Splinter (Whisper Walker Series) (21 page)

I’m screwed now.

“Is that so,” Kelsie said through gritted teeth.

I cleared my throat. “Well. I’m good to go now.” I attempted to push myself up but was immediately pushed back down by Kelsie.

“Are you sure? Why don’t you just stay here, like you always do?” she said, her tone scathing.

“Naw, that’s all right. I’m good. Let’s go home,” I said, directing my eyes away from her.

I stretched my hand out to Mica. She got the hint and helped pull me up. Kelsie then had no choice but to move. As she saw my face when I stood, her look softened a degree.

She ended up walking me out of the shack with her arm under my good shoulder. Mica stopped us at the door, handing me a packet of herbs for a tea that would help deaden the pain.

It took quite a while for us to get home. I drew some looks from the few people out and about, being shirtless and bandaged. But once they realized it was me, they went back to their business since I got injured fairly often.

Once we were inside, Kelsie sat me down at the table and made me a cup of tea from the herbs. A few minutes after I drank it, I felt ten times better. Only a little sore.

“Awesome. I’m taking a shower, and then I’m going to bed. You want it first?”

She considered for a moment. “You go ahead, then I’ll take it.”

I shrugged and hobbled to the shower and got the hot water running. I stripped and climbed in, letting the water soak the adhesive on the bandages to loosen them up. I gingerly peeled them off, prepared to grimace when I saw the wound. Only, there were some threads sticking out of the skin where the stitches were, but no wound.

The steam soaked into me as I nearly fell asleep under the water. I never even felt the shower curtain brush against me. When I climbed out, I started when I saw her standing there in only her underwear.

Kelsie had taken off her nose bandage. I got my first really good look at her face.

“I thought for sure your nose was broken,” I said as I paused next to her wearing only a towel.

“It was. It just healed extremely quickly.”

“Yeah, like the cut under my arm. Must not have been too bad, eh?”

She shook her head. “No, it was pretty bad. Deep and you lost a lot of blood.”

I looked back down at the stitches sticking out of lightly scarred skin. Then at her nose. I shook my head in amazement. “Weird.” She still had bruises on her face, though, and I saw a couple on my arm.

She stepped a little closer still and placed her hand gently on my abdomen, tracing something. I looked down and noticed for the first time the bruises that had blossomed over most of my rib cage. I guess that tea was better than I thought; I barely felt any pain at all.

I put a hand on her bruise, right below her breasts. Suddenly I became very conscious of the location of my hand.

I trailed my fingers up her perfect breasts for only a second. Then I removed my hand, waiting for her reaction. At first there wasn’t much, she almost seemed to smile. Then, all of the sudden, her eyes filled with tears. She closed the distance between us in an instant, throwing her arms around my neck. She squeezed so tightly that I felt the pain in my ribs, in spite of the herbs. Sensing that she needed this, I tried not to grimace and just hugged her back.

She sobbed into my shoulder for a few minutes. Eventually she turned her head sideways against my chest but still kept her arms around me just as ferociously. She let out a few shuddering breaths against my chest.

“I didn’t think I was gonna live,” she murmured. “I thought for sure he was going to kill me, that thing. I didn’t think there was any way you were going to find me. And my dad just sat there, like a statue. And you killed him. And then you killed the Dybbuk.” She trailed off. “I know you had to do it. Kill my dad.”

I kissed the top of her head. “I’m sorry I had to do it in front of you. I never–” I was interrupted by her holding her finger to my mouth.

“Shush. I’m not done yet.” She took her finger off my mouth but kept her head leaned back to keep looking me in the eyes. “What I was more worried about than dying,” she paused to swallow, her gaze as intense and vulnerable as I’d ever seen, “what I was most afraid of…was losing you. That’s the thing that constantly went through my head, while he was waving the knife at me. The thing that scared me the most was the thought of never again seeing you. Then, when you passed out when we got back, I was afraid again. Drake. Don’t ever leave me.”

She looked like she was going to say more. But I never gave her the chance. I brought my arm around and placed a finger under her chin. I stared into her beautiful green eyes for a second, then placed my lips on hers in a gentle kiss.

At first she didn’t respond. Then she kissed back, her hot tears salty in my mouth. It came naturally, my hand that had been wrapped around her slid down around her hips and pulled her closer. I wanted more. So much more. But I didn’t feel this was the time. After what seemed like hours, I broke the kiss and just held her.

Eventually, she climbed into the shower, and I left. I kind of expected Kelsie to sleep in my bed tonight, like she had for the last week or so, but she elected to go to her own room and her own bed.

She didn’t say anything to me, after the kiss. She just nodded her head or shook it when I asked a question and avoided eye contact, whether it was a yes or no question or not. I didn’t know what to think of it, of her. Maybe it was too soon. Maybe it was wrong. Maybe I had just ruined everything we had.

**********************

Here’s a bit about
Mission: Ash Run from London Cole
:

Four weeks is all it takes for everything to end:
 

Four weeks of Ash Season.

Three weeks of suffocating darkness.
 

Two weeks to get the supplies you need or die trying.

One chance to get it right.

In a world still trying to rebuild nearly eight decades after WWIII, it's a constant struggle to survive. Especially during Ash Season, the dreaded time every year when deadly gases and darkness descend upon the remaining inhabitants of Earth. Anyone unprepared for Ash Season won't live to see the next one.

The supplies Drake, Kelsie, and the rest of their Guild have spent months stockpiling are stolen only days before the start of Ash Season. Will they try to survive the deadly season by scrounging for whatever supplies they can? Or should they put everything on the line to track down the stolen provisions? If they choose wrong, their entire Guild will face certain death...

Be sure to check out the
Mission Novellas
on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, iBooks, and many other online ebook retailers. The first in the novellas that accompany
Splinter
,
Splash
, and the rest of the
Whisper Walker Series
, is out now and is titled
Mission: Ash Run
.

Keep an eye out for
Splash
,
the followup to
Splinter
!
If you sign up for London’s newsletter on his site you’ll be among the first to know about upcoming and new releases.
 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

During the acknowledgments, you normally get some spiel about how the author thanks his mother for having him and his pet fish for putting up with him while he spent countless hours in the dark hovering over his computer, feverishly pounding on the keys to make the voices in his head quiet down. This is not one of those spiels.

Well, okay it might be a little.

I do want to say thank you to the people and book bloggers that first read this book and gave it their thumbs up.

Rebecca Fisk, you’ve been an excellent sounding board and a great voice of reason in my head. If you say something is awesome, then I know it just might be. Thank you for spending countless hours on the phone with me talking over details and keeping me calm when something wasn’t going right.

Nathan, my roommate. Thank you for adding your input to my plot ideas that I threw up into the air during our random times of standing around in the kitchen for no known reason. If you said something sounded like a great idea, I knew instantly to scratch it from the record and never let it see the light of day.

My editor is Pauline Nolet, and I seriously couldn’t have done it without her. She kept me pointed at the narrow road of keeping this book moving. Without her encouragement and fine-tuning tweaks and red comment boxes on edits,
Splinter
wouldn’t be what it came to be.

Lastly, but definitely not least (I mean, you can only have one “firstly” per page, so
something
has to get bottom-listed), I want to thank you, the reader, for checking out this book and giving it a shot. I know there are millions of books out there, jumping out at you from the aisles at Barnes and Noble or catching your eye with a snazzy cover on Amazon. It means a lot to me that you picked
Splinter
up.

If you liked this book, or even if you didn’t, if you would take a moment to leave a rating and maybe even a short review at the retailer you purchased
Splinter
from, I’d be eternally grateful. My goal is to get this book into as many hands as I can, but it has lots of competition out there. A review and/or rating goes a long way in telling other potential readers what to think about the book, whether to give it a shot or pass it up for the next one.

Even if it’s something short on Twitter (you can’t get much shorter than 140 characters) that you send to @LondonColeYA, it’s a big help.