by Hope Ford
Terry walks up to me. “Zach, it’s fine. He won’t go out with her. I’ll take care of it, but let him go.”
My arm tightens against his throat and Terry says in a stern voice, “Let him go, Zach. You’re going to kill him.”
I count to three and release him. He falls to his knees, gasping for breath. I point down at him. “Don’t go near her,” I threaten him before I walk away.
I no sooner get to the locker room than Terry’s right behind me.
“What the fuck, man? What was that?” he demands.
I turn on him then. “Look, you and April need to quit trying to fix her up. Stay out of her business.”
His eyes get wide. “Wait. Is that it? You like her!”
I shrug my shoulders. “Fuck, Terry. You know Baker’s a piece of shit. Why would you want to fix her up with him?”
He puts his hand on his chest. “Look, April just wants her friend happy and I want April happy. It’s as simple as that. But fine, no big deal, he won’t go out with her.”
“Fuck, no he won’t,” I grunt at him, still pissed off.
Terry starts to walk out of the room but stops with his hand on the door. “You know, Zach, eventually you’re going to have to figure out that what happened to you and your dad, well, that’s not normal. You can’t let it keep holding you back.”
His words hit me like a ton of bricks. I fall to my ass on the bench by my locker. My hands go to my head and I sit there for I don’t know how long, trying to figure out what I’m supposed to do now.
Shannon
“Hi. I’m looking for Dr. Brian Cooper. He was brought in by ambulance a little while ago.”
The woman behind the desk looks at me in my uniform. “He’s in surgery now. That woman is with him, though, if you need to speak to someone.” She points over to a pretty woman in the corner of the room. Her face is puffy like she’s been crying.
I mumble my thanks before I walk over to the other woman.
I sit down next to her. “Hi. I’m sorry to bother you. Are you here with Dr. Brian Cooper?”
She looks at me with surprise on her face. “Yes. I’m his… well, he’s my father’s best friend. But my dad passed away a few years ago and Brian’s all I have now.”
Her eyes well up with tears. I put my arm around her, trying to reassure her that everything will be okay.
“I always thought he was invincible,” she mutters.
“No one’s invincible against a drunk driver, it seems. But I was with him before he passed out. Are they saying anything?”
She shrugs her shoulder. “The surgeon says he’s going to be fine. He has some broken bones and they are setting those. He has a few internal injuries, but they’re just monitoring them now, they said.”
I squeeze her shoulder. She’s maybe a year or two younger than my twenty-two. But she seems to really care about Dr. Cooper. “So I’m Shannon by the way.”
She smiles at me. “I’m Kendall.”
I gasp and start to smile. “Oh, God.” I reach into my pocket and pull out the crumpled envelope. Holding it out in front of us, we both stare at the name Kendall on the front of it. “He gave this to me to give to you.”
She looks confused. “Who did? Brian?”
Nodding my head, I tell her about the accident and him coming in and out of consciousness. “He gave me this. Asked me to give it to you.”
She takes it from me and holds it in both of her hands. “I can leave and let you read it if you want to.”
She grabs on to my hand, stuffing the envelope into her purse. “No. I’ll read it later. Can you sit here with me, just until I know he’s okay?”
We sit there for hours and I get to know Kendall. She is finally smiling a little bit and I’m glad I can take her mind off things.
When the door opens and the surgeon comes out, he walks straight toward us. “He’s out of surgery. He’s going to have a lot of down time with recovery, but he’s going to be fine.”
Kendall stands up and tells him, “Thank you, thank you. Can I see him now?”
“They’re going to wheel him up from recovery soon, but before he was out he was asking for you. I’ll take you to his room so you can wait there.”
She looks over at me then, and I assure her, “Go, go. I’ll check in on you tomorrow.”
She hugs me then, really tight and then follows the surgeon down the hallway.
I lift my arm and look at my watch. I have an hour to go home and change clothes before I’m meeting Baker. Oh, why did I even agree to this? I look down at my uniform and decide to heck with it. I’m going to the bar and have a drink while I wait on him and then tell him thanks, but no thanks.
9
Zach
I walk into The Tavern fifteen minutes before six. I see her sitting at a table and walk over to her. I’m surprised to see her still in uniform. I figured I would show up here and she would be dressed to impress. The fact that she isn’t calms my nerves a little bit.
I sit down across from her and she looks at me with a surprised expression. “What are you doing here?”
I shrug my shoulders. “We need to talk.”
She throws her hands up, tossing the wrapper that she was tearing up in her hands across the table. “What is it with you and wanting to talk? One night, Zach. It was one night.”
She starts to get up, but I put my hand on hers to stop her. “Just let me say what I came here to say.”
I know she wants to walk away, but instead she sits down and nods her head for me to continue.
“So… uh, I’ve never told this story, but here it goes.” I take a deep breath and try not to get caught up in the memories. “My mom left my dad and me when I was five years old. I came home from school and instead of her waiting for me at the bus stop, the next door neighbor let me into the house and fixed me a snack. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich, which I remember as being a treat. Usually, I wasn’t allowed to have a snack before dinner so I was pretty happy. It wasn’t until later that night I found out from my dad that Mom had left.” She gasps and I look down at her hands that are crossed on the table. I almost reach for her, but decide against it. “Uh, I haven’t seen her since. And I mean, it fucked me up. There’s no doubt about it. But it really fucked my dad up. He couldn’t hold it together after that. He started drinking and well, our lives pretty much fell apart then. His heart was broken and he couldn’t heal from it. He ended up drinking himself to death.”
“Oh, Zach…” she starts, but I hold up my hand to stop her. I know I need to get this out.
“So I decided then that I would never fall in love. I grew up thinking that all women left. I thought that if I felt anything for someone like my dad did, she would leave too, and there’d I’d be. And well, it worked for a long time. I had fun, taking women home with me but it never meant a thing.” I pause and look up at her. She wipes a tear off her cheek. “But then I met you. It’s been almost seven weeks ago and my life has not been the same since. I wake up thinking of you and then think about you all day. I don’t want other men looking at you, talking to you and I damn well don’t want you going out with them. I thought I could go with your notion of getting you out of my system, but it didn’t work. All it did was make me fall even more in love with you.”
She gasps and I reach across the table for her hand. When I lace our fingers together, I stand up and scoot into the booth next to her. I wrap my arm around her and look into her face. “I’m going to fuck up, Shannon. Probably a lot. But if you’ll have me… I promise to love you for the rest of my life.”
Tears are running down her face. “Are you sure, Zach? Because I’ll be honest, I fell for you six weeks ago and I haven’t stopped.”
I tuck a piece of hair away from her face, careful not to touch the stitches on her forehead. “So I guess getting me out of your system didn’t work, huh?”
She shakes her head side to side. “So I get another night?”
I do what I’ve wanted to do since I sat d
own. I bend my head and kiss her lips. I pull slightly back and tell her, “No, we get forever.”
Epilogue
A few weeks later
Shannon
Terry and a few of the other firemen are carrying my boxes into the house. Not Zach, though. He’s supervising and making sure that no one tries to talk to me. I should hate how possessive he is, but it doesn’t really bother me. For someone that claimed to avoid relationships, he sure has done a one-eighty. We spend all our time together, well, except when we’re at work. He calls and texts me a few times a day and he doesn’t go out with his buddies anymore to pick up women. If he does go out with his friends, he usually stays for an hour or so and then comes back home to me. Ever since that night at the tavern he has been all in. I was scared at first. Worried that he would change his mind.
I empty the box and before I can start to break it down, Zach is pulling it out of my hands. “I got it.”
I hand it to him and he just smiles at me while he works.
I pull on the hem of my shirt and look at him. “So it’s not too late. You sure about this?”
He looks at me in confusion. “Sure about what?”
I shrug my shoulders. “Me. Us. Moving in together… if it’s too quick…”
He drops the box and walks over to the bedroom door and hollers down the hallway, “We’ll be out in a minute.” I hear a lot of hooting and hollering in the next room but it muffles when he shuts the door.
He stalks over to me and doesn’t stop until he’s standing right in front of me. His hand goes around the back of my neck and he tilts my head backwards until I’m looking up at him. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”
He kisses me then, his tongue pushing through my mouth. His hand slides down between us, into the front of my jeans. I smile, pulling away from him. “All your buddies are in the next room, Zach. They’ll know what we’re doing in here.”
“What? Loving my future wife? That’s what I’m doing.” He grunts as he grips on to the front of my jeans and pulls me to him.
I hit his chest and gasp. “Wife?”
“Aw fuck… I’m doing this all wrong,” he says, shoving his hand through his hair.
“What?” I ask him, still stunned. We’ve never talked about marriage. I’ve thought about it a lot, but I’ve never had the nerve to ask him about it.
He lets go of me and walks over toward the bed before he backtracks and grabs my hand, pulling me with him.
He grabs on to my hips, pushing me until I’m sitting on the edge of the bed.
He’s staring at me and I can’t help but start to get nervous.
He brushes the hair off my face and kisses my forehead. “I know I’m not that romantic, but I’m trying. Shannon, I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I want to wake up every morning with you in my arms and go to sleep at night with you on my chest. I’ve never been as happy as I am when I’m with you.”
He turns away from me, grabbing something out of the nightstand. When he turns back to me, he drops to both of his knees, opens the box in his hands, and holds it out to me. “Will you marry me? Will you make me the happiest man on earth?”
I tackle him then, pushing him backwards and landing on top of him. “Yes, yes, yes!”
We roll on the floor, until he pulls me over him and puts the ring on my finger. I look at it and then at him, wondering how I got so lucky to find such a good man.
I slide my hand up his chest, pulling his shirt off and kissing along the way. He stops me with his hand on mine. “All our friends are out there.”
I shrug my shoulders, kissing him all over. “I don’t care. Let them hear.”
He pulls away from me, dragging me up off the ground. “No way, honey. No one is going to hear those hungry noises you make in the back of your throat when I’m kissing you here.” He reaches down, molding his hand to my jean-covered pussy.
I moan, and my hips jerk.
He kisses me again, his lips melding to mine, and I raise my leg, wrapping it around his waist, trying to get close to him.
He’s gasping for breath and pulls away from me. “Give me two minutes. I’ll get rid of them.”
He walks to the door, but I start to come to my senses. “Wait, you’re throwing out free help, Zach.”
He just smiles at me. “You’re worth it, honey.”
All For You
1
Kendall
I take another look at him lying in the hospital bed. He’s lucky to be alive. That’s what everyone keeps saying and my heart breaks a little more each time I hear it. I guess the car he was in caught fire. He’s indestructible. At least I thought he was. And I would have been happy to keep believing it, but instead, a drunk driver – in the middle of the day – runs a light and hits him. The other man walked away without a scratch. But Brian wasn’t so lucky. He just came out of recovery and the surgeon just told me that they have fixed the torn ligaments and his fracture was so small it didn’t have to be set. Although he looks bad, he’s going to be okay. I swear as soon as he said it, I started crying and have been sobbing ever since. When I was sitting in the waiting room, waiting on the doctor to come out and talk to me, I could only imagine the worse. I can’t lose him. I can’t. Not because he is my dad’s best friend. Not because he is holding my inheritance. No, it’s because he’s Brian. The man I’ve been in love with for years. I don’t know what I would do without him.
When my dad passed away two years ago, I was eighteen. An adult. But hell, I didn’t feel like it. My mom left us right after I was born and my dad was everything to me. He would have been the first to tell you that he didn’t know what the hell he was doing. But he took to raising a girl like he did everything else. Full speed and with complete devotion. I was his little girl and completely had him wrapped around my finger. But he also raised me to be independent, responsible and to go after what I want. Looking over at Brian, I can’t help but think that he’s the one thing I’ve wanted that I haven’t been brave enough to go after.
Dad started med school a little later in life and he may have been ten years older than Brian, but they were still the best of friends. So much so that when he passed, he put Brian in complete control of my inheritance until I turn twenty-one. I have one more year and then I’m free. Free from having to check in with Brian on everything I do. Not that I care, because I don’t. But all it’s done is put me face to face with the one thing I want more than anything and the one thing I know I’ll never have. It’s a little disheartening to have to face that every day.
I pull the envelope out of my pocket and slowly rip open the seal. Pulling out the documents, I unfold them, holding my breath the whole time. Obviously these forms are important. Brian was in an accident and his car caught fire. The firemen worked hard to keep them safe and one paramedic worked on him until they could get him out. In all that, Shannon, the paramedic, said he repeated my name over and over. He made her promise to give me the envelope with my name on it. The fact that he was so worried about me getting this letter that he gave it to the paramedic tells me how important it is.
I start reading the letter and I gasp when I realize what it is. He’s signed over my inheritance to me early. He’s done what I’ve been begging him to do for the past two years. He’s finally done it. The elation that I thought I would feel is not there. No. In its place is a burning feeling deep in my heart. I rub my hand over my chest, almost like I’m trying to self-soothe. I wanted this. I asked for this. But I can’t help but question why, after two years of begging, did he finally give in?
I look at his bruised face and the cut over his eye. He’s so white, his face almost blends into the stark whiteness of the sheet on the bed. I get up from my seat across the room and walk over to him. I swear he’s almost too big for the bed. His brown hair is short and when I take a closer look, I can see the dried blood in it. My fists clench at my sides because I’m fighting myself from reaching out to him. Without even lifting the sheet, I c
an picture perfectly in my mind what he looks like under it. He’s built, spending his rare free time running hills and lifting weights. He’s always taken care of himself. I take a deep breath and think about how he’s taken care of me these past two years. He’s done everything for me. It was because of him that I made it through my dad’s death and funeral, and he even helped me pick up the pieces afterwards. And this is how I repay him. That thought has lingered in the back of my mind since I got the call about his wreck. He has done so much for me and this is how I repay him. I can’t help but wonder if our argument from earlier had him preoccupied and if that’s not the reason he wasn’t able to avoid the accident. Remembering the hurt on his face has my legs about to buckle now. I stroke my finger lightly down his cheek. He moans softly and I still. He doesn’t open his eyes and I pull my hand away quickly. He wouldn’t want me to touch him. He actually wouldn’t want me to see him like this.
I clench my eyes shut, thinking of the horrible things I said to him that I didn’t mean. He has complete control of my inheritance. He was supposed to be using that money to help me live on, but he doesn’t. He spends all of his own money. I’ve talked to him about it over and over, but he never listens to reason. Today was the first time that I point-blank told him I wanted my money. I cringe as everything I said plays back in my head.
2
Kendall
Two hours before the wreck
I went to the hospital this morning to meet him in his office. I had scheduled an appointment with his nurse because I wanted it to be an official meeting. I didn’t want to do it over our weekly dinners together. I was sitting there waiting for him, trying my best to get myself under control and prepared for when he would walk in. He takes my breath away every time I see him. He does that with one glance, one innocent touch, or even a tilt of his head.
