I Hate Myself but I Love You

Chapter 23

"Smelling salts. The odor is so pungent that it should block your sense of smell." I say.

Laura coughs, grimacing as she lowers her hand from her face. "It worked."

"Yeah, I apologize for not warning you."

She flaps her hand dismissively. "I told you to do it."

"I did it without fully informing you of what you were getting into." I argue. This isn't about the smelling salts anymore.

"Maybe not, but Carm it's you. I trust you with my life and I know you would never intentionally hurt me. It was the only way for me to survive." Laura reminds me. She picked up on that, of course. My little journalist. Minus the mine part. I fucked that up.

My face crumples and I feel tears burning in the back of my eyes. Stupid feelings. "I just don't know what I'd do without you, cupcake." I murmur.

"Let's try not to find out, then. Come on; let's go get mattresses that we are not stealing." Laura gives me a hard look and I salute her sarcastically, giving her my famous smirk.

"Of course not, cutie. The one advantage of having Mother was the infinite amount of money she has. She bought her own bank to store it all."

"Whoa. And she just lets you use however much you want?"

"Your mouth is hanging open." She quickly shuts it, blushing. "But pretty much, yeah. Money wasn't really a big deal to her." I shrug. "Besides, isn't your dad rich?"

"He just is very good at what he does." Laura says defensively.

"What does he do?" I ask, handing her a small bag of blood to tide her over until we get back. "You never told me."

"He started Hollis Security."

Now my jaw's the one that's dropped. "John Hollis is your dad? I thought at most he was your uncle or something. New York Times dubbed him 'the other Bill Gates'."

"Um, yeah that's my dad. Why do you think he's so paranoid? He hears about bad people all the time and protects good people from them. Dad told me once that he hears about one of his employees getting hurt or killed every other day, or twice weekly if they're lucky. The worst one was when a high profile client decided to go hiking. The client and the bodyguard were horribly maimed by a bear." She pauses and chugs her blood like it's one of her grape sodas. "He was called in to identify what was left of the bodyguard. Ever since, he's made sure that I have bear spray."

I nod; taking it in and holding the door open for her. "Are you ready? You can stay here in the cabin if you aren't."

Laura reaches out to grab my hand as we walk out into the sunlight. "You'll be with me the entire time; I'll be okay."

I squeeze her hand, a soft smile lighting up my face. "We'll have to move quickly, creampuff. They'll be here soon enough."