“Good,” Nurse Yvonne said cheerfully. She made a note on the chart, and I wondered if it actually said something like “patient’s dick still gets hard, but not too hard for too long. Normal dick function.”
She checked my blood pressure, the state of the wrap around my ribs, and the inside of the cast on my arm. Every time she touched me I thought she might start feeling me up, but she didn’t.
Maybe every guy had a naughty nurse fantasy at some point. I decided I didn’t anymore.
“Naomi should be in to work with you by ten,” she said when she was finished. She breezed out of the room after that, but not without giving me a last look. When she left, I pulled the sheet and blanket up to my chest.
Sure enough, Naomi showed up a little after ten. She stood outside the closed door for a good ten seconds. She always did that; I could always tell it was her—she was the only one whose shadow blocked a bit of the space at the bottom of the door for more than a second before it opened.
I forgot to put on my gonna-fuck-you smile, maybe because I wanted to be sure it was her before another horny mom-nurse got the wrong idea.
Naomi strode in, then slowed, and looked me over. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Well, other than the broken arm, the cracked ribs, the head wound, and the contorsions.”
“Contusions,” Naomi corrected with a little smile. She did that from time to time and I don’t think she knew it. Her little mouth just quirked up at the corner even when she wasn’t makin’ fun of me, like she knew a joke but wasn’t telling.
Those pretty eyes appraised me when I shrugged.
“Okay,” she said finally. “Let’s get started. You know the drill.”
I followed her instructions as she put her soft hands on my rough arms and had me lift, pull, push and twist, isometric exercises she figured would keep me from wasting away or something. Whatever they were supposed to do, I figured it couldn’t hurt, though I’d recovered from my share of injuries.
“You’re awfully quiet today,” she said when we’d finished the first arm and moved on to the broken one. “They up your pain meds?”
“Nah,” I said as she had me extend the arm straight out from my shoulder, parallel to the bed. “Just in my head is all.”
“Anything good in there?”
“Nope.”
“Lift.” She held her hand on top of my cast.
I lifted up until I felt the first hint of pain in my busted arm, and held it there while she watched the second hand on the hospital room clock.
“That’s good,” she said after a full minute.
“What about you?” I asked.
She bent my elbow ninety degrees, and put her hand against mine. “Push.” I did. “What about me, what?”
“Anything good in that pretty little head of yours?” I asked. I smiled up at her through the pain the exercise sent shooting through my ribs. Bad, but not the worst. She had a stray curl of hair hangin’ in her face. It was always there, the little bit that wouldn’t stay put.
“Just work,” she said, all business. But I could tell she was trying not to smile.
Oh, she wanted it. Good girls always do. Inside every good girl is a bad girl trying to claw her way out. I had that effect on good girls like Naomi.
Except, there was something on her mind. Naomi did this thing when she was trying to decide what to say. She squinted her eyes just a little, and chewed the inside of her cheek while she put it all together.
“Good,” she said when whatever mysterious condition she was waiting for was met, and let my hand go. I almost curled my fingers around it before she took it away; did it linger, just a little too long? Probably my imagination, right?
I didn’t press her about it until she’d finished with my arms, the stretching and prodding that was supposed to keep my ribs from getting stuck, or something. I’d broken just about every rib I had at one point or another and never needed PT to make ‘em keep doin’ what they were supposed to do, but, she was the boss, right? Any excuse to feel around my chest.
When we were done, she sat down in the chair near my bed, and made some notes on her clipboard. “Patient still hard as a rock,” it probably said. “PT pointless, but need to keep touching him or I’ll never work up the nerve to feel him up.”
I was grinning at her when she looked up, but she pretended not to notice. “I had a meeting with the Urban Violence Outreach representative for Saint Michael’s this morning,” she said.
“I think there’s plenty of violence in the city,” I said. “I don’t think they need an outreach for it.”
Naomi gave a pretty little snort, and rolled her eyes. “That’s not… smart ass. No, they… they’re an intervention program.”
“Uh huh,” I said. Saint Naomi, back up on her high horse. Just how good could a good girl be? Christ on a stick. “Not interested.”
“You don’t know what they do,” she said.
“You got time to tell me before your next patient? I can save you some time, but I know how you like talkin’ to me.” I had to be careful about calling her ‘darlin’; I almost did again. She’d like it, later.
She sighed, and set the clipboard down. She set her shoulders, squared her jaw, fixed me with a look. Yep. Three, two, one…
“Randall, the representative, he reviewed your… case. I didn’t tell him much,” she said when I opened my mouth to tell her she needed to keep that shit to herself, “I didn’t tell him your name or anything. They have a program that rehouses at-risk individuals to a place outside the city. People that have had been involved in repeat violence, especially with organized crime. They could put you somewhere away from this. From Valentino. From the cage fighting and all that. You could start over, go legit.”
I laughed. “Legit?”
“Yes,” she said, “legit. Boxing, or MMA, or whatever else. You don’t have to fight illegally, you know? If you’re that good, then, why not go professional?”
She meant well. I had to remind myself of that. Naomi was the kind of person that always meant well. She was just ignorant was all. She hadn’t been where I’d been, didn’t know what I knew—hadn’t accrued debts to the people I owed. So when I explained why that wouldn’t work, I did it as calmly as I could. “Look, that’s… I appreciate you goin’ outta your way. Okay? But I’m a city rat. This is where I live, it’s what I do. It’s how I stay alive.”
“You realize you’re in a hospital?” She asked.
“I don’t mean keep kicking,” I said. “It’s how I live. How I feel alive. I need it like you need air, or water, or blood. All this, what you’re doin’ for me? I’m… grateful, or whatever. I mean it. I know you want good things for me, for all your patients, and want me to not end up back here, worse than before.
“But, dar—I mean, Naomi—this right here, how you see me this very moment?” I waved a hand at all of me. “This is me. I’ve spent more time banged up than I have in one piece. You think I’m crazy, I know, but without stakes, without danger, without the fight, I’m lost. I’m just some schmuck without a purpose. I can’t leave the city.” It wasn’t worth mentioning that if I did, there were people that would come and find me. “You don’t have to understand it. I need this. I’d die of boredom without it. Like a tree without roots.”
She watched me. She had the kind of eyes that always seemed shiny, catching the light just right. You’d think the hospital lights that made everything look clean and clinical would wash her out or something like it did everything else, but not her. Her thick lips turned down a bit, sympathetic or pitying, one or the other.
Didn’t matter, I reminded myself. Once I was gone, she’d write me off. It’s what everyone else did; it’s what I did. I’d write her off too, right?
“I do get it,” she said finally. “The need for a rush. For excitement. Danger, whatever. I get it.” She sighed, and looked for a second like she might just say something else. Something I wanted to hear.
She didn’t, tho
ugh. Not yet, anyway. Or at least, not what I really wanted her to say. “My life is… not dangerous. Not exciting. I do this, six days a week sometimes, and always for ten to twelve hours and when I’m done I don’t have the energy for anything else. And it’s the same, day in, day out. You say you’d wither and die without the danger? I’m already doing that.
“But a rush? Danger? Excitement?” She dropped her eyes, pained. She looked back at me, waved her hand at my injuries. “This isn’t the only way, Jack.”
“Maybe,” I admitted. “It’s just the only way I know.”
“What would be the harm in finding another way, then?”
“Why do you care?” I asked. I really wanted to know. Sure, she cared about everyone, that was who she was, it was written in her DNA probably. “I mean why do you care what I do? What’s it to you if I go back to the cage, or throw myself off this building? You don’t know me. You don’t know what I’ve done.”
“You told me,” she said. “I know who you are, Jack.”
Yeah, they always thought they did. “No,” I told her. “You don’t. You know about the fighting, you know I like it, but you don’t know everything. You don’t know what I’ve done, how I got to where I am now. You don’t know how many people I’ve sent here, to this place, and not just from the ring, lady. What do you think a cage fight is? It’s an interview. With people like Valentino, and worse. People who want things done to other people but don’t have the guts or the muscle or the know-how to do it themselves.
“Just stop, Naomi. Stop giving a shit about me. Get your rush somewhere else. I’m an animal. And I got an expiration date, get me?”
It all just came out at once. I wanted to fuck her—anyone would, unless he was blind—but I realized that a girl like her doesn’t settle for that. They got attached. She’d get attached, and she might as well get attached to a burning building, or a fuckin’ rabid bear. It’d end the same.
She just watched me. I wanted her to say something. Get angry, like she had before. I wanted her to spit in my face, tell me I was trash, and walk out; sign me over to somebody else. Go, good girl, before you get burned.
She didn’t go, though. She stood up, and put her hand on my shoulder. Different than before. Softer. It was warm, and made all the skin around it hot. “I care,” she said, “because no one who was a complete monster would say something like that.”
She took her hand away, and gathered her clip board to leave. It was that time. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Jack. Think about it, okay?”
After she was gone, I tried to put it all out of my mind. Go back to the cage, in my mind, and imagine my next fight; the unofficial kind, once I’d dragged Valentino’s ass in there with me, to show him how it’s really done.
But I couldn’t. The scene kept changing, and I kept imagining, just for a few seconds at a time, a different life.
Chapter 7
Jack
Naomi came back to me the next day, like clockwork as usual. In the hour leading up to it, I realized I was looking forward to seeing her again. Which is why I kept a straight face when she came in.
It had started to occur to me after she left the day before that I might have not read her quite right. Now, my battin’ average for reading women is pretty damn near perfect, and I thought I had at least one part of her down right—Naomi wanted me. That part was normal, almost a given, though. I mean, look at me.
But there was something else. She’d gotten softer with me, and at first I’d thought it was just her gettin’ used to my shit. That’s just Jack; he’s a sexy asshole, har har. But no. I’d seen her that first day, and read her right—she hated this job. She was tired of it, tired of life.
I don’t know shit about stuff like love and touchy-feely bullshit like that but I know enough about people to know that there are a few things in life that make the parts that are tiring feel not-so-bad. One of them is gettin’ the wrong idea about someone. Or the right idea, I guess; but it was never the right idea in my case.
So when she came in again, I’d made my decision. Hands off. Don’t give the poor girl the wrong idea. She was already invested, and it would just make things worse when I went back to my world and left her here in this one, where she could survive.
Don’t look at me like that. I’m an asshole, not a monster. Not really.
She noticed right away. “Two days in a row, and you’re quieter than before,” she said as she worked my shoulders. “Don’t tell me this is going to be a pattern. You’ll restore my faith in humanity.”
“Well, I’d hate to do that,” I said. “How about I screw it out of you after we’re done here?”
She choked, and I glanced up at her to see her eyes wide, her mouth open. She sighed, rolled her eyes at me. But… she was trying not to smile, again.
“You’re not gonna read me the riot act?” I asked.
“Would it do any good?”
I grunted, and held my breath for just the second it took me to remember I wasn’t supposed to as she dug her fingers into the muscles between my ribs and stretched my arm up. “Probably not. I’m an irredeemable manslut, after all.”
Naomi lowered my arm. And shook her head while she made notes on her chart.
“So,” I asked her, “am I fixed yet?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s not really my job to fix you; more like, it’s my job to make sure you don’t break down right away when you walk out the door. Your range of motion has improved, though. You’re healing up, at least.”
“Cause for celebration,” I muttered. “You gonna get me a cake or somethin’?”
“No, Jack,” Naomi chuckled. “You don’t get a cake for getting better, you get quality of life. It’s priceless. Alright, we’re done with all that.”
It had gone quicker than before. I glanced at the clock. Still half an hour left. “Cuttin’ me short? What am I payin’ for in this joint?”
“No, no,” she said, “I mean we’re doing something new today. You’ve been in that bed too long, we need to start making sure you stay limber all around. Leg works from here on out, in addition to the other stuff, and I’m going to leave you with a few exercises to do on your own. It’s third phase stuff; you’re on your way out soon enough.”
“And out of your hair?” I asked.
She set her jaw, and swept that lock of hair behind her ear. “Well, that depends on whether you’ve given my suggestion from before any serious thought.”
“What suggestion was that?” I asked. The woman just didn’t stop, did she?
She didn’t believe I’d forgotten. Smart. “About rehousing to somewhere safe, Jack.” She sighed again, looked like she might say something else, but must’ve shelved it because she waved at the blanket and sheet over my legs and hips. “First part’s on the bed. You’ve got something on under there, I hope?”
“Do you?” I asked. I grinned, and slowly drew the coverings down.
Naomi watched my face, defiant and challenging for a good ten seconds, until at the last her eyes flickered down. I got a little triumphant tickle and chuckled at her.
I was in my boxers, of course. I had to walk back and forth to the bathroom and wasn’t about to do it bare-ass naked with a cougar like that Yvonne woman stalkin’ the hospital rooms lookin’ for a meal.
“God, you’re the worst,” Naomi groaned. “Kick them off, all the way down.”
I tucked my thumb under the band of my boxers.
“No, Jack,” Naomi said. She giggled. “The blankets, Romeo.”
I had to reorient myself. The plan was to discourage her, not make it worse, fuck-face. Come on, get your head in the game. Wait, no; out of the game.
Once my legs were out in the open, Naomi came to the bedside and dropped the rail on the side that was conveniently there to keep me from rolling out of it or something. She put her hands on my shin bone, and rolled my leg a little, looking for something; too tight, too loose, falling off. Some secret PT bullshit, she didn’t tell me.
She rolled my ankles, tugged on my leg, had me push against her hand with the ball of my foot, bend my knee, and then lift the whole leg and hold it there for several seconds. A lot like what I did with my arms when she worked those.
Each time she did, though, she touched me somewhere. Differently than before. First, when I’d seen her right after I came in, she’d been clinical, methodical, even rough. Not gonna lie, it hurt; but it was kinda hot, too.
She’d changed, though. A bit at a time, and now her fingers didn’t just rest lightly here or there; when they moved from one place to another her fingers trailed half the time and left tingling traces behind that snuck up the skin of my leg and made other things tingle. I kept up a mask of plain, stone-dead expressionless nothing on my face because every time she did it I wanted to grab her hand and put it somewhere else; somewhere I’d appreciate that touch a lot more.
Not that I had any doubts, but when she asked me to pull against her hands with my thigh, like I was closin’ my legs—which I thought was ironic—her lower hand was on my knee but the other was higher up, almost at the lower hem of my boxers.
I watched her hand. Maybe, I thought, she had just decided she wanted a bang. Free and clear, no strings. Maybe she was trying to tease me, turn the tables after I gave her a hard time early on. Maybe I was reading into all of it and way off base. I didn’t think so, though. Signals were signals; you didn’t see ‘em, you felt ‘em.
The way I saw it, there were two ways this went and they were both fine with me. Either I gave her what I was pretty sure she wanted, had a good time, and then that was the end of it; or I gave it a shot, she slapped me, I survived, and that was the end of it. Either way, nothing really changed, right?
I reached down and put my hand over hers, the one closest to where I was already starting to swell up, half-stocked just from having her hand so close.
Naomi froze just where she was, deer in the headlights still.
Naomi
“My legs’ll be fine,” Jack said. His hand was rough on mine, but hot. It was heavy, like it weighed as much as a brick, and though I’d touched his hands a dozen times now they felt suddenly different. Full of force, just barely contained.
The Hitman's Baby - A Bad Boy Secret Baby Romance (With extra added bonus novel for a short time only!) Page 23