I Unintentionally Became Her Kitten

Chapter 121: Bang!

I woke finding her spot empty. It was dark outside and I went through a lazy process of getting upright and hissing as my hamstrings protested starkly about last night’s test on my flexibility. My thighs burned, aching deeper than usual, but I got up, stretched a little and found a phone.

Four in the morning.

I started to shuffle toward the stairs when I caught sight of her hair. Alisha was uneasily dozing off on the couch, a book still open on her chest.

I let out a sigh of relief. I’d expected to find her downstairs trying to sand imaginary dirt off the paint or something. But she’d stayed close.

I limped a little getting over to her and almost ran my hand through her hair to wake her up, but remembered better.

Instead I slowly sat on the far end of the couch, hoping the weight didn’t shift too much.

There was the standard furrow in her brow, right where it always was when she was struggling to sleep properly.

I leaned back, doing my best to relax. I put my feet up even and started to stretch them out and one gently nudged her thigh.

The reaction was immediate. She went from uneasy sleep to full fight or flight mode. At the very least I wasn’t within arms reach so there was no strangling but she did draw her gun, from where I didn’t know but as soon as it was in sight, I ducked. It went off, blinding my hearing for a long moment and when I dared to look up she was staring in numb shock at the other side of the room.

“Alisha?” I asked softly, hesitant to lift my head up.

Her eyes found me, and I realized she wasn’t quite awake yet, so I stayed very very still, hearing something gently tinkle to the floor on the other side of the room.

“Kitten?” she asked finally, voice exhausted.

“It’s me,” I answered.

I felt the relief wash over me as she snapped into the present and looked down at her gun and dropped it like a hot iron onto the coffee table, which shattered and suddenly there was glass all over the floor.

My heart beat that much faster. I swallowed

“I… I fired,” she said, as if she was confused why.

“I’m okay,” I reassured her. I didn’t know where the bullet went but it hadn’t been into me. 

My body still trembled violently as I slowly pulled my legs back toward me, giving Alisha space.

She ran a hand through her hair and looked at the shattered coffee table and then at the tinted  windows.

I turned my head and saw a grapefruit sized hole through the glass, too high to have been a sober shot. I was very very grateful for that. I knew Alisha could shoot pretty well.

My gaze slowly turned to the gun on the floor, still surrounded with tiny fragments of glass.

I rather wished she had taken the time to put it somewhere I didn’t have to stare at it.

And then Alisha started shaking.

I shifted, getting my knees under me so I could get close and hold her but she put a hand out to keep me at a distance so I instead kneeled by her feet.

“I’m going to kill you one of these days,” she managed, and wiped some tears from her eyes. “If you’d been standing, Kitten, there wouldn’t have been hesitation.”

I nodded. “I know.” My stomach still felt sick without the reminder. Alisha was dangerous. But I knew that long ago and I’d still stuck around. I didn’t think she was so dangerous as to blindly fire a gun at an unknown person though.

Then again, Tye had told me to do exactly that if anyone had approached the house.

Alisha curled up a little tighter. “You should go,” she managed, sniffling.

At first I thought she meant to give her space and I looked down to find out a way to walk across the room without getting glass in my feet but she shook her head.

“I mean leave me, Kitten,” she said.

I snapped my gaze back over to her.

“I will not,” I told her. “Yes, you could’ve killed me, but you didn’t. And I think— it’s not like you didn’t point a gun at me in New York but you didn’t fire then. I think even your subconscious wouldn’t let you see me as an enemy. I’m not— I’m not afraid.” I was stretching the truth. I was still scared, my heart rate was still coming down, but the thought of leaving her made me far more uneasy.

I climbed over the arm of the couch then and skirted around the broken glass to put some shoes on in the closet before going to sit directly next to her and urging her upright.

She did so slowly, keeping her legs folded underneath her. “I’m not okay,” she admitted quietly.

I held her gently. “I know, Alisha. And you’re allowed to not be.”

She wept some more, and once she’d calmed down to something more like numbness, I stood and got her a glass of water before figuring out what to do about the glass everywhere.

She watched for a moment while I found a broom and started to sweep it up, then she carefully placed a bare foot on one of the clean areas and got up to get some shoes.

She joined me in cleaning up the mess, taking the gun and sliding it, to my surprise, behind one of the couch cushions.

So it wasn’t her personal gun it was just one that she kept in the couch.

“Uhm… Alisha,” I asked.

She looked over, eyes still a little puffy, but her expression was controlled.

“How many guns are in this room right now?” I asked.

“Do you include the closet?” she asked soberly.

“Yes.”

She glanced around. I saw her fingers twitch in calculation. “I think… eight.”

“Eight?” I repeated.

She pointed to the bed, then the couch, the book case, the closet, the top of the stairs where her trash can was and next to the door.

I inhaled slowly. “Okay, can we discuss this?” I asked.

She blinked. “What needs to be discussed?”

“In light of what just happened, can we perhaps limit how many firearms there are?”

She opened her mouth, then closed it, then said, “fair enough,” in a quiet voice.

“How about you keep one close to the bed, but not in immediate arms reach, fair?”

She hesitated again. “And if someone does break in?” she asked.

“Has anyone ever?”

“No.”

I waited, letting both of us process this. “Someone watches the cameras overnight?” I asked.

She nodded.

“How about I keep a gun on my side of the bed frame?” I asked. “That way I’m armed if someone does break in, but if you wake up not aware of where you are, you’re not going to end up shooting something you don’t want destroyed. Is that… agreeable?”

She nodded. “Yes.” She looked over at the window again and sighed. “I should get dressed,” she stated. “And have someone order the glass to fix that.”

I gave her a hug. “It’s gonna be okay.”

Her arms slowly came up to hug me back before she buried her face into my hair.