F-Bomb (The Bear Bottom Guardians MC Book 9)

by Lani Lynn Vale

  “No sleep yesterday, paired with working all day, on top of all that excitement at the end of your shift? There’s no wonder you’re tired,” he admitted.

  I felt my lips quirk up at the corners.

  “So how did you spend your night?” I asked curiously.

  He grunted out a reply of, “Spent from six to about ten in the evening sleeping. Got a call at about ten-fifteen saying that someone—that Tara chick that was popped in the head—had broken into Liner’s house and shot him in the arm. He’s the one you came in and peeked at really quick when you first got on the floor.”

  She frowned. “Were you in the room?”

  Slate shrugged. “Mostly. I was leaning against the vending machine right outside the door to his room. I was hidden by the machine because the baby cop protecting Tara kept looking at me like I was going to haul off and murder each of the staff. I think that’s really why he was at the nurses’ station instead of where he was supposed to be.”

  I rolled my eyes. “If he couldn’t tell that Tara was the more dangerous one in the room—at least at that moment in time—then he shouldn’t be a cop.”

  His eyes looked down at me as he said, “You ready to go?”

  I felt like there was something else there, something that I was missing, but I didn’t say anything to that.

  “I have to go up to X-ray and get my bag and stuff,” I muttered. “Do you want to wait here for me?” I paused. “Though I do have my own car. I can drive it and meet you there.”

  He shook his head. “Your dad let your brother take it. It’s at the restaurant.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Why does that not surprise me?”

  He shrugged. “In answer, though, I’ll just go with you. I’m parked out front, anyway. We can just take the elevator to the first floor instead of ground and go out that way.”

  “Why are you parked out front when your buddy went into the ER?” I questioned as we began walking.

  I noticed idly how the doctors, nurses, and visitors were the ones to get out of his way and not the other way around.

  I looked way up at the man that was so much taller than me and could see the reason why.

  Not only was he dressed in head to toe black other than his jeans—which were also so dark that they could’ve passed for black in dimmer light—but he was wearing a scowl the size of Kilgore on his face, and his arms were fisted at his sides. The veins in his arms were bulging, and even me not being a nurse, I still looked at them and thought they were rather large and juicy.

  I wanted to run my finger down one particular vein that started at his pinky finger and traveled all the way up his arm to disappear into his t-shirt.

  My face was nearly eye-level with a tattoo, and I tried to surreptitiously look at it without drawing attention to the fact that I was.

  It was a skull, of course, but it also had scriptwriting underneath in a different language. One that I’d never learned, obviously, because I couldn’t figure out what it meant.

  I’d have to Google it later when I got home.

  Another woman quickly pulled her son, who was busy facing the iPad he had in his hand and not paying attention to where he was walking, out of the way and onto the correct side of the hallway.

  She almost looked scared when she did, causing me to look up at Slate’s face and chuckle.

  “You know,” I said with a slight laugh. “I could use you when I’m running from floor to floor. Most of the time I’m on a time crunch, but nobody ever sees me. When they do, they’re not really in that much of a hurry to move out of the way.”

  His face turned down and he looked at me questioningly.

  “Your scowl,” I said. “It’s intimidating.”

  He shrugged. “Can’t help my face.”

  He was right.

  He couldn’t.

  Not that he needed to or anything.

  Really, he just looked like someone that should be taken seriously.

  I had a feeling that when he was a cop, he was likely even more intimidating.

  I’ll bet he’d look good in a uniform.

  “I didn’t say anything was wrong with it,” I told him as we stopped at the bank of elevators. “All I’m saying is that you’re scowling. You don’t have to scowl. Not that I care if you scowl. You can scowl all you want.”

  His lips twitched right when the elevator door opened.

  That’s when I saw a group of people in there, all of which looked to be laughing about missing their stop on the first floor seeing as none of them got off and they were all laughing about their mistake.

  They also looked kind of drunk.

  What the hell?

  “Oh, there’s room!” one man said as he scooched back. “Sorry, we missed our floor. Come on.”

  I stepped on, or rather, started to step on, but Slate grabbed my hand and said, “We’ll wait. Thanks, though.”

  The drunk man shrugged and pushed the door close button.

  When the doors closed, I looked at him questioningly.

  “They smelled bad,” he muttered. “And I’m not squeezing in there with that. Fuckin’ gross.”

  I nodded in understanding. “My nose is all stopped up. I can’t smell a thing.”

  He grunted out a ‘you should be thankful’ and pressed the button to go up a second time.

  This time, when the elevator arrived, there was only one person on it and that one was too busy playing on her phone to even pay attention to either one of us.

  “People and their electronic devices,” Slate muttered. “What the fuck? When did that get so important? Why not live and experience life? You can’t find what you’re looking for in a goddamn screen.”

  I looked at him with surprise.

  “I never really thought about that, but I guess I am quite guilty of doing that also,” I admitted.

  He looked over at me.

  “I’ve been with you for hours now, and not once besides when your dad called did you ever look at your phone.” He indicated the woman that had just left the elevator. “She didn’t even look up.”

  I pressed the button for my floor, turned my back to the wall, and leaned against it. “I suppose you’re right. But there were extenuating circumstances.”

  I.e., you.

  Yet I didn’t say that part aloud.

  “Still,” he muttered darkly. “It’s just fuckin’ annoying. What’s even more annoying is to find people texting and driving and almost running me off the road. It’s like I have to pay double the attention that I used to, based solely on the fact that people can’t keep their goddamn eyes on the road.”

  That was true.

  “I had my dad install a train horn on my car,” I smiled brightly. “It takes up a lot of my trunk, but it’s so totally worth it to honk at people that are on their phone.”

  His lips twitched. “That’s actually kind of funny.”

  The elevator doors opened, signaling we’d arrived.

  “Come on,” I said with a tilt of my chin. “Come to the locker room with me.”

  He followed me this time instead of me following him, and we arrived in time to see shift change happening.

  The woman that was taking over for me waved. I waved back. “Good luck out there. It’s a mess.”

  She snorted as she held the door of the break room open for me. “I’ve heard. Have a good one.”

  “You, too,” I said, pushing the door open wide.

  Slate caught the door and held it for me to pass through, and I did, going under his arm like I was a small child instead of a fully grown adult.

  His eyes took in the small room as I walked to my locker, and his face lit on the cookies—or what was left of the cookies—that I’d bought from him just that afternoon.

  “You shared?” he asked as I spun my lock, cursing when on the first try it didn’t open.

  “No,” I snorted. “That was my lunch. I just didn’t get a chance to clean it up before I was paged back out.”

  I fucked th
e combination up again, causing him to study me.

  Then I really wasn’t going to get it.

  “I guess I don’t really need my purse,” I muttered darkly.

  He walked up to me and shouldered me out of the way slightly. “What’s the combination?”

  “23-7-44,” I murmured.

  He popped it open with the first try.

  I glared at him.

  He shrugged. “You went around twice instead of once the first time around.”

  That was true.

  I never remembered how many times I did it.

  I should’ve bought a key lock a long time ago.

  I missed it more than I got it at this point.

  And having him this close to me wasn’t helping matters.

  Grabbing my bag, I shouldered it and slammed my locker closed before once again locking it.

  “If you could come open it for me before and after each shift, I’d appreciate it,” I teased.

  His lip twitched—something that had been happening a lot tonight—and I felt almost giddy.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  I nodded and reached for my trash on the way out the door, tossing it in the trashcan as I left.

  He watched me do this, then held the door open for me once again.

  I didn’t duck as I went under his arm, but my hair did brush his arm as I passed underneath him.

  “Almost made it,” he teased.

  The ride down the elevator was less exciting this time, but we did happen to get on the same one that had the drunks on it earlier. I could smell the alcohol still, ten minutes later.

  He didn’t say a word and neither did I as he led me into the parking lot toward his bike.

  It was parked in a prime spot right outside the front doors.

  “Nice,” I said as I handed him my bag to tuck into his saddlebags.

  He took it, stuffed it in, and then said, “Sometimes luck is on my side.”

  He said it in such a way that made it sound like normally luck wasn’t on his side. Not at all.

  And that made my heart hurt for him a little bit.

  He closed the bags, then got on.

  I noticed this time, however, that there was a little seat on the back fender unlike last time.

  Then, without a second thought to who Slate was, or why I was so excited to be close to him all over again, I got on as well.

  For a second time in just as many days, I was on the back of his bike.

  This time, though, I didn’t bother to get as far away as I could.

  I got close.

  I also noticed him press back into me.

  Just the most infinitesimal of presses…but it was enough.

  Slate ended up being almost right.

  By the time we got out of the restaurant, it was almost four, and the bed was calling my name.

  Chapter 8

  Having a Snickers for dinner is acceptable when you’re an adult, right?

  -Slate’s secret thoughts

  Slate

  I could tell with an almost certainty that today wasn’t going to go at all how I had planned.

  Especially how it’d started.

  After getting the phone call, and finding myself at the ER, I’d been on alert.

  I’d felt like something was wrong, yet I couldn’t quite put my finger on why.

  After finding that I intimidated the staff and the brothers of the MC—an MC I still wasn’t sure really wanted me there—I’d spent the majority of the time outside, listening.

  Meaning I knew almost the instant that Harleigh was in danger.

  As soon as I saw her hit the ground after being backhanded by that man, something inside of me had switched from ‘off’ to ‘on.’

  Taking one look at her crumpled on the ground, holding her face, and I had nearly lost it.

  What I wouldn’t have given for the ability to have a weapon on me.

  How it had gone down had been me standing like a dumbass in front of Harleigh, hoping that he wouldn’t aim the gun in her direction.

  Seeing her crawl around on that dirty floor, trying in vain to escape, had made my heart ache with something I wasn’t really willing to admit I felt just yet.

  After I’d seen my chance, I’d taken the gunman down, and now I found myself going to dinner when all I really wanted to do was go home and decompress.

  Though, it helped that Harleigh was on the back of my bike two minutes ago and walking inside with me now.

  When we finally arrived, it wasn’t hard to find the MC and the rest of our group.

  Nor was it hard to realize that they’d started without us—drinking, that was.

  The ease in which we found them was likely due to the fact that they’d cordoned off a section of the restaurant, and they were being a rather rambunctious lot.

  “Wow,” I said surprisingly, coming to a stop just shy of being in the actual restaurant. “They didn’t waste time, did they?”

  Harleigh’s eyes shone as she took in the group.

  “No,” she agreed. “They sure didn’t…do we even need to be here?”

  She sounded tired.

  Really tired.

  I looked down at her to see her eyes wary and exhausted as if she wanted to be here about as much as I did.

  “Your brother’s in the corner there,” I murmured.

  The brother had come in for all of a minute and a half.

  He hadn’t said a word.

  All he’d done—in full uniform might I add—was walk—stomp—in, let his eyes take Harleigh in from head to toe, and then march right back out.

  He hadn’t even seen me standing there next to her.

  Or, if he had, he hadn’t reacted to that.

  Her brother wasn’t wearing the military uniform anymore.

  This time he was in a black t-shirt, jeans, and a baseball cap. He had his arms crossed over his chest, and yes, I agreed. He definitely had quite a few colorful tattoos—and they had nothing to do with the actual color of them.

  His eyes were the first ones to come to us, stalling there at the entrance of the restaurant that neither one of us wanted to be at.

  His lips tipped up at the corner as he saw his sister’s rather unhidden annoyance.

  “He’s a butthead,” she agreed. “But I love him.”

  “He looks like a much younger version of your father,” I found myself saying. “Obviously, that’s rather understandable why he does, but shit, they could be each other’s clones.”

  Harleigh sighed and grabbed a hold of my shirt, pulling me in her wake.

  “That’s why he got all those tattoos,” she explained. “Everybody always compared him to my father, and let me tell you something, he’s definitely not my father. Not in any way, shape or form.”

  I looked at Dax, then at the older version, Harleigh’s father.

  If Max’s looks were any indication, Dax would age quite well.

  And I also wouldn’t consider either of them beautiful.

  Their eyes were definitely too intense to ever be considered ‘pretty.’

  Though, I wouldn’t argue with Harleigh about that, because she’d probably want to know why I felt like that.

  And really, only a killer recognized another killer.

  “There’re only two seats left in the entire group,” she muttered. “Right in the freakin’ middle.”

  “Your brother looks like he’s moving people over,” I argued. “At least one chair for you, anyway.”

  And he had. By the time we arrived to the large group, Dax had acquired a chair directly next to him, and he was already pointing at it.

  However, before Harleigh could sit down, Payton was up and throwing herself at her child.

  “Oh, boy,” she whispered as she hugged her daughter fiercely. “You’re going to have a beautiful shiner in the morning.”

  Harleigh lifted her hand to touch the bruise, which caused me to study it.

  Payton was right. That bruise was going to be gnarly.

>   She’d be lucky if she could even see out of the eye at this point tomorrow.

  I frowned and turned around, abandoning her to her fate.

  Stopping the first person I saw, I asked for a baggie of ice and a towel.

  The woman’s eyes went wide, and that was when I realized she’d recognized me.

  Not that it was really hard not to, but still.

  “Yes, s-sir,” she stammered.

  I rolled my eyes heavenward.

  Dear God.

  “Thank you,” I tried for sweet.

  It didn’t come out as sweet.

  It came out as rather short and abrupt.

  Which was what I was feeling.

  I’d gone from everyone loving me because who I was and what I did, to everybody staring at me like I was going to haul off and kick their asses at any second.

  Not that some of them didn’t deserve it, but shit. I would never do that. Plus, we were in a public place. Even if the thought had crossed my mind, I’d be caught in a nanosecond.

  She practically ran toward the kitchen, narrowly missing getting her face bashed in by the swinging kitchen door.

  When she disappeared around the corner, I moved farther up into the mouth of the kitchen and waited patiently.

  When she came back two minutes later, ice in one hand and a towel in the other, shaking like a leaf, I barely restrained the urge to snap at her.

  “Thank you,” I murmured, trying to keep my voice low.

  She backed away like I was going to jump at her any second, and I turned with a curse, heading straight for the woman of the hour.

  Or at least, my woman of the hour.

  My woman?

  What the fuck kind of thought was that?

  Though, technically, I’d been having these thoughts for quite some time. It was only after learning that she wasn’t married last night that they’d gone from ‘can’t have’ to ‘shouldn’t have.’

  Making my way back through the too-close-together tables, I stopped at where Harleigh was sitting and handed the ice over.

  “Here,” I said as I dropped my hand in front of her face. “Put this on your face.”

  She’d had ice on and off her face for the last couple of hours, but we’d left her bag melting on the desk next to where she was sitting as we filled out our statements.