It was time to put painful old memories behind me. Caleb Jackson didn’t exist anymore, I told myself. Besides, the boy I thought he was back then hadn’t really existed anyway. The patient I’d be seeing for the next few weeks was called Trig.
The fact that he had the same dark, penetrating eyes and the same lazy, sensuous smirk that made my insides turn to Jello? That was just a coincidence.
7
Trig
Thank Christ even though my bum left leg meant I couldn’t ride my bike, I could still drive a cage. Otherwise, I’d be stuck being carted around by Cal like a fuckin’ kid, like last time I’d been shot.
The day I got out of the hospital, Cal drove me straight to the clubhouse so I could show the brothers I was doing okay. Grey didn’t say anything about the partial conversation he’d overheard between me and the doc, and I didn’t bring it up. I wasn’t ready to talk about that shit with anyone else, especially him. Grey was a great guy, and a fucking top notch president. I considered being his VP a privilege. But if I couldn’t ride anymore, I’d have to step down from that position, no question. A gimp VP wasn’t worth anything to the club.
I didn’t own a four-wheeled vehicle, but Grey gave me the keys to one of the trucks we used for pickups and drop-offs so I could get around. It was a little tough getting in and out of it, but there was room to stretch out in the cab once I was behind the wheel. So after making my appearance and telling everyone I’d be up and running soon, I hoisted myself into the truck and drove myself home.
My bike was sitting in the garage when I got there. One of the brothers had driven it back to my place from the motel the day I got shot.
I flipped the overhead light, cracked a beer, and lowered myself painfully onto the stairs leading down into the garage from the kitchen. There it sat, my pride and joy, and there it would sit for at least the next six weeks. The one possession, other than my cut, that mattered more to me than anything.
And if the physical therapy didn’t go well, I might not ever be able to ride it again.
I hadn’t told anyone in the MC how serious the injury was, or that I might not recover fully, and I knew Grey wouldn’t tell anyone the part he’d heard. I didn’t need the looks they’d give me if they knew. Oh, I knew they’d try to mask their pity, but I’d see it all the same.
I thought I’d done a pretty good job of convincing them all I was fine, knocking back a couple of shots with them despite the pain meds I was on, until I told them I was tired and was gonna pack it in for the night. Now here I was, sitting in the dark with no companions but my thoughts, none of them good. Truth was, I didn’t want to be alone, but I didn’t want to be with anyone, either.
I just wanted to fast forward to a couple months from now, to know whether I was still gonna be a Stone King when this was all over.
Because if I couldn’t ride, I was done. I was quitting the club.
I wasn’t gonna be some goddamn charity case. I’d miss the club and everyone in it like crazy, but if I was gonna lose the life I knew, I’d rather rip the bandaid off and lose it all. Start over again from zero someplace else. Doing what, I had no idea.
I took a long pull of the beer and leaned back against the door jamb, closing my eyes. In my mind’s eye, Eva’s face appeared. Her lip was turned up in that mocking half-smile she’d given me earlier that day, her brow arched.
She had called me a fucking baby when I tried to get her to shut up with all the talking about my leg. A laugh snorted out of me in spite of myself. I didn’t think anyone had called me that since I was five years old. She had guts, I’d give her that. And a goddamn smart mouth.
A mouth I ached to kiss.
Fuck.
I opened my eyes and sighed. Even after all this time, Eva Van Buren still had the ability to twist me up in knots. No other girl, before or since, had ever held my interest past a fuck or two. Hell, maybe that was the problem. Maybe if I’d just managed to fuck her back then — get it out of my system — I wouldn’t have cared so much when she went batshit on me.
Maybe if I can get her into bed now… it would do the same.
The thought came unbidden, and I pushed it aside. Eva hated me way too much to have sex with me. Plus, she was probably one of those “take your professional duty seriously” types. She didn’t strike me as the kind to engage in horizontal aerobics with her patients. She had standards.
Besides, even if I could convince her to get all hot and sweaty with me, I wasn’t exactly in fighting form with this bum leg.
My cock had hardened and thickened at the thought of getting Eva into bed. At least the plumbing still works, I noted to myself sardonically.
Shaking my head, I grabbed one of the crutches I had propped up against the jamb and used it to haul myself up, wincing as I did. I flashed back to the hospital, to when I sprouted wood just as Eva was bending down to look at my wound site. Jesus Christ, I hoped I wasn’t gonna be sporting a third leg the whole time I was in therapy. It was gonna be fucked up enough with me having to take directions from her for an hour every day. The last thing I needed was her laughing at me to boot.
I wish I could say I didn’t jerk off to thoughts of her before I went to sleep that night, but I’d be lying. In so many ways, it felt like the ten years separating us had never happened. It was almost as though I was right back to being an eighteen year-old kid who couldn’t stop thinking about the one girl who wanted absolutely nothing to do with him.
I overslept the next morning, and I was grouchy as fuck as I made myself a half-pot of coffee and stumbled around my kitchen like a goddamn invalid. I dropped some grounds on the floor but had no way to clean them up, so I just left them there, wishing I had a caffeine-addicted dog or some shit to take care of them for me.
I couldn’t take a shower with the bandage on, but luckily the remodel I had done on the bathroom last year had included a stall with a sizable bench built in and a hand-held shower head. So at least I was more or less able to make sure I didn’t smell like I’d slept in an alley.
I showed up for my first physical therapy appointment five minutes late, a fact that Eva wasted no time letting me know.
“If you don’t take your therapy seriously, your chances of making a full recovery will be lessened,” she said as she led me back to the rehab room.
“You already told me that,” I grumbled. “Besides, have you ever tried to get into a pickup truck with a fucked-up leg? It takes some doing.”
“I’m sure it does.” She looked down at my jeans. “Didn’t the appointment desk tell you to dress in shorts or workout sweats?”
“Yeah,” I said. “But I don’t have any.” Truth be told, I did have some gym shorts, but damned if I was gonna wear them to be poked and prodded by Eva.
She pursed her lips. “I should send you home and tell you not to come back until you’re wearing the proper attire.”
“You’re kind of bossy. Has anyone ever told you you’re kind of bossy?”
“Would you be calling me that word if I were a man?” Her eyes flashed.
“Probably not. You’re still bossy.”
“And you’re sexist.” She turned to a cabinet and reached in, pulling out a pair of gray sweats. “Here,” she said, nodding to a door that had the unisex restroom sign on it. “Go change into these. That’s an order.”
She walked away before I could respond.
Grumbling, I went into the bathroom and spent a painful five minutes pulling off my jeans and putting on the sweats. When I came back out, Eva took the clothes I’d piled on a small table inside the bathroom and shoved them in a cubby by the front desk.
“You can change back into them when we’re through,” she said. “But next time, dress appropriately.”
Eva was all business as she showed me the room we’d be working in. All sorts of weird contraptions, balls, colored mats, and weights were organized at strategic places. Off to the far end, an older lady was lying on a mat, trying to raise her arm up ninety degrees to meet h
er therapist’s hand.
Shit. Me and a senior citizen. Fuck if that didn’t make me feel even worse.
“So,” Eva began. “We’ll be starting out slowly, because your wound is still healing. But the longer we wait, the longer your recovery time will be. So, we’re going to start out with some basic movements so I can see your starting point.
“I’m going to need you to tell me how everything feels, and describe any numbness or pain you experience.” She glanced at me briefly, her eyes cool and professional. “How much longer is your course of pain medication?”
“I stopped taking them this morning,” I growled.
Her eyes widened. “Is that a good idea?”
“I don’t care if it’s a good idea. The doc put me on Percocet. That shit is addictive as hell.” I shook my head. “I’ll take the antibiotics, but fuck the pain meds.”
She took a deep breath and let it out. “Okay. Well, that’s good to know. But recognize that some of these exercises will be more painful as a result.”
“I’m no stranger to pain.”
She smirked at me, her eyes twinkling. “You sound like some tough guy character in a movie.”
Goddamnit, was she making fun of me? “Can we move on?” I said impatiently.
Suppressing a smile, she nodded. “Okay. So, let’s see you move. Come over here to these bars.”
Eva had me crutch over to some parallel bars and told me to use my arms to take the weight off my leg, then show her how much mobility I had. Then she had me sit down and show her how much I could flex my ankle and foot. The entire time, her expression gave away nothing, until I went too far once and winced in pain.
“Shit,” I hissed.
Her eyes widened in concern. “Are you okay?”
I let my breath out slowly. “Yeah. Just overdid it a little. I’m still getting used to it, I guess.”
She blinked, and the mask of coolness returned. “Okay. Let’s go to the plinth and start some exercises.”
She brought me into another, smaller room, with a large padded table in it, kind of like a massage therapist table. I sat on it and propped my crutches next to me.
Eva disappeared for a moment and came back with an ice pack. “Lie down,” she said.
“What— ”
“Lie down. I’m going to ice the muscles.”
I lay back, and she unzipped the bottom of the sweats, then pushed the leg up past my thigh. I closed my eyes and tried not to think about anything as she placed the ice pack.
She started talking about how icing me down would facilitate movement, and then ran through some of the exercises she planned to have me do, but I wasn’t really listening. All I could think about was how she sort of smelled like lilacs, and how her hands felt firm but gentle on the muscles of my thigh.
It was a special brand of torture to have her working on me so close to my groin. Why the fuck couldn’t I have been shot in the arm or something? I groused to myself.
The entire time she worked on me, I was concentrating as hard as I could not to let myself get hard. I even started mentally disassembling and reassembling carburetors in my head to keep my mind off how distractingly close she was.
Thank Christ she finally stopped with the torture, and then led me back out to the main room. She started me through a course of exercises: quad sets, hamstring sets, and something she called “heel slides,” where I slid my heel across the floor with a strap around the bottom of my foot, to get better at bending and straightening my knee. It was all pretty boring, and sometimes frustrating as shit.
I was getting pretty sick of the whole damn thing when Eva told me to launch into yet another set.
“Okay. Try it again.”
“I’ve been doing this exercise for five minutes,” I complained.
“That’s completely irrelevant.”
“That’s easy for you to say. You’re not the one with the goddamn gunshot wound.”
“Are you questioning me?” Her eyes flashed.
“No. Jesus. I’m just saying I’m getting sick of it.”
“Also irrelevant. Give me another set.”
I shrugged. “Whatever you say, princess.”
She froze. At first, I didn’t even know why, but then the realization of what I’d said hit me. I hadn’t planned to make any reference at all to the fucked-up past, but apparently my stupid mouth had other plans.
“Sorry,” I grunted. “It just slipped out.”
Eva’s entire body had become a mass of tension, like a coiled cobra ready to strike. She glanced up at the large clock on the wall.
“Session’s over,” she said coldly.
My gaze followed hers. “It’s only eleven thirty,” I said. “I thought we were supposed to go until twelve.”
“My gift to you.”
Without looking at me, she stood, and pushed my crutches toward me with her foot. “Don’t forget about wearing appropriate clothing in the future.”
And then she was gone.
8
Eva
I paced back and forth outside the back loading dock of the hospital, my heart hammering in my chest.
Goddamn it. God damn it.
I thought I could handle being Trig Jackson’s PT. I thought I was professional enough to push the past out of the way and concentrate on him as just another patient. But all it took was one word — one callous, cutting word — and all of the pain had come rushing back.
How dare he call me princess? Was he a child? Did it actually give him pleasure to try to make me feel like an awkward outcast again?
When I had calmed down a little bit and my breathing had slowed, I tried to think of any possible explanation for what he said that wasn’t edged with brutality, but I just couldn’t. It was too specific. There was no other way he could have meant it.
Whatever you say, princess.
It was, word for word, what he had said to me that day at the hot springs. Right after I shakily told him we should stop making out before things went too far for me to resist him any longer.
At the time, I had thrilled when he said it. It felt like a special name, just for me. A term of endearment. Something private. Tender, even. The word echoed through my head all the way home.
How wrong I was.
‘Princess’ was the one thing he could have said to me to cut me to the quick, even though I never would have believed he’d even remember calling me that. But he did. How could I possibly not believe he’d done it on purpose to make me remember the past? To remember what he’d done? Why, after all these years, would he be so invested in hurting me?
I had no idea. But what I did know is that I would not give him another chance to do it again.
When I had calmed down enough to go back inside, Trig was long gone. I wandered around until I found Vanessa just finishing up with a patient of her own.
“Hey,” I greeted her. “Listen, do you have time to get some lunch? I have a favor to ask you.”
“Sure, just give me a minute to make some notes,” she smiled. “Meet you out front?”
It was a beautiful day out, so we went to one of our favorite spots, a food truck taqueria across the street from the hospital that had the best fish tacos in town.
We found a bench to sit down and munched on our tacos for a few minutes in silence.
“So,” Vanessa said between bites. “What’s the favor?”
“I’d like you to take over a patient of mine,” I began.
She frowned. “What’s up?”
“I just don’t feel I’m the best person to help him.”
“What’s his story?”
I hesitated. “He, uh, has a gunshot wound. Femoral neuropathy. Dr. Larkin assigned him to me. I saw him this morning, and I think we’re not a good fit.”
She raised an eyebrow at me. “The hot one? With the tattoos? I saw him leave a little earlier. Why in God’s name would you want to get rid of that tasty morsel?”
Shit. I was going to have to tell her at least som
ething. “He, uh… Well, I know him from a long time ago. I’m not comfortable being his therapist.”
I did my best “it’s no big deal” shrug, but Vanessa is a bloodhound when she’s on the scent of what she thinks is a juicy story. Her face broke into a wide grin. “No way! You and he did the nasty? Oooh, girlfriend, I did not know you had it in you!” She held up a taco-less hand to high five me.
“No… No. It’s not like that.” I shook my head. “This was a long time ago. High school. And we never had sex. He was just… kind of a jerk,” I finished lamely.
Vanessa cocked her head at me skeptically. “Seriously? You’re scared to do PT on a guy who, like, pulled your pigtails or some shit way back when?”
“Vanessa, will you just please, please take him for me?” I begged. “You would be doing me the hugest favor ever.”
She gave me a pointed look. “Girl, that is some dumb shit. But okay. When’s his next appointment?”
She clearly thought I was being an idiot. But I didn’t care.
“Tomorrow. Ten a.m,” I said, relief flooding through me.
Vanessa gave me a harrumph. “Well, I’ve already got someone at that time, so he’ll have to reschedule. I’ll tell Norma or Adele to give him a call.”
The rest of the day passed a little better, knowing that I wasn’t going to have to work with Trig anymore. I made sure to drop by the appointment desk on the way out to see when he had been rescheduled to come in the next day, and was happy to see that Norma had put him in for the late afternoon. I could be gone by then, no problem.
Maybe, if I kept an eye on his schedule, I could avoid ever seeing him again.
This was the happy thought in my head as I pulled into the driveway of my house later. I got out of my car and headed down the street to pick Zoe up from Mrs. Hayes, the woman who took care of her after pre-K four days a week. As I knocked lightly on the screen door and let myself in, the aroma of freshly-baked cookies wafted out to greet me.
STONE KINGS MOTORCYCLE CLUB: The Complete Collection Page 40