The 6 Greatest Errors of All Time | ?

XVI. gas station duel

I set my lips firm as the man stayed silent. "I don't waste my time giving anyone attention and fake consolidation. This is as real as I get. Yes, I'm angry."

But it was more than just being angry. I wasn't angry at the fact that he could've gotten a stab wound, because I knew deep in my heart the severity of his position in our team. What I was angry about, was the fact that he never once touched on the topic of the aftermath of him dealing with a crime scene for our assignments.

This man made us forget the amount of pressure he had as a leader and the pain he endured as Beta. He didn't talk about it, so we didn't bring it up either. A team was a team. You have to deal with things together. But it seemed like he still couldn't trust us.

Or was it that he couldn't trust failing to uphold the position that he was held accountable for?

I finally started piecing something together. That night that I had found him with all those wounds, it couldn't have all been from the ambush. In truth, they were old wounds that easily opened up because he never had a rest from his assignments. But like any human, he had a limit.

And the scary thing was that he had reached it long ago. But all these years, he masked his pain so well, that he now believed he didn't deserve to mention what happened to him. And we believed him. We believed he was capable of everything. He was the perfect leader.

But today, I saw him as a human. And I was going to teach him, it was okay to breathe. All the more reason I was now set on not letting him find out I was Venus, at least not anytime soon. If he knew I was Venus, I wouldn't be able to reach him anymore.

Right now, the man felt alone... but he wasn't. I was right here guiding him. What he needed to learn was that, regardless of whether or not he knew Venus's identity, Venus and Risa were the same person. Just as Beta and Pierce were the same person. It was Pierce's life he should protect, not Beta's. Beta was a title. Pierce was a human. If we lost the latter, just how important then is the prior?

We ended up switching places. I settled myself into the driver's seat at last and he sat where I had been. I lowered the seat so that he was leaning further back out of my line of vision. The man applied pressure to his wound to clot the blood as he became quiet. Without wasting anymore time, I flicked on the engines more aggressively than I intended to, and we hit the road.

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I seemed to have calmed down as we neared home. My car was signaling I needed gas about 45 minutes more into the drive. Cursing under my breath, I cautiously took a peek at Pierce, and my eyes instantly softened.

He was sleeping. Quiet, tired, and with sweat running down the side of his face. The blood on his clothes had dried, but the wound was still fresh and lethal. As I observed him, I realized that he needed a dressing of some sort for his gash. Maybe they'd have some in the gas station.

Testing my luck, I immediately pulled over to the nearest gas station and parked the car at one of the gas pumps. It was 2 in the morning. There was barely any light. I had forgotten how cold it was outside just as I opened the car door. Turning on the heat, I left the keys in the ignition as I stepped out.

The closer I got to the door of the store, the clearer the image of a couple making out outside next to the door became. Trying not to make a face and judge, I shook my head of thoughts and quickly made my entrance into the gas store.