by Amy Brent
“Fuck you,” I said, gritting my teeth at him. “I’m getting out of here in two days, with or without your approval.”
“Okay, Mr. Daniels,” he said, moving toward the door. “It’s your funeral.”
“Fucking A right it is.” I managed to stay awake long enough for him to leave the room, then my head started to swim and I passed out dead to the world.
Shelby Cates
“I refuse to have that boy in this house!” I said it like I owned the place and slammed my fist down on the table to make my point. The silverware jumped and Daddy’s cup of hot coffee almost sloshed over. “He ain’t nothing but trouble and I will not have him here.”
“Settle down, Shelby,” Daddy said slowly, waving his fork at me as if it were a magic wand that could put his only daughter in her place. He blew out a long sigh that made the long whiskers in his mustache bristle.
“First off, he ain’t a boy, he’s a man, and second, this ain’t your house. Least not yet. When I’m gone, it’ll be yours and your brother’s to fight over. Till then, I have the say on who can sleep under this roof and who can’t.”
I sat on the edge of my chair at the other end of the table fuming at him. I just couldn’t believe Daddy would allow such a low-life piece of crap like Luke Daniels to stay under his roof.
In the meantime, my idiot brother, Cody, who brought up the topic of bringing his best friend, Luke, to the ranch to recover from getting gored by a rodeo bull, sat between us silently picking at his breakfast like a man keeping his head down hoping to go unnoticed during a bar fight.
“Luke’s always been like family, Shelby, and you know it,” Daddy said, stabbing another sausage link with his fork and bringing it to his plate. “Now granted, sometimes he’s been the black sheep of the family, but we don’t turn our backs on family, regardless of color.”
“What the hell does that even mean?” I snapped.
“It means you need to hush up and let me eat my breakfast in peace. I swear, you’re getting to be just like your mother.” He cut the link in two with the side of the fork and stuck half in his mouth. When he chewed, his mustache wiggled. When I was a little girl I thought it was cute. Now it just annoyed the heck out of me.
Daddy wiggled the fork at me again. “I swear, that woman could give me heartburn before breakfast just by looking at me. Don’t you try to do the same.”
“You gonna run Shelby off, too, Daddy?” Cody asked, grinning, cutting his eyes at Daddy. He was referring to the day fifteen years ago when Mama came home to find her bags packed and sitting outside the front gates of the ranch with Daddy standing there with his shotgun cradled in his arm. He had found out Mama was sleeping with a cowboy in town and that was all she wrote. Me and Cody stood inside the gate watching with tears in our eyes.
Mama didn’t bother to deny it or place blame. She’d been caught fair and square, and she knew Daddy was not a man prone to forgiveness after he’d been cheated on. I admired Daddy’s restraint. He just told her to pick up her bags and git. When he was a younger man he would have tracked her and the cowboy down and gutted them both like a deer.
“You hush, too,” Daddy snapped at Cody, though he was trying not to grin beneath the mustache that covered his lips.
“But Daddy, Luke Daniels ain’t nothing but trouble,” I said again, sitting back and crossing my arms over my breasts. I was starting to feel like a lousy lawyer arguing a losing case. My only argument against Luke Daniels was that he was “nothing but trouble” because that’s all I could say about him without riling Daddy up to the point of violence.
There were lots more things I could say about Luke, but I never would, not to Daddy, the man who still treated me like I was his virginal little girl. In his mind, I was still as chaste as mountain snow. He’d shit in his hat if he knew how many boys I had slept with in high school and while I was away at college. His little girl was no slut, but she hadn’t been a virgin since the day she turned sixteen. Luke Daniels saw to that.
I hadn’t seen Luke since the day I left for college six years ago, but I expected that he hadn’t changed much. Too good-looking for his own good, more muscles than brains, didn’t give a rat’s patoot about anything or anybody other than riding bulls and having a good time. And by good time I meant that he would drink anything you put in front of him and screw anything that moved and some things that didn’t. Cody always said Luke was stubborn as a mule and hung like a horse. I knew from personal experience that points were true.
Fuckin’ hell… it annoyed me to no end that the mention of Luke Daniels’ name could make my nipples hard. My waterworks were going, too, like somebody had turned on the faucet down there. I could feel hot moisture pooling in the cotton panties between my legs. Try as I might, it seemed I only despised Luke from the neck up, because from the neck down, it was party time.
“Why do you hate Luke so much, Shelby?” Cody asked, giving me a sideways glance. He picked up another biscuit and swirled it around the gravy left on his plate. He popped the entire biscuit into his mouth and chewed slowly while giving me a knowing smile.
“I just do,” I said, growling at him. “That boy’s been nothing but trouble since the day he was born.” Daddy was watching us from the other end from beneath his bushy eyebrows.
“You keep saying that Luke ain’t nothing but trouble,” Cody said, glancing at Daddy but talking to me. “What’d Luke ever do to you to make you hate him so much?”
“He never did anything to me,” I snapped. “Just shut up and eat your damn biscuit.”
Anyone listening would have thought that we were little kids the way we argued, even though I was twenty-four and just home with a degree in agriculture from Texas A&M, and Cody was a twenty-eight-year-old cowboy who helped daddy run the ranch.
I glared at Cody. He knew why I hated Luke Daniels, and he knew better than to say anything in front of Daddy. Daddy might have shot Luke with both barrels of his old shotgun if he knew what happened between us. Cody knew that, too, which was why he would never say anything.
Cody just rolled his dark eyes and shook his head. Cody looked more like Mama than Daddy. He had jet black hair that hung in his steel blue eyes and sharp Cherokee features. He was big and tall and rugged and had never started a fight, but was always ready to finish one if somebody was picking on me or Luke. His skin was the color of dark honey, year-round.
I looked more like daddy; tall and thin, with strawberry-blond hair that I kept pulled back into a long ponytail at the base of my neck, blue eyes, and fair Irish complexion that refused to tan even in the hot Texas sun. I had to wear long sleeves and a floppy hat to keep from burning when I went outside.
Crazy that I had gotten a Masters in agriculture, I know. I planned to spend more time doing seed research in nice, air-conditioned labs than tromping around outside in the scorching Texas sun.
Cody was easygoing like Mama and I was a stick of dynamite ready to explode like Daddy was at my age. Time had mellowed him. I couldn’t imagine it doing the same to me.
Cody and Luke had been like brothers since the day Luke’s parents were killed in a car wreck out on Highway 9. Luke was two months younger than Cody, so Cody always treated him like a little brother.
Luke’s daddy was my Daddy’s best friend and lead ranch hand. Luke came to live with us when he was twelve and I was ten. We all grew up together, but Cody and Luke were thick as thieves. You never saw one without the other.
Luke never gave me a second glance until I started filling out my t-shirts and bikini tops, then, like most girls in Calloway County, it became my life’s mission to get Luke Daniels to notice me… to touch me.
He always called me “Lil Sis” up until the day I left for college. The only time he didn’t call me Little Sis was when he was taking my virginity in the barn on my sixteenth birthday.
Sometimes I wondered if Cody was really all right with what happened between me and Luke all those years ago. He had always been a protective big brother to us both,
but when it came to Luke, he always seemed ready to give him a pass.
It made me sad sometimes that Cody hadn’t beaten the shit out Luke when he caught us in the barn that night, his best friend and his little sister fucking like rabbits in the hayloft. Cody hadn’t said a word. He just blinked at us for a moment, like he couldn’t believe his eyes, then went back down the ladder out of sight so me and Luke could finish what we were doing.
I guess Cody understood that Luke wasn’t forcing me to do anything I didn’t want to do, since I was the one on top, riding Luke like a rodeo cowgirl trotting around the arena on her prized stallion.
I was the one who had dragged Luke out to the barn while everyone else was enjoying my Sweet Sixteen birthday cake.
I was the one who begged Luke to pop my cherry.
I was the one who wanted him to be my first.
At the time, I wanted him to be my first, last, and only.
Maybe I still wanted that.
Maybe that was the problem.
Maybe that was why I was so damned afraid of seeing him again.
Luke
“I still think you should wait a few more days,” the doctor said, giving a disapproving shake of his head as he read over my chart for hopefully the last time. “You pop those stitches again and – “
“I know, doc,” I said, holding up my hands. “I could bleed out and die.”
He shot me a hard look over the top of his reading glasses. “Yes, without immediate medical attention, you could bleed out and die.”
“I understand, doc,” I said. “Don’t you worry. I plan to outlive you by a good thirty years just so I can say I told you so.”
I offered up the best smile I could muster. My side still hurt like a sumbitch, despite the pain meds and antibiotics they’d been pumping into me for over a week. It felt like somebody was sticking a hot branding iron into my gut, but I wasn’t gonna let him know that. I held up my right hand and said, “I promise to be careful. Scouts honor.”
“I seriously doubt you were ever a Scout,” he mumbled. He held out his hands and sighed like a man who was giving up. “All right then, you have been warned and I bear no responsibility for anything that happens to you once you walk out that door.”
“Agreed,” I said. “I am on my own. Got it.”
He closed my chart and tucked it under his arm. He took off the glasses and tucked them into the front pocket of his white coat. He asked, “Do you want me to prescribe pain meds to go with the antibiotics?”
“Don’t need pain meds, doc,” I lied. “I just need some clothes and directions to the elevator.”
I was sitting on the edge of the bed with my feet dangling, still wearing a flimsy hospital gown and nothing else. I’d been told that my bloody clothes had been cut off me by the EMTs and thrown away. The only things that survived were my bloodstained National Rodeo Association Championship belt and silver buckle (they knew I’d skin them alive if they hurt that belt) and my scuffed boots, which were sitting on the floor next to the bed with the belt tucked inside one of them. Far as I knew my old truck, along with everything I owned like clothes and a wallet that didn’t have more than a few dollars in it, was still sitting in the parking lot at the rodeo arena.
Sweet Thing -- the cute little nurse that I’d banged in the bathroom a couple of days before -- came in carrying a pair of blue hospital scrubs for me to go home in. The doctor watched her like a hawk as she set the scrubs on the bed next to me and quickly left the room without ever looking me in the eye. Too bad. I would have loved to have tapped that sweet ass one more time before being released. Oh well. Maybe I’d look her up the next time the rodeo was in Houston.
I had convinced the old bat of a nurse not to report Sweet Thing for what we’d done. It was all my fault, I said. Don’t punish her because I can’t keep my pecker from getting hard. Don’t ask me how I convinced her because that is a tale I will not tell. Let’s just say that sometimes a man must do things he wouldn’t otherwise do sober and leave it at that.
“Do you need help with that?” the doc asked, watching me struggle with the scrub shirt. I got my head in okay, but when I raised my arms it felt like somebody was sticking a chainsaw in my guts. I grunted at him as I got the shirt over my arms. He stepped in to tug the shirt down carefully over my bandaged side. My face was washed with sweat and I felt like I was gonna puke, but I held up a hand to shoo him away.
“I’m okay,” I said, my voice a hoarse whisper. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply for a moment. Slowly, the nausea subsided. I picked up the scrub pants and slid them up my legs and cinched them at my waist. Without underwear to keep it in place, my junk kind of bulged out the front of the thin scrub pants. Oh well. Nothing I could do but let it hang.
I tossed the hospital gown on the bed and pulled the belt out of the boots to set it on the nightstand. I ignored the dried blood that coated the silver buckle and dark leather. I didn’t have any socks, so I just slid my bare feet into the boots.
It took all the energy I had just to get dressed. I leaned back on the pillows and closed my eyes. Cody would be here soon to take me home where I could rest without a bunch of doctors and nurses fussing over me. I swear, these people would wake you up to give you a sleeping pill.
“Okay, Mr. Daniels,” the doc said with a tone of finality, still shaking his head at me. “I’ve done all I can do. I’ll go sign your release forms and the nurse will be in shortly with a wheelchair to roll you downstairs.”
He put a hand on the pointed toe of my boot and gave it a little wiggle. “Behave yourself, Mr. Daniels. I don’t ever want to see you in here again.”
“Don’t worry, doc,” I said quietly. “Next time a bull gores me in the gut I’ll make sure they just let me die in the dirt.”
Shelby
I just about had a hissy fit when Daddy told me that I would have to drive four hours to Houston to pick up Luke from the hospital because he and Cody were going to be busy nutting young bulls all day.
Actually, I think the correct term is “de-nutting”.
If you don’t know what that means, look it up for yourself because it’s too disgusting for me to talk about.
Anyway, when Daddy told me that Luke would be released later in the day and I had to pick him up, I said no fucking way. Let him take a bus or a taxi. I wasn’t going to spend four hours getting there and four hours back, stuck in a truck with Luke Daniels.
No way.
Forget it.
Shit.
Needless to say, I was still fuming when I pulled into the Houston Memorial Hospital parking lot and went to the desk to ask what room Luke Daniels was in. I was directed to take the elevator to the fifth floor, room 518. I got in the elevator and when the doors slid shut, I checked my reflection in the mirrored surface.
I was wearing skin tight jeans with the legs tucked into a pair of old cowboy boots, and a denim shirt rolled up to the elbows and tied at the waist, over a white camisole that showed off a fair amount of my freckled cleavage.
I had my hair pulled back like always and had even put on a little makeup. Silly, I know, but I wanted Luke to look at me and see what he missed out on when he left all those years ago.
Look at what you could have been fucking all that time, I wanted to say.
Look at what you could have had riding you like a buckin’ bronco.
Then again, by now we probably would have been divorced and fighting over custody of a couple of rugrat kids.
I don’t want them, you take them.
No way, they’re yours…
By the time the elevator dinged and opened to the fifth floor, I had just about decided that maybe it was best that Luke had left me behind.
If he hadn’t left home to ride the rodeo circuit, we might have gotten married and I might never have gone off to college to get my degrees and create a life of my own.
I might have lived my whole life on a dusty Texas ranch popping out babies and washing dirty diapers and wiping snotty nos
es while wondering if their daddy was ever gonna come home.
Maybe he did me a favor by leaving me behind.
Maybe I’m the hard-headed, strong-willed woman that I am today because Luke Daniels took off one day and never came back.
Maybe I was better off.
I guessed I’d never know.
* * *
Luke was in room 518. I held my breath as I walked down the long hallway, counting room numbers as I went. 510… 511… 512…
When I reached room 518, I paused for a moment to peek through the open doorway. It had been six years since I’d seen Luke. I was eighteen and he was twenty. We’d had sex dozens of times. We’d kept our relationship (if you could call it that) secret because Luke didn’t think Daddy would approve and he was probably right.
We weren’t exclusive or anything. I dated other boys and lord knows he went with other girls. But we had a bond that kept bringing us back together. Or at least I thought we did.
Then one day Luke said he was hitting the rodeo circuit and didn’t know when he’d be back. I was stupid in love with him and he was stupid in love with the rodeo. He just drove away and left me standing there in the dust waving goodbye like the village idiot. I kept waiting for him to turn around, but he never did.
Peering through the door, I held my breath, wondering how much he had changed, if he had changed at all.
The last time I saw him he was a strapping young bull rider with broad shoulders and a thick chest, and arms that were roped with muscle from hanging on to the backs of thousand pound bulls.
He had shaggy blond hair that hung down in his blue eyes and a smile that made me melt in my panties. His skin was the color of tanned boot leather from a life spent in the Texas sun.
He looked like a young Brad Pitt and he knew it.
And he took advantage of it every chance he got.
Besides me, he probably screwed half the girls in Calloway County and would have screwed the other half if he’d had the time.