“I had Elba drop me off,” she smirked.
I wanted to smack her.
“Didn’t Elba have to work tonight?” I asked as I walked to my car.
“Yes,” Hadley said as she walked around to the passenger side of my car.
Why she thought I’d automatically give her a ride after the shitty friend impersonation was infuriating, but I’d never leave her here by herself.
“So how was she able to drop you off here?” I wondered as I got into the SUV, and immediately started it up.
My eyes stayed on the window, and my heart leapt when I saw it open.
But it was only to see Sean come out with a very irritated Ellen at his heels.
“Uh-oh,” Hadley started to giggle. “They look like they’re about to fuck.”
I shot Hadley a look.
“Language,” I murmured.
I hated when she cursed around Tallulah, who might I add was at a very impressionable age and would soon start parroting whatever we said.
So even when Tallulah wasn’t around, I tried to keep it consistent with Hadley. The more I told her, the more she realized how annoying it truly was.
Or at least that was my hope.
Likely, she only did it because it annoyed me.
What she didn’t know, though, was that I was beyond the mood where I could deal with her shit.
I was at the point now that I was about to kick her out of the car and make her walk her ass home.
Lucky for her that she stayed quiet.
I could see the wheels turning in her head, and I knew that whatever came out of her knowing this little tidbit about Tommy and me wouldn’t be a good thing.
In fact, it was going to be damn bad.
The worst part was that I had no clue just how bad it would get. Nor how badly it would hurt when Tommy refused to talk to me.
Chapter 18
When someone asks you what you like most about your job, answering with ‘Sometimes people bring birthday cake for employees on their birthdays’ is not a good answer.
-Words of Wisdom
Tommy
I was able to stay mad at her for all of two days.
And really, I couldn’t count the first day as being able to stay mad at her, because I’d spent the first three quarters of it hungover as hell and trying not to move or think.
Apparently, at thirty-three, getting drunk off your ass wasn’t the best way to get over a bad day.
I’d proven that fact over the last two days, and even now, two days later, I was still just as ragged and worn down as I’d been before this episode started.
Note to self: Spending all day in bed trying not to throw up after binge-drinking the night before is not nearly as restful as it sounds.
The first hour that I worked with her, we circled each other like opponents about to start fighting.
The second hour, she tried to get me to start an IV for her on a child, and I gave her a look that would wither a lesser man’s heart.
She just took my glare and continued to stare at me until I got up and did it.
Why I did it, I didn’t know. It might’ve been the pout that she gave me right before I accepted, though.
However, I would neither confirm nor deny that the pout was effective.
I couldn’t very well give her the ammunition that would work on me…every single time.
“What’s that look for?”
It was now hour three, and I was sitting at the table in the break room, contemplating ordering a pizza.
“I’m hungry,” I replied tiredly. “I’m trying to decide if expending the energy to order a pizza, something I’d need to move in order to do, is actually worth the effort to not be hungry any more …and I’m not sure which one is better at this point.”
“Don’t you have another nine more hours?” Tally asked as she went to the fridge in the small break room and pulled out a brown paper bag that looked like it came from the local barbeque joint, Piggies.
My belly growled loudly as she popped the lid off of what I assumed was their famous sloppy joes, and she looked at me over her shoulder.
“Want some?” she asked. “I’m willing to share.”
I swallowed, and then shook my head.
No, I was still mad at her.
“No,” I grunted, then completely ruined any and all credibility when my stomach growled so loudly that there was no way she could miss it.
She sighed and turned to stare at me.
“Are you going to stay mad at me forever?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest once she put her food in the microwave.
And I was right. It was Piggies, and it was also their world-famous sloppy joes.
I wanted them badly…but I was a proud man. I wasn’t giving in to her on this one.
No, she’d have to crawl back to me and grovel to convince me that she was truly sorry for what she did, making me feel like I was nothing at all to her.
In answer to her question, I got up and walked out the door.
I was sitting in my normal seat at the nurses’ station when she walked out of the breakroom, stopping behind me just long enough to place three sloppy joes down in front of me before heading back to her own seat, two down from mine.
I would like to say at this juncture in time that I had enough willpower to throw the damn sandwiches in the trash…but I didn’t like to lie.
I ate those bitches.
Every last one of them.
But I didn’t say thank you.
That was how I convinced myself that I wasn’t a complete sellout.
Hour five I found myself with nothing to do but twiddle my thumbs.
I’d seen Tally make her way around the corner towards the bathroom.
However, I realized at the first hint of raised voices that something was wrong. Tally.
“What?!”
I turned at the shriek I heard in a voice that I would know anywhere, and watched as some woman I’d never seen before tried to calm her down.
The man at the woman’s side, however, I knew.
Russell, her ex-boyfriend, and baby daddy.
My feet started moving me in their direction before I was even conscious that I’d made the decision.
“This is not happening,” Tally seethed. “You’re not going to do this. And no, I do not care that you went to all this trouble to do this.”
“It’s a normal thing,” the woman insisted. “This used to be done all the time back in the medieval…”
“Don’t,” Tally hissed, taking a threatening step in the brown-haired woman’s direction. “I don’t care what you think, or why you think it. I don’t care whether you want to see her. I know that he,” she pointed at Russell, who’d hooked an arm around the woman and started to pull her back. “Doesn’t want her. The only reason he’s pursuing this is because you have created in your mind some fucked up reason for suddenly wanting to play a role in my daughter’s life. You, not him. You are behind all of this.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “So let me tell you something,” she growled. “I don’t need your help. I don’t need his help. I don’t need anybody’s help.”
I got there just in time to hear the woman’s whispered reply.
“We’ll fuckin’ move and file this in a different court so that your daddy and his cronies won’t screw us over like they did last time.” She poked Tally in the chest with one long, manicured finger. “What do you think about that?”
“I think that you can go fuck yourself,” Tally replied smoothly. “Now please leave. I’m at work, and this wasn’t the place to have this discussion.”
“I tried to do it at your parents’ house, but they said that you were at work,” she sneered. “Why, if you’re at work, can’t we have Lula…”
“Don’t call her that God-awful name!”
The woman huffed and Russell showed that he actually had some brains behind that pretty package.
The woman harrumphed.
“Fine,” the woman sniffed. “But this isn’t over, bitch.”
Tally moved forward to reach for the woman’s hair, but I caught her before she could get even a footstep into her advance.
“Tally,” I murmured quietly so the oglers couldn’t overhear what I was saying. “There’s a time and place, and this isn’t it.”
She huffed.
“You were doing really well until she called her Lula,” I murmured. “Wow, you really don’t like it. What is it about that name? Is it synonymous for anti-Christ or something?”
Tally’s lip curled in distaste, then she practically wilted in my arms.
“It’s not really that bad of a name,” Tally admitted softly. “The only reason I hate it is because that woman uses it.”
“And who exactly is that woman?”
“Sheena Morton.”
I blinked. “I can’t tell if you’re joking or not.”
Tally’s mouth kicked up into a grin. “I am most certainly not. That woman may be a joke, but her name’s not.”
I let go of her once I realized that she was calm enough to answer coherently.
“What did she want?” I asked, glaring at a boy who came up, offering Tally a pen.
She took the pen and nodded at the boy—who was more like nineteen so not really a boy—and shoved the pen in her pocket before answering.
“She wanted to breastfeed my child.”
I blinked, then blinked some more, until a furrow appeared on my brow.
“What?” I grunted, completely stunned that someone would offer that for another woman’s child. “You’re kidding me, right?”
“No,” she growled in frustration. “I’m not.”
I didn’t even know what to say to her. There was nothing I even could say that would make this situation better.
“She can’t feed your kid without your consent while she has her,” I finally decided on. “That’s just… I can’t even believe they would suggest something so outrageous.”
“Then he says, ‘they used to have wet nurses in the old days. What’s so different about this?’ I’m pretty sure he’s contacting his attorney tomorrow.”
“He can try to bring this to court,” I said. “But he’ll be laughed right out of it. No judge is going to tell a father that it’s okay for his new wife to breastfeed his kid against the mother’s wishes, especially if she is not having milk production or delivery issues,” I told her. “It’s nice that he’s trying to think of ways to be more involved in the life of his kid, and let me assure you, it could be worse. But this is completely ridiculous. I mean, offering your new wife’s tits up to breastfeed so your kid can stay overnight with you? That’s just weird.”
“That’s what I started telling her the moment she brought up the asinine idea,” she snapped her fingers together. “What’s with that look on your face.”
I froze, trying to figure out what was on my face for her to demand an explanation.
“What look?” I raised a brow.
She sighed and started walking away from me, and I had a decision.
Either I stayed mad at her and continued on with my miserable day, or I talk to her and tell her that her words sucked ass and hurt.
“Stop,” I ordered, calling out to her.
She stopped and looked at me over her shoulder. “What?”
I walked over to the down room and unlocked it, urging her in with a sweep of my hand.
She looked at me skeptically, but nonetheless followed me into the room and turned once she was all the way inside.
“Yes?”
I locked the door securely behind me, and then turned so I could see all of her before starting.
“I don’t care if you want to keep this a secret,” I told her honestly. “You have a couple weeks left, and I completely understand that you would want to keep something like this a secret until you’ve graduated.”
“But…”
“But, the guys in my club, they’re trustworthy,” I promised her. “They’re all overprotective big brothers who would have my back no matter what I did, murder included.”
Her eyes sharpened. “Murder isn’t a good thing to have your back on,” she informed me, a lazy smile taking over her face.
“Murder is sometimes necessary…under special circumstances,” I teased her, my heart feeling light for the first time in a couple of days. “Although it can be messy and gross, it isn’t quite as gross as your ex’s woman offering to breastfeed your child.”
She locked her lips.
“I’m fucking over them.”
I could believe it.
They’d done enough to her to make her wary of talking to them. All of which I wasn’t even privy to completely yet, but I would be…someday.
Someday soon, maybe when I stopped acting like an ass and started appreciating Tally.
Though, it should be noted that I did appreciate her ass.
“You still mad at me?” she asked softly.
I shook my head.
No, I wasn’t. I understood, even though I didn’t like it.
“I want you to promise me that when we’re at my club or out of town with some of my fellow members, you won’t freak out and push me away.”
She nodded her head in promise.
“I was sorry I said it almost as fast as it came out of my mouth,” she admitted. “The only reason I left was because Hadley was there, and you definitely don’t want her there. She’s nosy, and she doesn’t care who she offends in the process of finding out whatever information it is that she wants.”
I hesitated to say what I had to say next.
“I don’t think she’s all that great of a friend,” I admitted. “The way she watches you sometimes is enough to make my hackles rise.”
Her mouth twitched.
“Your hackles are always raised,” she countered. “You’re just better at keeping it secret.”
Before I could refute her words, there was a sharp knock at the door.
“Ms. Slater, a word?”
Tally stiffened, and I wanted to groan.
Jesus Christ.
What was Lucia doing here?
Lucia, better known as Nurse Crotchet, who was one of Tally’s teachers as well as the head of the nursing department, wasn’t the nicest of people.
And I could see a million ways she could turn this around on Tally, even though nothing had gotten out of hand as of yet.
Knowing she had nothing to worry about, I opened the door and found myself face to face with the old bat.
“Yes?” I asked.
“I hear that Tally’s in here.” Nurse Crotchet accused, face pinched.
“She is,” I confirmed. “But she’s currently in a very bad state.”
Lucia’s face turned stony.
“Well let me see her.”
That was about the time my little actress turned on the waterworks, letting tears stream down her face in unending torrents.
The moment Lucia saw her, the old bat softened.
“What’s wrong?” she asked in concern, looking over at me accusingly.
“My ex-boyfriend, and father of my child, is harassing me,” Tally wailed.
I rolled my eyes and left the room, unable to deal with the fake show.
I knew that it wasn’t all a complete lie. Though the majority of the tears were likely only being produced to get her teacher on her side.
Something I had a feeling she accomplished as I made my way back into the nurses’ station to busy myself with signing discharge papers and writing out a few prescriptions.
“Can I speak with you?” Lucia asked a few minutes into my work.
I barely contained the urge to sigh.
“Yeah,” I grunted, turning to face her.
Lucia was a pretty woman once, I was sure. Now she just looked rundown and tired, and she could really use a makeover. Though, it was hard to look good when you worked seventy hours a week.
“You being in the same closed room as a student…that’s not a good idea.”
I knew that.
“Yes, I know. She was very worked up, though, and I wasn’t sure what to do.”
Not a total lie, I knew, but a partial one that would satisfy her.
“I had an anonymous tip today that you were being inappropriate with another student.” She finally got around to saying. “That’s why I was here…to investigate.”
My back stiffened, and I stared at her, making her take a step away.
“I would never cross that moral line,” I told her bluntly.
Lies! I was totally lying my ass off!
“I know, Thomas.” She patted my hand, making me feel like complete shit for lying to her instead of telling her the truth.
But I would never be admitting the truth about this, especially with Tally’s career on the line.
Even if this were to end completely between us, I would never wish her ill. Nor would I ever jeopardize her means of putting food in her little girl’s mouth.
“Do you have any leads on who this student was?”
Because I knew it was a fucking student, and I suspected I knew exactly which student.
Even if I didn’t want it to be true.
Because the truth would likely break Tally’s heart.
“No,” she shook her head. “But I have the security guard going through the camera feed that filtered around that time.”
My heart stuttered in my chest.
“Cameras?” I asked causally.
She nodded.
“Got them last month on a trial basis due to a few things missing from the simulation lab,” she nodded her head, leaning against the counter of the nurses’ station. “They’re in the main hall, right at the entrance into the college. In the teachers’ offices, two of the classrooms, and inside and outside the simulation lab.”
Thank God!
Nowhere near where I’d fucked my student.
Son-of-a-bitch, this wasn’t a good thing.
How had I not known about the fucking cameras?
“Why wasn’t the staff informed of these cameras?”
Fear the Beard (The Dixie Warden Rejects MC Book 2) Page 16
