To Love Again

by Andria Large

  Table of Contents

  Blurb

  Chapter ONE

  Chapter TWO

  Chapter THREE

  Chapter FOUR

  Chapter FIVE

  Chapter SIX

  Chapter SEVEN

  Chapter EIGHT

  Chapter NINE

  Chapter TEN

  Chapter ELEVEN

  Chapter TWELVE

  Chapter THIRTEEN

  Chapter FOURTEEN

  Chapter FIFTEEN

  Chapter SIXTEEN

  Chapter SEVENTEEN

  Chapter EIGHTEEN

  More from Andria Large

  About the Author

  By Andria Large

  Visit Dreamspinner Press

  Copyright

  To Love Again

  By Andria Large

  Jack

  Leaving was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. He would have killed me if I stayed, though. I couldn’t have done it without Warwick’s help. Not only did he give me the out I needed, but also a safe place to live. With my ex looming around every corner, looking for the chance to get his hands on me, I received the best gift ever—a month in England—and I took it!

  Warwick

  England was supposed to help Jack get away from his ex and find himself again. I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with him there. Especially when I knew he might stay… indefinitely. With my busy schedule as an ER doctor, an ocean between us, and the trust issues his abusive ex inflicted, the chance of a successful long-distance relationship is close to zero. Loving Jack may be the one thing I can’t fix.

  Chapter ONE

  WARWICK

  “DR. ALDRIDGE?”

  I turn from where I’m standing at the nurses’ station to face one of the ER nurses, Cheryl. I give her a smile. “Hallo, love, what can I do for you?”

  I just started my shift and haven’t had a chance to greet anyone yet. And yes, you heard my accent right. I’m British—from Birmingham, England to be exact. I came over to the US seven years ago for an internship at one of the best hospitals in the country, Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, Maryland. After a year of making a life here in Baltimore, I didn’t want to go back. Even though my accent has lessened and I’ve picked up a lot of American terminology, I’ve still retained enough of it that people always ask me about it.

  I notice then that Cheryl has a concerned look on her pretty face.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “There is a patient in room seven; he has a multitude of injuries. His boyfriend brought him in and is doing all the talking. I’m getting a weird vibe off him, and something about the story doesn’t add up. They say he fell down a flight of steps.” She frowns.

  I nod in understanding and give her shoulder a squeeze. “I’ll go have a chat with them.”

  She gives me a relieved smile. “Great, thank you.”

  I may be easy on the eyes and friendly, with a good bedside manner, but I can also be intimidating as hell when I need to be. Domestic violence doesn’t sit well with me, and if I can help someone get out of a tight situation, then I will do whatever I can.

  I visit a few other patients with lesser injuries or illnesses first. If this is a case of domestic violence, I don’t want the abuser to be suspicious. Nothing is more suspicious than a doctor walking into a room right after the nurse leaves.

  When I stop outside room number seven, I make a quick assessment of the two men inside. The one standing next to the bed looks like a body builder—the guy is huge. Not only is he tall, but he’s stacked like a brick shithouse. He just looks aggressive. I’m no shrimp at six four, two hundred and twenty pounds of lean muscle, and this guy is about my height but a hell of a lot bigger in the muscle department. No doubt he’s on steroids.

  The other man is much thinner and nowhere near as muscular as his boyfriend. The guy looks like he could be cut, going off the definition in his arms, but he doesn’t have the bulk of his counterpart.

  The patient has a swollen-shut left eye and a cut on the left side of his bottom lip, and he’s cradling his left arm to his chest. I can tell even with the busted-up face he’s a gorgeous guy. The nurse already put an IV in his right arm, so that’s good. As soon as I get him checked out, I’ll order him some pain meds.

  Walking into the room, I put on my comforting doctor smile. “Good afternoon, gentlemen. I’m Dr. Warwick Aldridge, the attending ER doctor.”

  The Hulk narrows his eyes at me. “What’s with the accent?”

  “I’m British,” I reply, cocking an eyebrow.

  “No shit. What is a British doctor doing here?” he snaps.

  “I live here in Baltimore, been here for about seven years, not that it’s any of your business. Is there a problem with me caring for your friend because I’m British?”

  “Boyfriend,” he growls.

  “Greg, please,” the patient pleads, looking over at the wanker by his side, his voice laced with pain.

  “And what’s your name, mate?” I ask the patient, with a soft smile.

  “His name is Jack McClellan,” Greg answers.

  I slowly turn to look at the dickbag who’s flexing his chest muscles at me. “I do believe the patient can speak for himself if you’d kindly keep quiet.” I make sure my tone is firm and unyielding. I will not have this man bullying me and getting in the way of my work.

  Greg bristles and opens his mouth to say something else, but I cut him off.

  “I can have you removed from the hospital if you want to keep running your mouth,” I threaten.

  His mouth snaps shut, but he continues to glare at me. I turn back to my patient.

  “So, Jack, want to tell me what happened?”

  Jack sends a quick nervous glance at Greg, confirming right then and there he’s going to lie to me. “I… uh… I tripped and fell down the steps in my house,” he answers, a slight tremor to his voice.

  “Okay,” I reply neutrally and move in to do some tests on him.

  I test him for a concussion, which he doesn’t seem to have. I also ask him what hurts and what his pain level is.

  “So you think your shoulder is dislocated?”

  “And my forearm is broken. I felt it break,” he croaks, closing his eyes.

  “Okay, well, I definitely need to send you for X-rays. We need to see what and how bad it’s broken. I’m going to order you some pain meds, and we’re going to have to pop that shoulder back into place. Your eye will go down on its own, and your lip doesn’t look like it needs stitches. I’ll get one of the nurses to give you the meds, and then we’ll bring you down for X-rays.”

  Jack nods. “Okay, thank you, Dr. Aldridge.”

  I leave the room and go to the nurses’ station, where Cheryl is waiting anxiously. I sigh and shake my head dejectedly. “I think you’re right. I think his boyfriend kicked the shit out of him.”

  “Should I get the report started?” Cheryl asks.

  “Yes. He’s not going to like it, but it has to be done.” I grunt and rake a hand through my hair. I tell Cheryl what pain medication to give him and to call radiology and get him down there for X-rays.

  JACK

  I’M FLYING high after the lovely nurse, Cheryl, pushed Dilaudid into my IV line. The pain is gone, and I feel completely relaxed. I sigh heavily and close my good eye.

  “I don’t like that doctor,” Greg snarls.

  Mmm. Dr. McDreamy. I can’t remember the last time I saw a doctor as hot as Dr. Aldridge. Just gorgeous. He has bright blue eyes, a square jaw, deliciously plump bow-shaped lips, and military-cut brown hair. Plus the accent! Damn, I’m going to have some fantasies about him!

  “Why?” I ask Greg, my boyfriend of two years.

  “He’s a dick, and I didn’t like the way he was looking at you a
nd touching you.”

  I crack open my good eye and try to give Greg a bland look, but I have no idea if it’s coming off how I want it to. “Really, Greg? He’s a doctor. He’s supposed to look at me and touch me. That’s what doctors do.”

  Greg is in my face in a flash, making me gasp in surprise. His angry black eyes bore into my one open eye. “That’s the attitude that got you here, Jack. You know how I feel about that snarky shit,” he growls.

  “I… I’m sorry, Greg. I didn’t mean for it to come out like that,” I say quickly, digging my head back into the pillow to try and put some distance between us.

  “You need to watch your mouth a little better, baby. I hate having to keep you in line,” he soothes, smoothing his hand over my hair. I do my best not to flinch away from his touch, but it’s extremely hard when most of the time he touches me it’s painful in some way.

  He smashes his mouth hard against mine, not caring about my bruised and battered lip. I let out a whimper of pain after he finally moves away.

  “Stop being such a baby, Jack. It’s not that bad.” Greg huffs, straightening up and crossing his bulging arms over his equally bulging chest.

  Greg does steroids, and he’s fucking huge. He wasn’t this big when I met him. He wasn’t abusive when I met him either. He was funny, loving, and a great boyfriend, and I fell head over heels in love with him. Then slowly, during the course of the past year, he started to change. It started with just some arguments, a few where he got particularly vicious and said some horrible things to me. I even broke up with him at one point when it got really bad.

  He got me to come back with promises of change, and I loved him, so I believed him. He had been juicing for about three months prior to me leaving, and he blamed his outbursts on the ’roid rage. He said he would stop taking the steroids. He lied. He continued to take them, and he started shoving me around, no full-out punching yet, but he’d toss me into a wall or over furniture. With his increased size, I’m no match for him. He can lift double, if not triple, my weight, so picking me up to toss me is like throwing a rag doll across the room. He’d be apologetic and sometimes even shed a couple of tears, and he’d beg me not to leave.

  The biggest change came about six months ago when he raped me. I was sleeping and was woken up by him ripping my underwear off. When I tried to fight, he held my hands behind my back with one hand, held my head down with the other, and forced my legs apart with his much stronger thighs. No lube, no prep. It’s been downhill ever since. He now verbally and physically abuses me, and to him, it’s sex. To me, it’s rape. I don’t want it or enjoy it, so I consider it rape.

  Do I deserve what he does to me? Maybe. If I could just keep my mouth shut sometimes, I wouldn’t piss him off, and then he wouldn’t have a reason to hit me. The reason I’m in the hospital is because I made a comment about not liking the color of his new shirt. I should have fucking kept my damn mouth shut.

  “All right, Jack, time for your X-ray,” Cheryl, the nurse, says cheerfully, pulling me out of my downward spiral of thoughts.

  An orderly is with her and goes about getting my bed ready to move. Greg acts as though he’s going to come with me, and Cheryl takes notice.

  “Sir, only the patient is allowed down in radiology. He’ll return soon,” she says.

  Greg’s lip curls into a sneer. He doesn’t like that at all, but he doesn’t argue. Greg isn’t a fan of letting me go anywhere by myself, except for work; he doesn’t really have a choice with that, since he’s been banned from my office building.

  He gives me a look before I get wheeled away. I know the look well. It’s the “If you tell anyone how you really got hurt, I’ll fucking kill you” look. And he’s not kidding either. He will fucking kill me if I tell anyone about him abusing me. Of course people are suspicious. He makes it so fucking obvious, but I do my best to make excuses for my continuous injuries. Once we’re out of the room, I let myself relax a bit. It’s nice to have a reprieve from Greg. I never get to be alone anymore, and I miss it.

  WARWICK

  I GET the page from Cheryl letting me know Jack McClellan is down in radiology. This will be my only chance to see if I can get him to talk. I finish up with the patient I’m with and head down. I find him in his bed, waiting in the hallway of the radiology department. His not-swollen eye is closed, and his lips are parted slightly. Shit, he’s probably sleeping. I stop next to him and place my hand on his knee. He jerks, his eye flying open as he lets out a yelp.

  “Jack, it’s just me, Dr. Aldridge,” I say in a calming voice.

  He blinks a few times as he tries to focus on me. He licks his dry lips and swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing a couple of times. “Oh, hey, Doc, you startled me.” His voice is raspy from sleep.

  “I’m sorry, mate. I didn’t mean to scare you. How are you feeling?”

  “I… um… I feel okay now that I have the pain meds,” he says quietly, closing his eye again.

  I stay silent for a minute, then ask, “Do you want to tell me what really happened?”

  A sad smile pulls at Jack’s mouth. “I fell down the steps.”

  “Jack, I’m gonna be straight with you here. Your injuries aren’t exactly congruent with a fall down the steps.”

  Jack drags his eye open and stares at me, studying my face. “I appreciate your concern, Doctor, but I’m a clumsy kinda guy and shit like this happens to me all the time. I tripped and fell down the steps.”

  “It’s just me and you here, Jack. Whatever you say to me is confidential.”

  His lips form a thin angry line, and his eyebrows crank down. “I. Fell. Down. The. Stairs.” He bites out each word through clenched teeth.

  I roll my lips in and nod. “Okay, fine. You stick to your story, but I’m going to tell you something; I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I know abuse when I see it.”

  Fear flashes in Jack’s eye before he can cover it up. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he whispers.

  Bloody hell, this guy is in deep. I reach into my lab coat pocket and pull out two cards. I hold them out to him. “Put this wherever you need to put it so he won’t find it. If you want help, one card is for the team we have here that will help you in these kinds of situations; the other is my card. Call them or me. Either way, I will do everything I can to make sure you get out safe. Legally, I have to report this to the proper authorities.”

  Jack’s eyes widen. “What? No, you can’t—”

  “I have to.”

  Jack snaps his mouth shut and nods. I wave the cards at him. I almost think he’s not going to take them, but then he reaches out a shaky hand and plucks the cards from my fingers. I give his knee a squeeze, then leave him be. I’m sure his mind is spinning right now.

  I take care of my other patients for the next hour while I wait for the X-ray report to come in. In the meantime, I have one of the resident doctors go pop his shoulder back in. When I get the X-ray, I bring it to his room to tell him what’s going on.

  “Well, Jack, it looks like it was a clean break,” I say as I walk into the room.

  I go over to the bed and hold the X-ray up to the light in front of him so he can see it. “Both the radius and ulna are broken. You’ll need to see an orthopedic doctor as soon as you can to get it casted. We’ll soft cast it for now.”

  “Okay,” Jack says wearily.

  “Once we get the soft cast on, you’ll be able to go home,” I tell him.

  “Good, I’m fucking starving,” Greg barks from where he’s seated against the wall. “You people take forever to fucking do shit around here.”

  I ignore him and keep my eyes on Jack. “I’ll prescribe you something for the pain to take home.”

  “Anything but Percocet. They make me throw up,” Jack replies.

  “You got it, mate.”

  “You better quit calling my boyfriend ‘mate.’ He’s not your fucking mate,” Greg grits out.

  Now that, I can’t ignore. I turn toward Greg. “A
re you threatening me, mate?”

  “Greg, stop,” Jack hisses.

  Greg stands, puffing out his chest as he steps up to me. I cock an eyebrow at him and wait for him to say or do something. If he thinks I’m going to back down, he’s got another thing coming. I’ve been in my share of fights, and I know I can handle myself. What makes me hesitate is Jack, who is pleading with Greg to stop, to leave me alone.

  “I don’t threaten, I promise, and if you call my boyfriend ‘mate’ again, I’ll make sure you end up a patient here.”

  “Greg!” Jack screams, finally grabbing his boyfriend’s attention.

  Greg turns his head to look at Jack. “Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?”

  I’ve had about enough of this guy. I walk over to the phone on the wall and page security. When Greg realizes what I’ve done, he sends me a death glare.

  “I’m not very tolerant of arseholes like you. You can wait outside while Jack is discharged.”

  Two security officers show up at the door a moment later and escort Greg out of the hospital. Once he’s gone, I turn to look at Jack, who is shaking his head, tears welling up in his eye.

  “I’m so sorry about that, Dr. Aldridge. He’s a bit of a hothead sometimes,” he says quietly.

  I scoff at the understatement of the year. “I really hope to hear from you, Jack,” I tell him softly, then start for the door. “Cheryl will be in with your discharge papers in a few minutes. Take care, mate.”

  Chapter TWO

  WARWICK

  I FLOP down on my couch after an exhausting day at work. A bottle of beer appears in front of my face from over my shoulder. I let out a small chuckle as I take the offered bottle. I glance up to see my roommate and best friend, Diandra Johnson, smiling down at me.

  “Thanks, love,” I murmur.

  Diandra and I met on my first day at Johns Hopkins. She was also starting her internship to become a cardiothoracic surgeon. She had moved to Baltimore from Philadelphia. We became fast friends and stuck together throughout our internships. When I decided to stay, we got an apartment together since we were always together anyway.