Priest (A Standalone Bad Boy Romance Love Story)

by Claire Adams

  Moving like the snake he’s striving to be, Mick leans forward, nearly catching my lips with his before pulling away. My palm stings as I make sure he knows exactly how I feel about what he just tried.

  “Okay,” he says, rubbing his cheek. My handprint is remarkably well-defined. “Okay, I guess I was misreading signals or something-”

  I’m already out of the car, closing the door behind me.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Revenge/Armistice

  Eli

  “Now, what did we learn?” I ask Mick as I shake my hand.

  He’s sputtering for a moment, his hands up in defense as he crawls away from me.

  I’ve already made my point. I don’t know why he’s so scared.

  “Just calm down, man,” he says. “I can explain.”

  “What did we learn?” I repeat, this time more slowly.

  “Don’t try to make out with your girlfriend?”

  I shake my head. “No,” I tell him. “What we should have learned is a lot more fundamental than that. If a woman looks like she’s trying to get the hell away from you, that’s not your cue to try to put your mouth on her. Are you stupid? What did you think was going to happen?”

  “I don’t know,” he says. “I thought you were wrong and there actually was something between her and me. I didn’t actually kiss her.”

  “You’re an idiot,” I tell him, tossing him a handful of paper towels. “Didn’t the fact she was trying to get out of the car—or that she was telling you she was ‘sorry if you got the wrong idea’—let you know pretty clearly that she wasn’t interested, dumbass?”

  I kind of want to kick him, but then he might consider filing charges so I don’t.

  “I’m sorry!” he says. “Okay, I know I messed up and I’m so-”

  “I’m not the one you need to apologize to,” I interrupt. “You’re right that you messed up, but you need to apologize to Kate. You think about that, maybe I’ll think about taking you to the hospital to get your nose put back in place.”

  His hands are instant to cover the lower half of his face, and his breathing just got a lot faster.

  It looked like he’d been doing really well after getting punched in the face (repeatedly,) but it seems the idea of his nose being a little crooked overwhelms whatever fear-inspired courage he was showing.

  “Of course I’ll apologize to her,” he says through his cupped hands. “You need to take me to the hospital, Rans.”

  “You will apologize to her if and when she decides to allow you to apologize to her, and you sure as hell better mean it,” I tell him. “Until then, you’re not going to go anywhere near her. If we’re in the shop working on the President’s motorcade and the Secret Service has their hands on their guns, telling us to hurry it up, and Kate comes into the shop, you drop what you’re doing and you walk the other way, you got me?”

  The betrayal part of the whole thing bothers me, sure; but it’s the fact that she said she wasn’t interested and he kept going that makes me feel pretty good about his now-crooked nose. A kiss is a kiss, but someone doesn’t want a kiss, you do not try to give them a kiss.

  It’s pretty damn simple.

  “All right,” he says. “I got it. When she’s ready for-”

  “If,” I correct. “If she never wants to see or hear from you again—and I think that’d be justified—you make sure she never does.”

  “Fine,” he says. “If she decides she’s ready for me to apologize to her, I’ll apologize to her. If not, I’ll stay away. Now, will you please take me to the hospital? I can’t drive like this.”

  “Fine, but we’re taking your car,” I tell him. “I don’t want you getting blood on my seats.”

  “Oh, come on,” he protests. “Your Galaxie’s seats are cracked and filthy. The GT’s only a year—”

  “Either I can drive you in your car or you can drive yourself…in your car,” I tell him. “Blood’s harder to get out than motor oil and my car’s not going to pay for your mistake.”

  I’m almost expecting him to point out that there are multiple oil stains over most of the interior of the Galaxie, but he doesn’t say anything. He just nods.

  I have no way of knowing, but I like to think he’s being so cooperative because he’s trying to figure out how I would know that blood stains worse than oil. The truth is that I have no idea which is worse. I just wanted to see that fear in his eyes one more time before I take him to get all patched up and feeling better.

  All right, that part of it is just for me.

  “Fine,” he says.

  He goes to reach in his pocket, but I stop him, saying, “Whoa, hold on there a second.”

  Mick looks down at his hands.

  “You’ll want to wash those,” I tell him. “Making you bleed is one thing. I’m not touching your blood.”

  He washes his hands thoroughly—twice—and, after drying them, he reaches into his pocket, pulls out his keys and hands them to me.

  “Can we go now?” he asks as he grabs a couple more paper towels for his face.

  “Yeah,” I tell him. “We can go now.”

  Just to be on the safe side, Mick and I are going to Gianelli Teaching Hospital on the edge of town. I’ve only ever been to St. Mary’s of Egypt, but I’d rather not give Kate’s mom any more reason not to like me.

  I’d imagine bringing in the guy who needed medical treatment because I just beat him up wouldn’t exactly change her mind about me.

  We pull into the lot and find a spot to park.

  Getting out of the car, Mick’s still holding paper towels against his nose, although it looks like he’s stopped bleeding. Part of me does feel kind of bad for hitting him, but he did have it coming.

  It wasn’t all that long ago that Mick was the only person I would ever think of calling my friend.

  We get into the emergency room and get Mick checked in.

  When the nurse doing the intake asks how he hurt his face, I don’t expect it, but Mick covers for me. It’s funny, I never asked him to lie about what happened. As long as he’s not pressing charges, I don’t care who knows I beat the crap out of him.

  Still, I don’t bother correcting him. I may not be ashamed of introducing my friend to my fists, but I’m not looking to brag about it, either.

  I honestly think it hurt me just about as much as it hurt him. Seriously, I think I’ve got a knuckle out of place or something. My hand is throbbing.

  We’re waiting a while before a doctor calls Mick’s name.

  “You want me to go with you or stay here?” I ask.

  “Go with,” he says.

  The way he was asking to be brought here, I almost forgot he’s just as likely to come out of here more injured as he is healed.

  I don’t make a big deal about it, though. No reason to get his blood pressure any higher than it is already.

  This is already going to be the second half of his punishment. I don’t need to do anything more to make it unpleasant for him.

  We head to the back so they can take his vitals. I don’t know if it’s because I’m feeling guilty or what, but I can’t stop thinking about the first time Mick and I met.

  I was living in the Galaxie at the time, even though I was too young to legally drive it. I had parked it behind an old building, now a Dairy Queen.

  Living on the street that young, I was a bit surprised more people didn’t try to rob me. Of course, if I’d kept having that kind of good luck, I probably never would have met Mick.

  I was sleeping in the backseat when the car started to move. At first, I was too scared to do anything. After all, I was only fifteen.

  It’s not like the Galaxie was that hard to steal. My dad had already messed with the ignition so he could start it without a key. I guess he got tired of spending all his time looking for them when he’d rather be drinking and driving. It’s only a guess. Apart from that, it was summer, and so I was sleeping with a couple of windows cracked.

  The nurses take us ba
ck to a small, private room and Mick gets up on the bed…willingly. I’m not sure if it’s because the last time he was in the hospital, he had Kate to check in on him or if he’s finally starting to get used to doctors, but when they put the heart rate monitor on him, his pulse is still in the double digits.

  “The doctor has a couple other patients ahead of you, but he should be in shortly,” the nurse says before leaving the room.

  Mick and I don’t talk.

  That day, being the unwilling backseat passenger in my own car, I thought I was going to be lucky to get out of there with my life. The car would likely be the price I would pay for whoever was behind the wheel to consider letting me go.

  I hadn’t been on the street all that long, but it was more than long enough to start hearing the stories.

  There are two worlds in this country, probably everywhere else, too. If you’ve got a place to live, a decent job, or a family to go home to, the apparent world feels almost like it was built just for you. Sure, it’s because everyone is trying to sell you something, but it can still feel pretty good if that’s the way you’re looking at it.

  If you’re on the street, without a home, without a family that you can—or want to—go back to, you’re an intruder in hostile territory.

  Instead of trying to get you to come in and buy something, people working their nine-to-five jobs spray hoses and call the police if you try to get anywhere near the entrance. When I first escaped my home, I never tried to go into a business if I didn’t have the money to pay for whatever they were selling.

  After a while of being kicked and pushed and told to get the hell away, though, I didn’t feel so bad about learning to steal. The way normal, “respectable” people were treating me and everyone else like me, it seemed only fair to take something in compensation.

  It was never easy, though. People tend to watch teenagers who look like they haven’t had a decent meal in a while.

  The funny thing is that nothing scared me more than being ripped off myself. If I’d gotten arrested and taken to jail, at least I’d know I’d have three meals and a nearly decent place to sleep.

  After about ten minutes of waiting for the doctor, the nurse pops her head back in, asking, “How are we doing in here?”

  “How long’s he going to be?” Mick asks.

  He’s been holding up well so far, but now he’s starting to sweat. His eyes are spreading a little further open, and I can almost feel the growing tension in him.

  “Don’t worry,” the nurse answers. “Dr. Chavez shouldn’t be much longer.”

  Dr. Chavez.

  “Isn’t that Kate’s-” Mick starts.

  “Yeah,” I interrupt. “That’ll be her dad.”

  Kate’s dad is a doctor, too, and she did tell me he worked at a different hospital than she and her mom. This is the only other hospital in town, but I’d never really thought about it.

  Having not met the guy, I haven’t developed the same drive to avoid him at all costs the way I have with Kate’s mom. That said, just because I haven’t met him yet doesn’t mean he’s going to be on my side.

  The nurse leaves and now Mick’s looking at me with the raised eyebrows and slightly cocked head that’s usually reserved for patients in a place like this. He’s looking at me with pity.

  “You gonna be all right, man?” he asks. “Do you have to go?”

  “I have no idea,” I tell him.

  For now, I just decide to stick around. The guy hasn’t met me, so I doubt he’ll recognize me so long as I keep my mouth shut.

  Still, I’m kind of hoping the nurse comes back again so I can ask her for a sedative.

  In an attempt to take my mind off of the looming disaster that meeting Kate’s dad is sure to be, I take my inner monologue and make it external.

  “Do you remember when we met?” I ask.

  “You mean, do I remember the first time I saved your ass?”

  He’s not wrong, but I’m still angry enough at him that I’m not going to bother mentioning that fact.

  “I was riding around in that backseat for I don’t even know how long,” I tell him. “When he stopped off for gas, I thought maybe that would be my shot, but he paid at the pump. I still don’t know how he didn’t see me back there under that crappy blanket.”

  “I still don’t know why you didn’t just get out of the back and get in the driver’s seat,” Mick says. It seems he’s glad to have the distraction, himself. “What was he really going to do? Throw you out right there at the gas station?”

  “I was fifteen and the guy was freaking huge,” I tell him.

  “Whatever,” he says. “It’s a good thing I happened by, is all I’m saying.”

  That’s true enough.

  While the guy’s receipt was printing, I told myself I was going to let him know I was back there, but I was frozen in place. For a minute, I considered just getting out of the car and running. I didn’t know if the guy was armed or what he would do to me when he found me.

  The only thing that kept me under that old, dirty blanket was the possibility that I could avoid being found until he parked the car somewhere and got far enough away I could just hop back in the front seat and get out of there. It didn’t quite happen that way.

  “Everything was fine until I got that tickle in my throat,” I say. “I held it back as long as I could, but after a while, I couldn’t help it. I had to cough.”

  If I hadn’t coughed, I wouldn’t have met Mick. Of course, if I hadn’t coughed, the guy probably wouldn’t have slammed on the brakes, pulled over, gotten out, and pushed me up against the side of the car with a knife to my throat, either.

  I could have done without that part.

  “I thought I was going to die right then and there,” I tell Mick.

  “Nah,” he says. “I’d already spotted the guy by the time the switchblade made its first appearance.”

  It wasn’t a switchblade. It was actually a rusted pocketknife, but Mick has a tendency to exaggerate things.

  “I remember just wanting you to go away when you first walked up,” I chuckle. “I didn’t know if you were there because you knew the guy and you were going to help him hide my body, or if you just wanted him out of the way so you could take the car yourself.”

  What did happen next was more of a surprise, though. I was just standing there, my hands up while Roid Rage held that little shard of infection and blood loss to my throat, when Mick moseyed on over and cleared his throat.

  “How’s it going, fellas?” Mick asked, though it didn’t seem like he was talking to me. “Looks like there’s some kind of disagreement here and I thought I could help.”

  Roid Rage told Mick to “Piss off,” but he just stood there.

  “You know,” Mick said to the guy holding a knife to me, “I think you’ll find you’re not going to get a lot of cutting action out of that blade. You’re not gonna hurt anyone with that unless you stab them, I don’t think you’re going to have time to do that.”

  The man pushed me against the car harder with his non-knife hand and turned toward Mick, lifting his two-inch blade a few inches in front of Mick’s eyes, saying something like, “Oh yeah? Why’s that?”

  The man was on the ground a second later, doubled over and rolling around as he gasped for air. I remember in school, kneeing a guy in the balls—even if it was the only way to avoid a beating—was the kind of thing that would make a person lose friends.

  Mick’s knee shooting up between that asshat’s legs, though: that was a beautiful thing.

  “It’s your car, but I’m getting us out of here,” Mick told me as he picked up the pocketknife Roid Rage had dropped on his way to the pavement.

  Before I got into the car, though, I made sure to give Roid Rage a good kick to the gut for trying to steal what was then my home while I slept in it.

  That’s how we met.

  Mick took me from being a stupid kid getting jacked on the side of the road and gave me a place to live with an actual
roof overhead. It’s for that reason he and I aren’t enemies right now.

  We chat a little bit more about the early days before the curtain opens and a middle-aged doctor comes into the room.

  “So,” the doctor says, “you’re Eli, huh?”

  Here we go.

  “Yeah,” I answer. “I’m here about my friend, Mick, here, though.”

  Dr. Chavez, Kate’s dad, pulls up a rolling stool and grabs some latex gloves from a box on the countertop. His hands are prodding Mick’s face when he continues, “Yeah, I’ve heard about you,” Kate’s dad says.

  “I bet,” I respond. It comes off a bit hostile.

  “So, is this what you do?” he asks. “You find a girl that’s got everything going for her and you see if you can’t just turn things around on her?”

  “Not at all, sir,” I answer. Why am I calling him “sir?”

  “Listen, I’m sure you’re a decent guy or whatever nonsense you’re going to unload on me to try to get me to like you, but that’s my daughter,” he says. “Do you really think I’m just going to lie down and let you take her off the course she’s been on her entire life?”

  “Ow!” Mick interjects as Kate’s dad feels around my friend’s nose.

  “Yep, it’s broken,” Dr. Chavez announces. “So, what’s the big plan?” he asks me.

  “Big plan?” I ask.

  “This really hurts,” Mick says, “can’t you give me something before you start-”

  “Oh, don’t act like you don’t have something in mind,” Kate’s dad says. “One of the things about working in a place like this is that you really get to know a lot about people, and I’ve met more people like you than I’d have liked.”

  “You don’t know the first thing about me,” I tell him, though I doubt it’ll change anything.

  “Maybe not,” he says, rolling over to one of the cupboards and pulling out some tape. “I know my daughter, though.”

  “Do you?” There’s no way this guy’s going to like me. I may as well say what I think. “To me, it sounds like you and Kate’s mom have been going out of your way to make sure she stays miserable.”

  Mick is crying out in pain as Dr. Chavez grabs the bottom of Mick’s nose with the fingers of one hand and the site of the fracture with the other. He gives Mick’s nose a short, but hard tug, straightening it and before Mick can find his voice to scream in pain, Dr. Chavez starts—I don’t know what else to call it—forcibly splinting Mick’s nose.