Like… what possessed me to try to become a hero? That was never going to work!
Leland does something weird with his mouth as my eyebrows knit and then he just sighs and lifts his gun, shooting the man in the shoulder. I swear I felt the fucking bullet whiz right by me.
The man cries out as he jerks back, ripping me back with him.
“Don’t go down with him, Ellis, what are you doing? Are you going to just take a nap?” Leland asks.
“You nearly shot me!” I cry.
“I would never nearly shoot you.”
“You… fucker,” the man yells.
I roll away as Leland aims his gun at the man’s head. “Ifeltthe bullet.” I look over at my arm, needing proof that I’m not bleeding to death, when I see a hole in the sleeve of my shirt. “Look at my arm! What if I’dmoved?”
Leland looks confused as he kicks the gun away from the man. “Why would you have moved? I told you to stay perfectly still.”
“Did you?” I ask, wondering what kind of telepathic nonsense he thinks he’s acquired. Especially when all I saw was him making some weird fucking facial movements. “He had a gun to my head.”
“He sure did, but the safety was on. He knows he’s not supposed to kill you, so it’s fine.”
“My heart says it’s not.”
“It was super-duper sweet of you to try to save me, but I knew he was there,” he says.
I gape at him. “You did?”
“Yeah. I told you there were two guys.” He points to the one he’d taken down then points at the other like maybe I can’t count to two.
“I… thought you meant two over there.”
Now that he has the guy taped and bound, he smiles at me and then ruffles my hair. “You did good!”
“Did I?” I’m more than a little skeptical about this.
“Like… I’d give you like a D plus, definitely.”
“I suck at this.”
Leland grabs me by the shoulders and squeezes them. “You’re out here, aren’t you? Hell, you’re probably the bravest of all of us. Maybe you have no idea what you’re doing, and maybe you can’t shoot a man who was like seven feet from you—and he was a big man… like… did you see the size of those muscles? Like a fucking brick house.”
“Are you trying to make me feel better?” I ask, quite unsure.
“But you’re still here, aren’t you? You’re determined to help Tavish… I mean, maybe you have questionable taste in men, but you’re here. And that counts for a whole lot.”
I look over at him before nodding. “Y-Yeah. I’m here.”
“You sure as fuck are. Now let’s go fuck some shit up.”
“I’ll watchyoufuck shit up.”
“Deal,” he says as he rushes into the building without reservation. It’s like I’m in my very own action movie as a mere spectator as he knocks a woman down and then trots on up to the third floor. He pushes open a door before punching a man right in the face, throwing him back into the room and coming out with a hollering woman.
I’m left just gaping at how smoothly it all goes. Like how?
“W-Who the fuck are you?” the woman asks.
“Your worst nightmare,” he says. “Or your favorite. Depends. Now walk. We have a date with your father.”
