Chased

by Hazel James

  “Because you’re a great roommate, and because you like kids and care about their education,” she notes, taking the ingredients for a sandwich out of the fridge. Ali doesn’t usually work Mondays, but one nurse is on vacation and another got food poisoning, so she’s filling in. She slaps some mayo and lettuce on whole wheat bread and finishes up with a few slices of turkey and a piece of cheese. I should probably pack my dinner when I go to work. Maybe I’d lose a few pounds.

  “I’d like to point out that I don’t even know these kids.” I take a sip of my drink and break into my donut, savoring the combination of Bavarian pudding and chocolate icing. There’s no room for guilt here. “And you’re sure your brother-in-law is okay with looking at my car today?” It’s been making a knocking noise, and I’d like to get it fixed before I drive to Louisiana tomorrow to see Chad. I don’t have to work again until Friday night, so I’m surprising him.

  “Yeah, he said he had some time this afternoon. He’ll pick you up too, since he’s also doing career day at Austin’s school. Given your sense of direction, it’s probably safer that way,” she laughs, tucking a piece of her inverted bob behind her ear. I’d argue, but there’s no point. With my luck, I’d get lost and show up about ten minutes after school let out.

  “What grade is he in again? And how long do I have to speak?”

  “First, and about five minutes. Then you answer questions they may have.” She zips up her lunch bag and grabs her keys from the ring beside the front door. “He’ll be here at nine, so you’ve still got about thirty minutes.”

  “Okay,” I say with a mouthful of donut as she opens the door. That’ll give me enough time to shower—and hopefully wake up more—before I leave.

  The doorbell rings two minutes before nine.

  “Coming!” I yell, grabbing my purse and my lip gloss. Wait…where’d it go? I scan the counter, where I swore I left it.

  Nothing.

  Three hard knocks come from the other side of the door.

  “Just a sec!” I dash to my bedroom to check my night stand, but it’s still missing.

  The doorbell rings again. I run back down the hall, through the kitchen and open the door on my way into the living room. I don’t bother to look at who’s there; surely Ali wouldn’t have sent a murderer to the house, right?

  “Sorry! Just looking for my lip gloss before we go,” I call while feeling between the couch cushions. I come up empty-handed, except for a stale Wheat Thin from the last time I tried healthy snacking. Defeated, I trudge back into the kitchen. My steps falter when I see DH standing inside the door, holding my lip gloss. My lungs feel like they’ve just had an unfortunate encounter with a baseball bat, and I don’t move for several seconds, trying to figure out what I did to piss off the universe.

  “Are you nervous?” DH asks in a low voice. He leans back against the doorframe like he’s been here a hundred times. His dark blue jeans emphasize his long, muscular legs, and don’t even get me started on the way his gray shirt hugs his pecs and biceps. His Sooners ball cap completes the all-American look. If this was a photo in one of my middle school magazines, I would have cut it out and laminated it to keep my drool from damaging the picture. He’s so fucking gorgeous.

  I hate him so much.

  “No, why?” I do my best to sound bored and completely uninterested. People like DH can sense hormone surges like a shark in water, and I’m absolutely not on the market, despite what my estrogen is trying to tell the world.

  “You’re holding your breath,” he replies with a casual shrug of his left shoulder.

  “Why are you here? Are you stalking me again? I’ll get a restraining order, I swear to God.” Right after I get my lip gloss back. Because, priorities.

  “Relax, Nurse Paige. It’s career day. And I’m just as surprised to see you, for the record.” His eyes look me up and down, and for a brief moment, I wonder if I should have worn jeans and a shirt instead of my new floral-print dress. On the other hand, it’s sort of nice to see a man like him check me out the way he did Whitney the other night.

  “So you had no idea I lived here?” I don’t know why I bother asking. DH would probably lie to the Pope.

  “No. I thought I was picking up Allison.” He rolls my tube of cherry lip gloss between his thumb and first finger like he doesn’t have a care in the world.

  “Wait a minute.” I rub my forehead. Being up all night isn’t helping my ability to think straight. “Allison said her brother-in-law was picking me up. Shit! You’re not married to her sister are you?” I flash back to our conversation at the restaurant and suddenly feel like I need another shower.

  “Me? Married to Maggie?” DH laughs. “Fuck no. That’s Eric’s job.”

  I sigh with relief, remembering the guy who drove DH to the ER. “So why isn’t Eric here?”

  “He forgot about his jury duty.” My nostrils flare. Civic responsibility can kiss my ass.

  “Fine, whatever,” I mutter, reaching for my lip gloss. “Where was it, anyway?”

  “By the sink.”

  I know I looked there. I grab my house keys and flip the bottom lock before pulling the door shut.

  DH opens the passenger door to his white Ford F-150 4x4. I step up, careful not to give him a peek of my girly bits. I should have worn jeans.

  “Are you sure it’s safe for me to sit here?” I ask, pointing at the seat. For all I know, it could be a petri dish of bodily fluid.

  His eyebrows draw together as he scans inside of the cab. “Yeah, why wouldn’t it be?”

  “With the way you and Whitney were almost molesting each other last weekend, I thought for sure she’d be waiting for you spread-eagle.” I reluctantly sit down and buckle up. I suppose a car accident will kill me quicker than an STD from DH’s truck.

  “She was.” He flashes a wicked grin and walks around to his side while I suppress a gag. “Are you jealous?” He closes his door with a smirk and starts the engine. Rock music blares from the speakers, and he quickly turns the dial to a more tolerable volume.

  “No, I just don’t want to contract a venereal disease by sitting in your smut truck.” I hug my purse on my lap and wish I had the ability to levitate. I’m gonna kill Allison for this, even if she didn’t know about Eric’s change of plans.

  “Relax. We didn’t have sex on your seat.” He drives down the unpaved path to the main road. It’s actually one of the things I like most about Allison’s house. I feel safer with it being set back a bit, especially since I sleep alone during the day.

  “Well, that’s reassuring,” I say with a bite of sarcasm.

  “We were at her house.”

  Disgust washes over my face. “You are a vile human being, you know that?”

  “Aw, come on. That’s pretty harsh, don’t you think?” he chuckles.

  I turn my head in his direction. Christ, even his profile is gorgeous. Why does he have to be so repulsive? “So you mean to tell me you’re not a manwhore?”

  “I never said that. I’m clean though. I get tested every six months and I always wrap it up. I’ve also never had sex in my truck.” He pauses to check for traffic, then pulls onto the road. “What about you?”

  What about me? Let’s see. My boyfriend lives seven hours away, I haven’t had sex in a couple of months, and my vibrator just isn’t cutting it anymore. “My sex life is none of your business, thank you.” He laughs, which only irritates me more. “Jesus, are you even capable of having a normal conversation?” I retort.

  “Sure, I am.” He makes a left at Sonic. Maybe I can convince him to stop there after we’re done so I can get a cherry limeade.

  “Doubtful.” I roll my eyes.

  DH pulls up to a red light and faces me. “Tell me why you were so upset at work last weekend,” he says quietly, all hints of playfulness gone. His brown eyes stay fixed on me, which is equally spellbinding and unnerving. Is he being serious, or is this just part of his ploy to reel me in so he can bare his fangs when I’m within reach?

/>   Chancing it, I say, “I hate Dr. Spencer.” That’s about the easiest way to sum up that night.

  “You mean God’s gift to the emergency room?” he asks with a wry smile. “Yeah, I get that. Dude almost got punched a few times for the way he was speaking to you.”

  “Why, DH, who knew you were such a gentleman?” I ask in a fake Southern accent as the light turns green again. That’s something Chad would never consider. He’s far too reasonable to ever resort to violence. Not that punching someone would be my first choice. It’s just nice to know the option is on the table.

  “I can be a gentleman when I want to be,” he declares, his voice gruff.

  “It’s too bad you’re an ass the rest of the time.” I look out the window and concentrate on not smiling. DH is an arrogant bastard, but damn if it doesn’t feel good to have someone willing to fight on my behalf.

  If I’ve learned anything in the last hour, it’s this: kids are just as inquisitive as they are exhausting. In my five-minute discussion about being a nurse, I was interrupted no less than thirteen times. Half of that was by the same kid, Julian, who’s fascinated by dead things. He kept asking me about transporting bodies to the morgue.

  Watching DH around his nephew was damn cute though. Who knew Mr. Ego was actually a softy? He ended up talking about his enlistment in the Air Force instead of storm chasing. I had no idea he was a PJ. His self-diagnosis last weekend makes more sense now. Of course, Julian asked if DH killed anyone while he was in Afghanistan. DH took it in stride and said his job was to make sure people lived, not died. Surprisingly, Julian shut up after that.

  “Austin called you ‘Uncle D.’ What’s the D stand for?” I ask, buckling my seat belt. I must not have looked at his first name on his medical chart, and if I did, I can’t remember it.

  “You wanna know about my D?” he replies, giving me a ridiculous grin as he starts the truck.

  “You really are a twelve-year-old trapped in a man’s body, aren’t you?” I laugh while changing the radio to my favorite country station. I can’t handle any more rock music.

  “We all are. Some of us just hide it better than others.” He winks and pulls out of the elementary school parking lot as Taylor Swift comes through the speakers. Not caring that I’m in his truck, I crank the volume and sing along to “Teardrops on My Guitar.” I catch him looking at me several times, but that doesn’t stop me from grabbing the pen out of his cup holder and performing with my makeshift microphone. By the end of the song, he’s laughing with me.

  It’s nice, this moment. Almost like friends hanging out together.

  “That’s my name,” DH admits, turning the volume back down.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Drew. That’s my name.”

  “So, what’s the H stand for? Henry?”

  He laughs and shakes his head. “My middle name is Lucas. Andrew Lucas Rhoads.”

  “So, what’s the H stand for?” I repeat, even more curious.

  “Do you have anywhere to be?” He tosses a hopeful glance at me.

  “I’ve gotta take Ruby to Eric’s shop later to get my engine looked at,” I say, about three seconds before I remember he’s on jury duty. “Shit! There goes that.”

  “Assuming Ruby is your car, I have that covered. I’ll work on it this afternoon. I can drop you off at your house, and you can follow me back to the garage.”

  “You work on cars too?”

  “Yup. Rhoads Auto Shop, where we get you on the Rhoads again,” he says in a television announcer voice.

  “Very catchy,” I laugh.

  “Again, do you have anywhere else to be right now? Because I’m fucking starving. I figured I could tell you the story of how I got my nickname while we eat.” He pulls into Sonic and my insides weep with joy. I can practically taste the Coney dog and cherry limeade already.

  I watch DH empty three salsa packets on his cheeseburger. “That’s disgusting.”

  “Don’t knock it ‘til you try it. You have no idea what you’re missing out on.” He picks up his burger and devours half of it in one bite.

  What a pig.

  “Normal people put ketchup and mustard on burgers.” I layer napkins on my lap to protect my dress from my meal and carefully cut into my Coney dog, savoring the first bite.

  “Salsa is like ketchup, just with more flavor,” he replies after swallowing. “It’s like ketchup’s sexier older brother.”

  I chuckle. “I wasn’t aware that ketchup had a family.”

  “I wasn’t aware you ate chili dogs with a knife and a fork. Afraid of getting your pretty little fingers messy?” The small flick of his brow is half innuendo, half challenge, but for once, my brain is working faster than my mouth.

  “I don’t mind getting my fingers messy, but I do mind ruining my dress, and that’s exactly what would happen. Now enough about food. I want to know about this mysterious nickname.”

  “So you know that I was deployed to Afghanistan a couple of times,” he says around another bite. I nod and pop a tater tot into my mouth. “Well, I was about three months into my first deployment when insurgent activity in our box picked up.”

  “Box?”

  “Sorry, the area we were responsible for. Anyway, more bad guys meant more injuries, so we were running scramble after scramble.”

  “Scramble?”

  “Missions,” he clarifies, as he loads another burger with salsa. “When the night shift came on duty, I went back to my bunk, stripped out of my uniform, and crashed because I was so exhausted. I woke up in the middle of the night with a piercing pain in my dick. I grabbed my flashlight, pulled back the sheet, and saw blood.” He pauses for a bite, and a drop of salsa falls out of the back end of his burger. So gross. “The next thing I know, two of my teammates are standing over me. I, uh…”

  “You passed out?” A giggle slips past my lips.

  “Yup. Out cold.” He smiles and rubs his beard, lost in the memory. “Turns out, I was bitten by a camel spider right on the tip of my dick. It hurt like a motherfucker. Patch, one of my teammates, kept asking how my dickhead was, and it just sort of stuck.”

  “I don’t get it,” I confess before taking a sip of my cherry limeade.

  “DH is for dickhead. Patch thought it was hysterical and used it every chance he got.”

  “But you’re not in the Air Force anymore, right? So why do you still use that nickname?” I return my drink to the cup holder and try to not glance at his crotch. I don’t want him to think I’m checking him out, but not looking at a man’s dick after he talks about it is like not looking at the sky when someone mentions the weather.

  “Well,” he drawls, swirling his fries in a pile of salsa, “that’s because I got caught fucking Carlie Webb when I was home on leave after my first deployment.”

  “Why was that a problem?” I dab a tater tot in the remnants of my Coney dog and take a bite.

  “Her sister, Kelly, was the one who found us. She was pissed, because I was fucking her, too. They both made it their personal mission to tell everyone about Dickhead Drew, so I took charge and started introducing myself as DH.”

  “And here I was ready to feel bad for you because of the nickname Patch made up,” I shake my head and stuff my trash into the paper bag next to the console. Everything I suspected about him is true.

  “Don’t feel bad for Patch. He was just paying me back, because I’m the one who gave him his nickname.”

  “And how did he get that?”

  DH laughs for a few moments before answering. “His wife wanted him to manscape, but he said he was tired of shaving all the time. He got one of those in-home wax kits, thinking if chicks did it, he could too, but he screamed like a bitch when he ripped the first one off. He said ‘fuck it’ and threw the kit away. For weeks, he had a reverse Brazilian.”

  I giggle. “That’s terrible!”

  “It’s fucking funny is what it is.” He wipes a napkin over his beard and wads up his burger wrappers. “I miss that fucker.” />
  “When was the last time you talked to him?”

  “Right before he bled out,” he answers softly, staring out the windshield. “Aside from Eric, Patch was my best friend. He died three days before we came home from our second deployment.” His words suck the last remnants of laughter out of the truck, leaving me with a hollow pit in my stomach and a burning desire to ease the pain that’s washed over his face.

  “I’m so sorry, DH,” I say from behind my hand. If he was a friend, I’d hug him. Except, I have no clue what he is—aside from a very cute pain in the ass—so I sit helpless while he grabs our bags of trash and opens the door.

  “Yeah, well, you win some, you lose some.” He doesn’t look at me when he says that. I get the feeling that whatever he sees is several thousand miles away, covered in sand and blood.

  I’M BEYOND THE POINT OF being able to stifle my yawn, so I own it loud and proud inside the empty auto shop waiting room. Some night-shift nurses prefer to keep their sleeping schedule throughout the week, but not me. I’m off Monday through Thursday, so it doesn’t make sense to be nocturnal that long. I can usually get by with a power nap on Monday afternoon, but I’ll have to skip that since DH is working on my car. Right now, he’s taking Ruby around the block to listen to the knocking noise that’s been getting worse this past week.

  I forego sitting on the small couch for fear that I’ll fall asleep, and instead I walk over to the framed picture over the water cooler. Eric and DH look handsome standing in front of a limo for what must be their prom. Eric’s date looks like a younger version of Magnolia, Allison’s sister. I’ve never met her, but Ali has a few family pictures in her room. Maggie’s pale pink dress makes her look like a princess, and Eric’s hand is resting on her belly, which looks slightly swollen. I count backward on my hands. I wonder if Maggie was pregnant with Austin in this picture?