Time drags between visits from Ashley and Finn now. Daytime television hasn’t changed since I was little and my mother would watch it while chain-smoking. The shows are still too dramatic and poorly acted. I try to sleep to fill the time, but there is only so much of that you can do. Ashley has brought a few books, but they are what she likes to read, not what I enjoy which are memoirs and historic novels. I’m sure that Finn would bring me any title I requested, but I don’t dare bring it up. He’s already doing so much for me.
Too much maybe.
I’m not used to Finn’s level of attention. Nobody has ever shown it to me, not without expecting something in return. But Finn doesn’t seem to want anything, outside of hanging out with me that is. Which is odd because he was so rarely around back when I was practically living with his family. Back then I was just his sister’s friend. A girl he might greet now and then with a gruff ‘hi’ between him running out of the house on the way to whatever teenage boys do. Now I’m spending more time with him than I am with Ashley. Which, to be honest, I’m perfectly happy with. Not that I have anything against Ashley; she’s a friend as close as a sister. Finn is, well…he’s something else.
When he drops by my room after lunch, my heart flutters about in my chest for a moment, like a butterfly testing the limits of its cage. It’s only been a couple of hours without his comforting presence at the side of my bed. Years ago we would go months between awkward and short conversations. Now, I can’t imagine returning to that routine.
“The nurses wouldn’t approve,” he says as he slides the door closed behind him, “but I got you a giant chocolate chip cookie from that shop you and Ashley used to go to all the time.”
“You didn’t have to do that,” I say even as I pull off a piece of the cookie he’s placed on my lap.
“It’s just a short walk across the street from the hospital. Trust me, I needed some fresh air.”
“Why’s that?”
Finn tenses up a bit. Something’s wrong, but it passes like a chill wind on an otherwise pleasant spring day. “I just realized that it’s been days since I’ve seen the sun. It was a good walk.” Before I can object and suggest that I’m the reason he’s been trapped inside the hospital, Finn claps his hands together. “Is it that time already? Gotta get you to your physical therapy. Maybe put that in your drawer, so you can finish it later.” He pulls the cookie away from me, smiling as I fight to keep the plate close. When it’s safely stowed away from the prying eyes of stringent nurses, he wipes his thumb across the corner of my lips. “Sorry, you had a bit of chocolate there.”
“Thanks,” I say, frozen with our faces closer than I can ever remember them being. He’s leaning over me, one hand on my bed, the other hovering just over my cheek. I’ve always heard about electricity between couples. That fierce emotional chemistry that manifests in actual physical stimulation, but this is the first time I’ve ever experienced it. Without thinking, I lean forward to kiss him, meeting him halfway because he’s had the same idea.
A moment of hesitation between both of us. A half second of stillness. Our lips touching, but not moving against each other. One of us could pull back now, give a shy smile, and act like it was friendly. Nothing but a sign of familial affection.
The moment passes as he leans into the kiss more, both his hands on the bed, his chest pressing forward so that I have nowhere to go but back against the inclined bed. His arms are magnets, pulling my hands onto them, fingers rubbing against the slight bulges under his doctor’s scrubs.
Speaking of bulges, his dick is a thick band of flesh against my thigh. Just picturing it, pressing against me, separated only by the merest layers of clothing, is enough for me to test out his lips with my tongue, darting—at first tentatively and then with bold motions—between our mouths. I can’t help but pull him the rest of the way on top of me. First I feel his chest press against mine, remembering that I wear no bra that might hinder our progress. But then a bolt of electricity runs of my leg where he’s rested his hand. This shock isn’t so pleasant.
My scream has him leaping away as though I’ve just prodded him with a knife.
“I’m sorry. So, so sorry,” he’s saying, waving his hands out in front of him. “Of all people, your doctor should remember your broken leg.”
I’m still squinting away the pain, a fresh reminder that I am far from getting out of this place. “It’s fine,” I lie, rubbing my hand around the edge of the cast. “Honest mistake.”
He bites his lips, and looks straight at me. Says nothing. Nothing that would signal this was more than just a freak incident. Nothing that shows he regretted it either. “I’ll get a wheelchair so you can head to your physical therapy session,” he says, backing towards the door.
“Okay.”
When the door closes behind him, I hate that all I could get out was a measly ‘Okay’. I’m shaking my head, eyes closed, muttering about how stupid I am under my breath when the door slides open again. Thinking it must be a nurse, I spring to attention, wiping my face as if there are any signs of what Finn and I were just doing.
It’s not a nurse; it’s Finn.
“I’ll sneak you dinner tonight,” he says. “Do you like barbecue?”
“Barbecue’s perfect,” I say, feeling a smile stretching my face.
Chapter 8
Finn
Twice I have to go right back into one of my patient’s rooms to check their chart after seeing nothing but April’s face the first time I pretended to read it. My conversations are ethereal, words automatic and instantly forgotten. After I finish, I check in with the nurses. No emergencies that need to be dealt with, which means I have a couple of hours during which I hope to grab a few hours of sleep so I can be fresh for my date tonight.
My date. This is wild. I have to slap cold water on my face in the bathroom, staring myself down, to convince myself that this is really happening. That April and I just made out. That my sister’s best friend and I might be an item.
That’s when it finally hits me. Like the pavement meeting me after a ten-story fall. I just crossed multiple lines. Ashley is either going to love this or hate it, and it’s easy to imagine which side she’ll fall on. She knows my history with girls, which is scattered, short, and littered with broken hearts. I won’t stay in any relationship if I am not sure that she could be the one, so I’ve never dated a girl for more than two weeks. Ashley will no doubt be concerned that April will end up just another one of my statistics. Ashley wouldn’t be my sister if she weren’t worrying about something. Besides, April’s heart is about the only unbroken part of her body, so I can’t be the one responsible for cracking that.
But April’s different. Not just a random girl I met at the library or through a friend of a friend. She’s been a part of my life for most of my life. Lounging on the sofa when I would get home from late night study sessions, watching girly movies with Ashley. For god’s sake, I’ve seen her naked. I’d forgotten all about it until now, but there was one time that she and Ashley decided to skinny dip in our parents’ pool in the backyard, and I happened to see them out my window on the second floor.
After all these years since my first day in pre-med, I would hate to mess everything up over some girl, but April isn’t just some girl. Though she is a patient, which is the other line I’ve crossed. It doesn’t matter if I could scientifically prove she was my soul mate; if anyone finds out about this, I’ll be in for a world of hurt from the board of directors. I won’t lose my chance of being a certified physician—it’s not that huge of an infringement, though it is beyond just sort of bad—but I will be reprimanded. It will definitely go on a record somewhere and end up biting my ass in the long run.
The break room is empty, thankfully. I clamber onto the top bunk and close my eyes, visions of tonight’s date transitioning into dreams of what life will be like when she gets out of the hospital. I’m just getting to a scene where we’re in a hotel on our honeymoon, and she is stripping out of her wedding dre
ss when the lights flick on.
It’s Joshua. He’s got a horrid smirk pulling at the corners of his lips, as though he were a puppet controlled by some vindictive demon. “Sleeping in while the world burns, huh?”
“I have nothing to say to you, you ungrateful prick.” After checking my watch and finding that I’ve only slept two hours, I roll over, turning my back to him. “Kill the light.”
“This is just too good,” he squeals with delight. “I had hoped I could deliver the news to you, but I was certain one of the others would find you first. Seems everyone else is actually busy doing their jobs, something you wouldn’t know anything about.”
“Seriously, you asswipe. I already know about your little stunt running to mommy and daddy about me not playing nice. Nothing you say is going to scare me because I know the board won’t make any sort of decision without hearing my side first.”
“Oh, this isn’t about you and me. It’s about that little squeeze you’ve been spending all this time with. April? Is that her name?”
I’m out of the bed, feet hitting the linoleum with a satisfying smack that has Joshua backing up half a step. “What are you on about? What about April?”
His smirk is still there, but it trembles. A leaf losing its battle against a wind it can never hope to overpower. “Just that she checked out about half an hour ago. Gone the moment she could get away from you.”
No. That’s impossible. She still has internal bruising. Her head needs more time to heal from the concussion. She’s not well enough to leave the hospital. April needs physical therapy and more tests to make sure everything is healing properly. I say as much to Joshua, but not in so many words. “You’re just trying to rile me up. Hate that a first-year has no pull with the board, so you’ve resorted to tricks.”
He shrugs. “Go see for yourself.”
Although there’s no way even a single syllable of what he has said could be true, I’m not getting anymore sleep. Besides, I want to talk to April and make sure Joshua hasn’t been harassing her while I’m away. But when I get to her floor, there’s a cleaning cart sitting outside her door.
“No,” I whisper to myself as I jog the rest of the way. Inside is one of our janitors, rolling the bed sheets up and stuffing them in a bag. “Where is the patient who was here before?”
“I don’t know,” comes the older woman’s reply. “Isn’t that your job?”
Despite her snark, she’s right. I’m supposed to know. I latch onto the first nurse I find, which turns out to be Lane, an experienced nurse who has always been straight with me. “Where’s the patient who was in room 231?”
Lane is on the phone, but tells the person on the other end that she would get someone down there right away before hanging up. “Where have you been? I’ve been calling for you on the intercom.”
“I was catching a nap. Now tell me what happened.” The phone rings again. When Lane goes to answer it, I pull the receiver out of her hand and slam it back down. “Tell me where she is.”
“Her parents checked her out. Had a lawyer with them. They claimed that because she had a brain injury that she was in no state to make decisions for herself. Wouldn’t listen to our protests that she needed further medical attention. And you weren’t here, so we had no choice but to let them go. They had papers from a judge and everything, Finn.”
“Her parents?” I say, trying to fit these odd pieces together. “That’s just not possible. Her parents never cared what happened to her. They left her at a shopping mall when she was seven. My parents were the ones who got her home. Do you know what those vile people said after delivering their daughter back to them? ‘Should’ve left her there. Finally had some peace’.”
“I don’t know what to tell you,” Nurse Lane says. “They had all the documents.”
“It just doesn’t make sense,” I say again to myself. “I mean, where did they even get the money to hire a lawyer? They can barely keep their twenty-year-old Hyundai running.”
“He looked cheap, for what it’s worth,” Lane adds. “Polyester suit. Bad hairpiece.”
Something clicks. “Do you know anything about April’s—I mean , the patient’s insurance situation?”
“Nothing except that apparently the driver’s insurance is covering all of her costs while she’s with us. Why?”
I don’t answer. I’m already pounding down the hallway, slamming my fingers against the elevator button again and again. I need to get to her. Get her back to the hospital before something happens. Because I can guess why her parents have suddenly reappeared in the picture. April’s probably won some sort of payout. More than just the costs of her healthcare. Enough that she has just been essentially kidnapped by her parents.
Chapter 9
April
“I hate you,” I try to mumble through the gag they placed on me as soon as I was in the backseat of their trashed hatchback. Someone added cheap body modifications to the car to make it look like a racer, but it has not been kept up. Now it is the personification of white trash, a perfect fit for the people who have the gall to call themselves my parents.
“For the thousandth time, shut up,” Kathy shrieks from the driver’s seat. I stopped calling them ‘mom’ and ‘dad’ when I was eight and they not only forgot my birthday, but also left me at a home so that they could spend the weekend at a casino. They didn’t even leave anything to eat in the house. If it hadn’t been for Ashley’s family, I would have starved. That’s when the earned title ‘parents’ shifted from these people to Ashley and Finn’s mom and dad. “Do something,” Kathy prods at Matt.
The man who has never said he loves me has lost more of his hair since I last saw him. So much, in fact, that he has shaved his head to try to hide the fact, but I can see how far back his hairline has receded. Having lost hair, he’s gained more weight, but only around his lower torso. This doesn’t stop him from wearing tight undershirts to show off his arms, which are all flab and faded tattoos. Matt doesn’t drive, not because he can’t but because he’s always too high.
“Shut it, you little twerp,” he leans his hulking mass around and extends his hand into the backseat where I’ve been restrained with seatbelts. I would get out of them and risk falling out of this moving heap of garbage if it weren’t for the plastic tie Matt fastened around my wrist as soon as the lawyer was out of the way. He tightened it to such a degree that my hands have passed the red-as-a-tomato stage and are moving on towards eggplant purple. With his sweaty hand, Matt grabs the flesh at the base of my leg cast and squeezes while twisting.
I shriek, which only agitates Kathy more. “I thought I said to shut her up. Not crank up the volume. Oh, volume. There’s an idea.” She turns the knob on the stereo all the way to the right. The ensuing base notes reverberate through my bones like some unproven therapy for healing cancer. It works to drown out my shouts though, so I resign myself to leaning against the window, hoping that the cars beside us at intersections notice the gagged and bound girl in the backseat.
Nobody does though, and when we finally arrive at our destination and I’m yanked out of the backseat, I understand why: the car windows are tinted to a high—and certainly illegal—shine. It is a thin veneer hiding the shitiness, but there is no such gloss on the place they call a home.
The bungalow is in the middle of an area where the grass is somehow always a dead yellow color but still manages to grow high enough to tickle at ankles. The sidewalk has so many cracks that avoiding them with each step would be impossible. Standing in what might have once passed as a front lawn, but now only serves as a dumping ground of trash, is their shack. The details hidden under decades of neglect reflect a history of what was once a picturesque family dwelling. Before being shoved inside, I take note of the address.
97 Phillip Drive.
Inside are three bedrooms that, at one time, were probably filled with laughter and perfectly ironed shirts, and smells of brisket cooked by a tame housewife entertaining her husband’s friends. Now the house
is all decay and drugs, a playground for adults who’ve never learned what responsibility means.
“This is your room,” Kathy says, directing Matt to toss me into the bedroom behind the kitchen, which doesn’t look like it has been used to cook anything in years. It’s now nothing more than a hangout spot for three other people I don’t recognize, each with a cigarette in hand, empty beer bottles spread out on the table before them. “Don’t go clogging up the toilet. You do that and you’ll have to shit in a bucket. Got it? Push us too far and we might decide you’re not worth all this effort after all.”
I can’t answer before they snip the plastic tie from my wrist and slam the door shut. Before allowing myself to fall to the floor and wallow in self-pity, I immediately hobble to the window, thinking that if I am going to escape there is no time to wait. They won’t expect it right now. But rusted bars block out half the light that manages to break through the crusty glass. Even if I were to bust out a pane and scream for help, the bedroom butts up against the next house. No one would hear me but the neighbors and from the look of this area, they aren’t going to be in a rush to get in someone else’s business.
After checking the window, I move onto the bathroom. A bucket would be preferable if it meant not needed to step foot on the bathroom tiles barefoot. My hospital slippers fell of on the sidewalk outside, and I just know that even tiptoeing across that mildew and filth and black mold will end up with me having some sort of infection.
I try the bedroom door, slowly and quietly so as not to alert Kathy or Matt, but the lock is about the only solid part of this house. When I get braver and push against the door, I can hear a chunk of metal bounce off the wood just above the handles. In my mind’s eye, I see a padlock holding the door closed.
A Sweet, Sexy Collection 1: 5 Insta-love, New Adult, Steamy Romance Novellas (Sweet, Sexy Shorts) Page 9
