"I'm afraid the three American girls checked out this morning. I remember the girl you're talking about; she was quite beautiful." He smiled and winked at me as if we had something in common for appreciating Harper's beauty.
Usually I would've told some crass joke about her ass or her pussy. But today it just made me angry. The look on his face made me want to punch him. I didn't want anyone else looking at her. That was a problem. But it wasn't going to stop me from trying to find her.
"Can you tell me any more information? Like her phone number, her last name, where she lives.”
"It was booked through an online travel agency. We just have phone numbers for the website and names."
"Do you at least have her last name?" I asked him.
"Harper's last name is Kelly. I'm afraid that's all I can tell you"
I grunted. “I'm sure there's less than twenty thousand Harper Kelly’s in the United States of America," I said, hitting my hand on the reception desk.
The clerk flinched as if I was going to punch him. Like I would waste my time on a skinny wimp who worked behind the reception desk at a resort.
"Thanks, bro," I said, walking away.
From behind me I heard, "Mister Nolan, Crash, can I have your autograph?"
I didn't even respond. It was a total waste of my time.
I walked up to my room feeling like a complete tool. I'd never gone through that much trouble for a woman I'd already banged.
Not even when I was a young kid and still believed that a woman could give me love and understanding. I’d learned from my time in the military that women were good for only one thing. But now I wasn't so sure.
I made it up to my room and slid my key card into the door. The lock clicked open and I went inside. I needed a shower and a decent night’s sleep before I headed home on a redeye flight back to the good ol’ USA.
After a quick shower, I went into the bedroom and slipped beneath the sheets in my bare skin. Thoughts of Harper flitted through my mind. Even as tired as I was, just the thought of her made me hard. I reached under the comforter and gripped my thick cock in my hand. Fatigue overtook me as I stroked down a few times, uncommitted to getting myself off.
The memory of the look in her eyes when I'd filled her, holding her body close in the moonlight, haunted me. That image was there as I drifted off to sleep. Harper Kelly had gotten under my skin.
If I ever did find her, I'd get to the bottom of it, deep inside her soft, aching cunt. Whatever power she had over me, I would find out why. I would find out what it was about her that made me ache and yearn for a woman, and then I’d make it stop.
Chapter Five
Only two days after arriving home from Brazil, Ava, Mia and I all started our residency on the same day at Santa Monica General Hospital. It was a combination of everything I'd been working for my entire life. All the late nights studying and missing out on the frivolity of youth had come to this.
I was dog tired and jetlagged from the trip. Part of me resented Ava for convincing me to go against my better judgment and take a trip to Brazil right before our residency started. But I couldn't resent her completely.
The night that I'd spent with Crash I should have logically seen as a mistake. But deep down, I couldn't see it that way. It had been the hottest night of my entire life. I’d spent all those years being a good girl, doing everything I was supposed to do.
The night I spent with Crash, I'd escaped all of that, and I felt something tremendous and real, something hot and dirty but pure at the same time.
I kept telling myself that Crash didn't have any real feelings for me. Men like that never had real feelings for women. They just wanted to score with as many broads as they could before dying in some back alley knife fight or from contracting a deadly STD.
As much as I tried, I couldn't see him that way. Deep in my subconscious, I knew there was something else there. Something we had both felt under the moonlight, pulsing to the music and holding each other in the Atlantic Ocean.
It had been beautiful and tender, even though it had been fucking erotic and sexy in a way I'd never experienced before. I'd definitely never felt that with Jeremy.
Just as I was contemplating how much better the sex was with Crash, how much bigger his cock was, how much stronger his hands were then Jeremy’s, my ex-boyfriend walked up to me holding a briefcase and wearing a smarmy smile on his face. I turned away, trying to avoid his eyes. But it was too late.
"Baby," he said, opening his arms.
I turned back to him, giving him a civil smile that I didn't mean. After how he treated me before I'd broken up with him, I really didn't ever want to see him again. Unfortunately, I wasn't going to be able avoid him since he worked as a pharmacy sales rep in my area. We'd probably be bumping into each other for the rest of my career.
"First day on the job?" he said, lifting his briefcase and putting it on the counter in front of the nurse’s station. One of the nurses gave him a nasty glare, but he ignored her. I fiddled with a stethoscope around my neck and straightened my white coat. I was a doctor, dammit. I might be a first year resident on my first day, but I was a doctor. I deserved that title, and I deserved some respect. He shouldn't be addressing me as “baby” in the hospital.
"Hello, Jeremy," I said. "Selling a new brand of erectile dysfunction medication?" I gave him a meaningful smirk. I could see the anger flash in his eyes at the insult. Jeremy didn't have erectile dysfunction, per se. He just had an incredibly small cock and zero stamina.
"I'm here to talk with the hospital’s pharmaceutical buyer about this new blood pressure medication. I thought you'd learned more about my work in the three years we spent together," he said, as if trying to insult my intelligence.
"Well, good luck with that. I have my rounds. I'm on call in the emergency room and my attending is expecting me there in two minutes. I don't have time to talk."
"Wait, wait, wait, baby. We haven't seen each other in so long. I thought we could get together and chat about old times."
He gave me that smarmy smile and ran his hand back through his slicked back black hair. He made me cringe inwardly, but I didn't let him see how much he disgusted me on the outside.
I had, in fact, spent the last three years with this man. Thinking too badly about him was a reflection on myself, and my own taste.
After spending a night with Crash, I was beginning to think differently about myself. Crash and Jeremy couldn't be any more different. Not that I had a relationship with Crash. It was a one-night stand for God’s sake. Why was I thinking it was any more than that?
Standing in front of Jeremy and remembering the sex that we'd had over the last three years, I realized it never felt as intimate or as hot and erotic as the one night I spent with Crash. Hell, I didn't even know Crash’s last name. Crash wasn't even his real name! But that night had rocked my world. I'd never be the same again.
“I just don't have time, Jeremy," I said, trying to brush him off as politely as possible. The last thing in the world that I wanted to do was go out with him, for any reason. The entire relationship had been so ridiculously controlling.
A month before I left for Brazil, he had told me that we were going to get married next year. He hadn't even asked me. He hadn't even given me a ring. He just said we're getting married next year.
The year after that, we were going to have our first baby. After the baby was born, I would drop surgery and become a pediatrician. I didn't want to be a pediatrician. I didn’t have anything against pediatricians or anything. My mom was a pediatrician. But I'd spent the last ten years of my life studying to become a surgeon.
I was the top of my class. I was the best young surgeon that I knew. The chief of surgery at Santa Monica General had told me so himself. He'd taken me under his wing and had been mentoring me the entire last year of school. I wasn't going to give away my dream just because Jeremy had decided that's the way things were going to be.
I tried to explain that to Jeremy,
but he just wouldn't hear it. He kept insisting that since I was going to be staying home with the baby, I would need to have a less intense job.
He assumed we would be living on his pharmacy sales income and I would work in some upscale clinic giving immunization shots millionaires’ children. Well, that sort of thing might work for my mom. But it was never what I wanted to do.
When I’d chosen to follow in my mother's footsteps and enter medicine, it was never with the intention of becoming anything but a surgeon.
Jeremy knew that, but he just didn't care. He had his own way of looking at things. And he never looked at anyone else’s point of view. If I ever had a kid, I didn't intend to give up my career or my dream. I’d find a way to make it work. I’d get a really great nanny, or maybe two.
"Another time, then," Jeremy said as I walked away. From behind my back, I could hear him flirting with the annoyed nurse who was entering data into her computer. What an asshole.
I made my way into the emergency room where we were doing our rounds with the attending physician. I was right on time, but everyone else was already assembled. This was just not me. If I hadn’t been stopped by Jeremy, I would've been here five minutes ago.
"Nice of you to join us, Dr. Kelly," the attending physician said.
Unlike the chief of surgery, our attending physician did not like me. She was always pushing me and criticizing me. I followed the rest of the junior residents through the emergency room, diagnosing cases and participating in minor care.
By the end of my fourteen-hour shift, I was completely exhausted. When Ava and Mia wanted to go for drinks, I respectfully declined. I had to catch up on sleep after the Brazil trip. And if I wasn't going to be sleeping, I planned to be studying new developments in surgery.
I went back to the little house we all shared since medical school and continued unpacking my bags from Brazil. Since passing my medical exams and receiving my certification, everything had been a blur.
We’d been studying for days straight to pass the test, and sometimes I didn't even know which way was up. Then we went straight to Brazil after passing. I could keep up, like any young resident. I was built for this kind of thing. But that didn't mean it wasn't taking its toll. Unlike Ava and Mia, who had barely passed their exam, I completed the test with an almost perfect score.
I put in more hours studying, which meant I'd lost more sleep. Residency would mean insane hours, working all day and night for peanuts. But medicine was my passion, and I would do anything to achieve my goals. Someday, I knew it would all pay off, and I was willing to sacrifice a little bit of pain for my compelling future.
As I unpacked my clothes, my birth control packet fell onto the bed. I picked it up, remembering to take my pill for that day. I glanced down at the pills and counted them. Even through my sleepy haze, I could tell something was wrong. Then it occurred to me what it was. I hadn't taken the pill in a week and a half. How could I have let that happen?
I had always been so responsible. After all those years with Jeremy, I never missed a day. How could I have been so irresponsible? It was completely unlike me in every way. Even with all of the studying, the travel, and the confusion, there was no excuse.
Then I thought about the night Crash and I spent together. I'd been drunk and stupid. Having unprotected sex with a stranger was the dumbest thing I'd ever done. Now, I realized that I wasn't even on the pill at the time.
Shit, shit, shit.
What had I done? I sat down on my bed, my head in my hand. A tear slipped down my cheek. I couldn't believe that I was crying. Stress usually didn't get to me. But the thought of having made a mistake like this, it could ruin my entire life. It could ruin my career and take all of my chances from me. And to think, it was with a man whose name I didn't even know. My mother would be so disappointed in me.
After all the years she’d spent single and working to support me, she’d just recently met someone. Supposedly, he was some kind of bigshot business person with a huge mansion in Malibu, only a few miles from the hospital, unlike my current house in San Fernando.
Mom kept telling me I should come visit, but I hadn't yet. She wanted me to meet her boyfriend. I couldn't even think about it. I'd made such a massive mistake. Mom always pushed me to excel and to work hard. Having completely unprotected sex with a stranger was not the woman she'd raised me to be.
Chapter Six
I woke with my stiff cock in my hand, the memory of Harper's face still fresh in my mind. Damn. I had to get this girl out of my system. Finding her wasn't going to happen, but finding some other piece of ass probably would. I pulled myself out of bed and slipped into some clothes. As I was making myself a pot of coffee, the phone rang.
"Hello," I said.
“Mr. Nolan," an American man said from the other end of the line.
"Yes." I figured this was probably a promoter or someone who had learned I was going back to the States today.
"Mr. Nolan, I regret to inform you that your mother Jessica Nolan has passed away."
I didn't speak for several moments and the telephone line hung silent. My mother had always been there for me. Her sweet and calming presence was a consistent reminder of who I turned out to be.
I hadn’t been able to face her in the last year, and that was part of the reason I'd spent so much time in Brazil. She'd wanted me to come home to LA, but I'd pulled my usual bullshit and told her I had other things to do.
"How?" I finally uttered.
"Your mother had stage three breast cancer," the man said.
"She never told me she had cancer," I said angrily.
"Your mother's been sick for quite some time. As her attorney, I must inform you that as her next of kin, it is your responsibility to dispose of her estate."
His words were so clinical that I could barely think. It just couldn't be happening. The last time I’d seen my mom, I'd given her some bullshit excuse about why I couldn't stay. She'd never told me she was sick. That was so like her to keep it to herself. Anger and desperation bubbled in my gut, and I wanted to scream. I wanted to punch something. I wanted to make somebody pay for the pain I was feeling. But I couldn't do any of that. This attorney, my mom, I couldn't take it out on either of them. I couldn't take it out on anybody except myself.
"I'm on my way back to the States today. I'm in Brazil right now, but I could come see you tomorrow morning."
My voice was distant and soft. I almost didn't recognize myself. Even when a buddy of mine had been blown to bits in front of my face, I hadn’t felt this kind of pain. My mother was everything to me. I had been such a jackass. I'd been a selfish fuck.
After I’d gotten out of the service, I’d told myself I would change, I'd stay home, I'd be a better son, but I had taken off just like always and left her alone. This time, I’d left her alone to die.
"That will be just fine, Mr. Nolan.”
I hung up the phone and sat in silence, staring at the carpet. Nothing felt real. It felt like someone was playing some sick joke on me. It was like I’d gone to hell and I was paying for all my sins.
But the one who was really paying was my mom, and I had been the devil who'd hurt her.
All the way to the airport and during the entire flight back, I was barely present. I medicated myself with the hardest liquor I could find.
I arrived in the States as the early morning light was rising over the city. The plane set down, and I was home. Los Angeles could be a princess or a bitch, depending on who you asked or who you were.
It was a princess for the wealthy and beautiful. The ones who had it all, the Hollywood producers and billionaires. It was a bitch for everybody else. Bumper to bumper traffic on crowded highways, poverty and gang violence, drug addiction and prostitution.
I’d barely made it out alive myself. As an angry young man on the streets, I could have become a gangbanger like so many of my friends. Even a white kid like me could join a gang, deal drugs, smack people down for the scraps that small time criminal
s could find in a broken world like the ghettos of Los Angeles.
But my mother’s integrity and watching her work her fingers to the bone as a maid, just to put food on the table for me, gave me at least a little bit of honor.
I’d joined the service right out of high school. I’d graduated. I’d made her proud. Maybe the last time I ever made her proud? But she was there that day. Watching me get my diploma. I remembered the smile on her face and that look in her eyes. It was one of the proudest moments of my life, even though getting a high school diploma didn’t mean shit. It meant a lot to her, so it meant something to me.
That’s why I’d joined the military instead of joining a gang. But I’d thrown it all away by leaving her. I didn’t know if I could ever forgive myself for that.
Instead of thinking about it, I’d drunk myself into oblivion for the last twenty-four hours. I hailed a taxi and gave the Middle Eastern driver the address to my mom’s lawyer’s office. It wasn’t far from her house in East LA, and I sat in the back of the cab in silence the whole way there.
When I got there, I gave the driver a big tip, feeling more generous than usual. Maybe if I gave back a little, it would take away some of the guilt I was feeling.
But I doubted it.
I slammed the door closed and stood in front of the strip mall lawyer’s office in the bright glow of the Los Angeles morning sunlight. I slid my shades over my eyes and looked around. The place wasn’t going to open for another fifteen minutes. I went into the coffee shop next door, hoping the coffee would help sober me up from the bender I'd been on since leaving Brazil a day ago.
I walked inside and pulled off my sunglasses. A girl I recognized from the old neighborhood was behind the counter. Maria or something. Her light brown skin gleamed under the frilly white tank top she wore. I walked up to the counter and recognition sparked in her eyes. Andrew?" She asked. Nobody but my mom had called me Andrew in a long damn time. I was still searching for her name when she relieved me of the responsibility.
Crash: A Bad Boy MMA Romance Page 3
