Taste (Take It Off #9)(42)
Author: Cambria Hebert

“Yeah. Climb across to the driver’s seat.”

I nodded and started moving. He snatched me back. “Stay low, darlin’.”

“I will.” I promised.

He pressed a quick kiss to my lips. “Go on.”

I scrambled across the seats, trying my hardest to stay low. Glass from the shattered driver’s window cut into my skin, but I ignored it. Behind me I heard Spencer getting into the car as I slid the key into the ignition.

I slid the seat all the way back as far as it could go and sat on the floor. It was uncomfortable as hell, but I managed to get the car started using my feet on the clutch and the gas.

“You couldn’t have gotten an automatic?” I muttered.

Spencer chuckled. “My bad.”

“You ready?” I asked him. He looked uncomfortable and in pain squished on the floor of his car.

“Go,” he said.

I sprang up, threw the car in drive, and peeled out. I took out the mailbox on the way, but I didn’t stop to see what kind of damage it made.

“Respect the car!” Spencer groaned as I sped down the street.

Another shot blew out the back windshield, and I screamed.

“Fuck!” he roared, and I increased the speed, tearing around the corner.

I kept my eyes on the rearview mirror, waiting for a car to fall behind us.

But one never came.

Spencer pushed himself up into the seat and pulled out his phone. As soon as someone answered, he began reporting about what happened, about shots fired and what direction they came from.

I was amazed. How the hell did he know the location and direction of the shooter? I was sitting over here proud I hadn’t peed my pants and I was driving this stick shift without stripping the gears.

“What did the guy watching the house see?” Spencer demanded.

He let out a string of cuss words a few moments later. “You should have left a watch here!” he roared.

“Calm down,” I told him, worrying about his blood loss.

I heard a voice on the other line but couldn’t make out what he was saying. Spencer grunted a couple times, and I peeked beneath my shirt he was pressing against his wound and became anxious all over again when I saw the blood wasn’t slowing down.

I imagined the man on the phone wanted to know where we would be.

“I need to go to the hospital,” he said reluctantly. “I got shot.”

Muffled yelling from the other end of the line made me grin. Spencer needed to get yelled at. He acted like getting shot wasn’t that big of a deal.

“Yeah,” he said after his lecture. “See you there.”

When the call was disconnected, he jammed the phone back in his pocket and looked at me.

“Please don’t die,” I said, the choked words bursting from my mouth before I could stop them.

“Hey,” he said, covering my hand on the stick shift with one of his red-stained ones. “It takes a lot more than this to kill a guy like me.”

A sob ripped from my throat as the pressure in my chest built. He gave my hand a squeeze. “I’m okay, baby. Just get us to the hospital.”

But it wasn’t okay. “You shouldn’t have done that,” I said. “You should have let them shoot me instead.”

He grunted. “I’d rather get shot than live without you.”

“Getting shot is not a romantic gesture,” I scolded, even though he totally owned me.

He chuckled.

I ran up over a curb, and the car in the other lane honked madly at me.

“I’d like to arrive at the hospital without further injury,” he said, dry.

I gave him an evil look and the car went over a bump. He winced and fear flooded me anew. I gripped the steering wheel tightly and fastened my eyes on the road. The hospital was just up ahead.

That should have been me sitting there bleeding. It’s me they wanted dead.

I wondered when they would try again.

25

The hospital’s bright fluorescent lights were jarring to my tired eyes. Spencer wouldn’t let me drop him off at the emergency room door. Instead, he insisted on staying with me while I parked and then walked with me to the entrance.

He was absolutely maddening.

And stubborn.

But when he held my hand on the way in, I forgot to be mad at him.

Thankfully, when we got there, he was given first priority. It was a good thing because I was so strung out and worried that I would have gone postal on some poor nurse if they tried to make us sit in the waiting room for even five minutes.

Turns out, gunshot wounds rated attention immediately.

When I looked at Spencer as we waited for the nurse to wheel over a wheelchair (which he tried to refuse), I noted how pale he was looking. It worried me because he’d lost so much blood.

“You can wait here,” the nurse said, eyeing my bra and blood-stained jeans.

I opened my mouth to tell her exactly what I thought of her prim instructions, but Spencer intervened.

“She stays with me.”

“Policy states—” Hagatha started in her sour tone.

Spencer held up his hand and spoke, his voice hard and cold, leaving no room for argument. “She is a witness in a federal investigation. She’s in danger, and I’m pissed off. She stays with me.”

“Right this way,” the nurse said and then led me down a long, white hall.

I made faces at her back as we walked.

What? Yeah, I was an adult, but I was in a bitchy mood.

She put us in a “room” that was sectioned off by a large curtain that hung from the ceiling. Spencer got up from the wheelchair as soon as she disappeared, and he stepped toward the exam table. I was at his side instantly, offering my frame for support. He didn’t lean on me, but he did kiss the top of my head.

Once he was settled on the table, I began to pace. “I hope the doctor hurries up.”

“I’m fine.” He assured me. “A couple stitches and I’ll be good as new.”

“You lost a lot of blood, Spencer.” I pointed out.

“This is nothing.”

I stopped dead in my tracks. “Have you been shot before?”

“A couple times.”

It hit me then. I realized that this was a man who was essentially in danger for a living. I guess I’d always seen him as the guy who stole cookies from the kitchen. A guy who always flirted and made me smile.

But those things weren’t his job.

His job was to protect the president. His job was to take a bullet for him if need be.

His words from before settled inside me. He wanted to be part of my life and Jack’s. I wanted that, too. I wanted it more than I realized. Spencer hadn’t really snuck up on me. He’d been there for quite a while. Since the first time he’d waltzed into the kitchen, looking for something to eat.