I feel worse.”
“Seems unlikely.”
“Which of us is missing a body part, Perry?”
He sighs. “Okay, I’ll concede that you’re feelinga littleworse. Even if I feel downright shitty.”
It’s impossible to hold on to my anger when he reminds me of a kicked puppy. The thing is that while this is definitely the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, I can one hundred percent see how Perry would have made that mistake. He doesn’t exactly think things through, and that can’t be one of the things I like about him if I’m also holding it against him. I sort of feel like I get a pass inthisscenario, but the more pathetic Perry looks, the more I soften to him.
“Don’t.”
He steps closer. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t make me feel bad for you. If I get the sympathy in any situation, it’s this one.”
“Right. Yes. Sympathy.” He cups the side of my jaw with myruined ear. “I just want to point out though, that everyone loves battle scars.”
“Not the person with them.”
“They’re sexy. Interesting.” He releases my jaw to touch his own bullet wound. “And now we match.”
“We match. What a relief.”
