The Cupid Touch

The Cupid Touch Chapter 23 - Nerve Endings

"It's on its way."

I'd called for the ambulance, weirdly calm about it, and then bent down to try and help Joe-Moe with the wounded hood.

I'd been so terrified for Joe that I hadn't noticed what I should have done. The magnetic awareness of Axel had shifted focus. It was Joe-Moe I could sense now: Joe-Moe and another distant point that was drawing nearer. In my flood of relief that he was ok, I was close to losing control of it.

Don't love him. Don't love him. Come on, Helena!

It was terrifying. I could feel myself growing sweaty with fear. It was like the prelude to throwing up.

But then I caught Joe's gaze, and it was cold and distant and not at all part of the haze of love.

"Thank you for doing that," Joe-Moe said, as if I were some kind of a stranger. "Sorry you walked in on it. Are you ok with blood?"

"I'm... fine," I said, feeling actually a little bit sick still and seriously confused. Had something snapped in him? Or was this what he was really, truly like when he got angry? Cold and distant and... inhuman.

It was strange going pretty quickly from fear of Joseph Moritz dying to fear of Joseph Moritz himself. Whatever had happened, it did the swiftest job I could remember of nuking the magnetic feeling. It faded out as if it had never existed. But I couldn't feel good about it.

"Are you all right?" I asked him. "I..."

"My brother and I were just leaving," he cut in. "I think we must have walked in on some kind of a hit."

He glanced up at me, significantly, and a sort of a light dawned. He was trying to pretend he didn't know me, because only one of the guys was unconscious.

I gave him a slow nod, and then looked instinctively at the guy with the gunshot wound. He looked bad. His skin was sort-of greyish, and he there was sweat standing out on it, but he was shivering.

"Are you ok?" I asked him.

"I just - I don't feel good."

Which was pretty natural, given he'd been shot in the stomach, but he didn't seem to be losing all that much blood.

"I think he's in shock," I said, remembering being hit by it myself the time I broke my ankle. "I've got a can of soda in my bag."

I went to get it, trying to act like it was my car I was going to and not Joe-Moe's, and of course, messing up opening the door. But I wasn't so sure the injured guy was in any state to notice.

I grabbed the soda and crouched back next to him. He flinched when I pulled the ring, but let me tilt some into his mouth.

"You need some sugar," I said, hoping that I wasn't doing the wrong thing feeding him liquid when he had abdominal injuries. But shock can kill more quickly than blood loss, and I wasn't going to let Joe-Moe end up being charged for murder. Even if he hadn't actually touched the gun.

Axel came to sit next to me, almost as grey as the injured guy.

"Shit," he said, quietly, as he looked at the blood that was gradually welling between Joe's fingers.

I could feel all of us flinch when the first sound of a siren made it to us. It was an intermingled wail that resolved itself into two squad cars and an ambulance. They had to go pretty slowly to fit down the alley, and then the squad cars had to park up behind and squeeze past the ambulance. It was all in all almost funny.

The ambulance didn't stay long. Two paramedics loaded up both the hoods and screamed (kind-of-slowly) off. Which was when the questions started from the three cops who'd turned up.

I could see them watching Joe-Moe steadily while he talked, and their questions were a little bit skeptical.

"Why were you exiting the back of the nightclub?... Can I see your knuckles? Are those bruises?"

But once they'd asked us all the same questions and come up with the same answers - that I was waiting while Joe picked up his brother, that I was Joe's girlfriend, that Axel knew some of the staff there - they seemed to become less suspicious, and more accepting. It was just unfortunate that Joe had opened the door at the wrong time and interrupted some kind of a confrontation. It was a shame one of the guys assumed he was being attacked and went for him.

"If there are any assault charges brought against me, I'll take them," Joseph said levelly, at one point. "Though given the guy had just shot someone, I'm hoping that won't be relevant."

They took all our names, and the name of Axel's ex-boyfriend bartender, and then they let us go.

I couldn't stop looking at the blood outside the door throughout all of it, and I was still staring at it as Joe drove us away.

"You're leaving," Joe-Moe said, turning to talk over his shoulder to Axel. "On the first train I can put you on."

"What about work?" his brother asked.

"What about your life?" Joe snapped back. "You can't be in this city while they're looking for you."

"But it's not going to go away," Axel argued. "What's the point in running?"

"It will," Joe-Moe said quietly.

It made my flesh crawl, hearing him say it.

He met my gaze when I looked over at him, and I know what I was thinking was obvious: that he'd promised not to bring revenge down on them if he could avoid it.

"You have some magical method?" Axel asked, sounding a little bit like he was twelve.

"The cops are involved now," Joe said. "I'm going to give them a lot more information on Lucas. I think they'll be interested in him and his boss."

Axel gave a sigh. "It could take months to do it that way. And I'm pretty sure the cops already know about them. It's proving it that's the problem."

"I'll make it happen," Joe said, and reached out to take my hand. I squeezed it, harder than I had to, trying to somehow communicate that he had to try it the right way. I saw a small smile appear on his face. He knew what I was saying.

"Where am I going to go?" Axel seemed to have accepted his brother's decision, even if he was being a little sullen about it. I guessed that he was pretty scared underneath the irritation at having his life interrupted.

"Uncle Aaron's."

"Seriously?" Axel asked, leaning forward. "It's miles from anything."

"Yup," Joe-Moe said. "And nobody's going to know you're there."

"They know who you are now, you know, bro," Axel said, suddenly serious. "You need to be careful too."

"I'm on it," he said, sounding serenely unworried. "You worry about yourself, little brother. And until you are on that train, you are not leaving my sight. Got it?"

Axel huffed, and I laughed, because it was about time someone did.

"Bossy big brother, much?" I asked.

Joe glanced at me, and smiled slightly. "Bossy boyfriend too. Be grateful none of them knows who you are, or I'd be walking you everywhere."

I grinned at him, and only then remembered the guy looking at me as I spoke to Joe on the phone, and the recognition on his face. I could feel the blood draining out of my face, but by that point, Joe had already turned to look back at the road.

We didn't get our night in a hunting-lodge hotel. We didn't get total privacy. We got to sleep in a room that shared a wall with Axel's, and listen to the quiet buzzing of the bass through his speakers. But after I'd been through the terror of losing Joe in two ways today, there was no way I was going to be self-controlled.

I could sense the same urgent desire in Joe the moment the door closed, and in absolute silence we undressed each other and pressed mouths, bodies, legs together in a slow and achingly wonderful love-making. I bit Joe's shoulder hard enough to leave marks to keep from making any sound, and when I put the palm of my hand up to his mouth as he got a little noisy, he grabbed it between his teeth. Just then, I loved the pain. It made me a little bit angry, and it was so much better than being scared that I embraced it as I gave in to him all over again.