Sweet Thing -- the cute little nurse that I’d banged in the bathroom a couple of days before -- came in carrying a pair of blue hospital scrubs for me to go home in. The doctor watched her like a hawk as she set the scrubs on the bed next to me and quickly left the room without ever looking me in the eye. Too bad. I would have loved to have tapped that sweet ass one more time before being released. Oh well. Maybe I’d look her up the next time the rodeo was in Houston.
I had convinced the old bat of a nurse not to report Sweet Thing for what we’d done. It was all my fault, I said. Don’t punish her because I can’t keep my pecker from getting hard. Don’t ask me how I convinced her because that is a tale I will not tell. Let’s just say that sometimes a man must do things he wouldn’t otherwise do sober and leave it at that.
“Do you need help with that?” the doc asked, watching me struggle with the scrub shirt. I got my head in okay, but when I raised my arms it felt like somebody was sticking a chainsaw in my guts. I grunted at him as I got the shirt over my arms. He stepped in to tug the shirt down carefully over my bandaged side. My face was washed with sweat and I felt like I was gonna puke, but I held up a hand to shoo him away.
“I’m okay,” I said, my voice a hoarse whisper. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply for a moment. Slowly, the nausea subsided. I picked up the scrub pants and slid them up my legs and cinched them at my waist. Without underwear to keep it in place, my junk kind of bulged out the front of the thin scrub pants. Oh well. Nothing I could do but let it hang.
I tossed the hospital gown on the bed and pulled the belt out of the boots to set it on the nightstand. I ignored the dried blood that coated the silver buckle and dark leather. I didn’t have any socks, so I just slid my bare feet into the boots.
It took all the energy I had just to get dressed. I leaned back on the pillows and closed my eyes. Cody would be here soon to take me home where I could rest without a bunch of doctors and nurses fussing over me. I swear, these people would wake you up to give you a sleeping pill.
“Okay, Mr. Daniels,” the doc said with a tone of finality, still shaking his head at me. “I’ve done all I can do. I’ll go sign your release forms and the nurse will be in shortly with a wheelchair to roll you downstairs.”
He put a hand on the pointed toe of my boot and gave it a little wiggle. “Behave yourself, Mr. Daniels. I don’t ever want to see you in here again.”
“Don’t worry, doc,” I said quietly. “Next time a bull gores me in the gut I’ll make sure they just let me die in the dirt.”
Shelby
I just about had a hissy fit when Daddy told me that I would have to drive four hours to Houston to pick up Luke from the hospital because he and Cody were going to be busy nutting young bulls all day.
Actually, I think the correct term is “de-nutting”.
If you don’t know what that means, look it up for yourself because it’s too disgusting for me to talk about.
Anyway, when Daddy told me that Luke would be released later in the day and I had to pick him up, I said no fucking way. Let him take a bus or a taxi. I wasn’t going to spend four hours getting there and four hours back, stuck in a truck with Luke Daniels.
No way.
Forget it.
Shit.
Needless to say, I was still fuming when I pulled into the Houston Memorial Hospital parking lot and went to the desk to ask what room Luke Daniels was in. I was directed to take the elevator to the fifth floor, room 518. I got in the elevator and when the doors slid shut, I checked my reflection in the mirrored surface.
I was wearing skin tight jeans with the legs tucked into a pair of old cowboy boots, and a denim shirt rolled up to the elbows and tied at the waist, over a white camisole that showed off a fair amount of my freckled cleavage.
I had my hair pulled back like always and had even put on a little makeup. Silly, I know, but I wanted Luke to look at me and see what he missed out on when he left all those years ago.
Look at what you could have been fucking all that time, I wanted to say.
Look at what you could have had riding you like a buckin’ bronco.
Then again, by now we probably would have been divorced and fighting over custody of a couple of rugrat kids.
I don’t want them, you take them.
No way, they’re yours…
By the time the elevator dinged and opened to the fifth floor, I had just about decided that maybe it was best that Luke had left me behind.
If he hadn’t left home to ride the rodeo circuit, we might have gotten married and I might never have gone off to college to get my degrees and create a life of my own.
I might have lived my whole life on a dusty Texas ranch popping out babies and washing dirty diapers and wiping snotty noses while wondering if their daddy was ever gonna come home.
Maybe he did me a favor by leaving me behind.
Maybe I’m the hard-headed, strong-willed woman that I am today because Luke Daniels took off one day and never came back.
Maybe I was better off.
I guessed I’d never know.
Luke was in room 518. I held my breath as I walked down the long hallway, counting room numbers as I went. 510… 511… 512…
When I reached room 518, I paused for a moment to peek through the open doorway. It had been six years since I’d seen Luke. I was eighteen and he was twenty. We’d had sex dozens of times. We’d kept our relationship (if you could call it that) secret because Luke didn’t think Daddy would approve and he was probably right.
We weren’t exclusive or anything. I dated other boys and lord knows he went with other girls. But we had a bond that kept bringing us back together. Or at least I thought we did.
Then one day Luke said he was hitting the rodeo circuit and didn’t know when he’d be back. I was stupid in love with him and he was stupid in love with the rodeo. He just drove away and left me standing there in the dust waving goodbye like the village idiot. I kept waiting for him to turn around, but he never did.
Peering through the door, I held my breath, wondering how much he had changed, if he had changed at all.
The last time I saw him he was a strapping young bull rider with broad shoulders and a thick chest, and arms that were roped with muscle from hanging on to the backs of thousand pound bulls.
He had shaggy blond hair that hung down in his blue eyes and a smile that made me melt in my panties. His skin was the color of tanned boot leather from a life spent in the Texas sun.
He looked like a young Brad Pitt and he knew it.
And he took advantage of it every chance he got.
Besides me, he probably screwed half the girls in Calloway County and would have screwed the other half if he’d had the time.
All he cared about was getting drunk, getting laid, and hanging on to a bull for eight seconds to get a silver buckle.
I knew it at the time and I knew it now, Luke wasn’t the kind of boy you expected to stick around. He was like an angry Brahma bull: you might get a rope around his horns, but there was no way you were gonna tie him down.
The man lying in the bed in room 518 vaguely reminded me of the boy I’d once known, but as we say here in Texas, he looked like he’d been rode hard and put up wet.
He was lying on his back with his eyes closed and his hands resting over his stomach. He looked a little ridiculous, wearing a pair of blue hospital scrubs tucked into a pair of dusty old cowboy boots.
His complexion was pale, sickly, like he’d been out of the sun for a while. His sandy blond hair was pushed back and plastered to his head, like it hadn’t been washed in days. His chin and cheeks were hollow and stubbly.
I hadn’t seen him in six years, but he looked like he’d aged a couple of decades.
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then stepped forward and tapped on the door. When his blue eyes opened and he smiled, the past came rushing back like a tsunami crashing into the shore.
My old Luke was there within that shell of a man.
I knew it because I felt my body tingle the moment I saw him smile.
Luke
I was lying there with my eyes closed, breathing slowly in and out, trying to will away the burning pain in my side, when I felt like I was being watched.
I opened my eyes just enough to see someone standing in the hallway outside my door. I couldn’t tell who it was exactly or whether she was there to see me or someone else.
It wasn’t until she knocked on the door and stepped closer that I realized who it was. I felt my heart jump into my throat. It was Shelby, Lil Sis, come to take me home.
“I’ll be damned,” I said, smiling when her face came into focus. “What are you doing here?” I held out my arms to hug her, but she just reached for my hands and gave them a loose shake.
“Cody sent me to pick you up,” she said flatly, giving me a smile that I could tell was forced. I tried to remember if I’d done anything to make her mad, as was the case with most women in my past. Honestly, I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d seen her, or if we had parted in good company. Too many concussions will do that to you, I guess.
“He too busy to come get me himself?” I asked, grinning, hoping she would grin back. She did not. She just shrugged her pretty eyebrows at me and said she reckoned so.
Time had been extra good to Shelby. She looked amazing in her tight jeans and little white shirt with her cleavage bubbling out. Her face was flawless except for the freckles that dotted her nose and cheeks. I used to count them with kisses after we made love in the barn loft. She was always the prettiest girl in Calloway County and that had not changed. She didn’t look like an awkward teenager anymore. She looked like a woman; so much so it made my mouth water. I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to make love to her now.