“And that makes you…” I looked at the man standing behind my mother.
“Steve,” he answered. “Soon to be your stepfather, if you’ll have me.”
“Right,” I muttered, nodding absently. “Steve and… Luke.”
The heat of embarrassment crept out from under my flimsy hospital gown and up my neck, warming my cheeks. I’d actually called my soon-to-be stepbrother my boyfriend. He must think I’m a real idiot.
Chapter Eight
Luke
She’d said I was her boyfriend. My heart actually did a little thumpy thing when she said it. I felt like some schoolboy with his first crush, only my body responded significantly differently.
I chastised myself intensely for the twitch in my pants as the poor girl lay there just waking up from an eight-month coma. What kind of dirty perv was I to get a stiffy over my soon-to-be stepsister after her brush with death?
Dad and Lucy had gone off to find Katherine’s doctor, and she and I were sitting there in awkward silence. She was staring at the ceiling, and I was picking at a hangnail or something.
Could things get any more awkward?
“Where’s the nurse?” she asked, staring out the door.
“Why do you need a nurse?” I asked, pushing to my feet, concerned she might be in pain.
“I just do,” she said “Can you call one?”
“Are you alright?” I asked. “In pain?”
“No, I… I have to pee,” she hissed like a frantic cat.
“Oh,” I muttered, my cheeks flaming. “Oh, I get it. Sorry.”
I pressed the nurse call button on the side of her bed and waited. Finally a nurse answered, “Yes?”
“We’re in room 206. Katherine… needs a nurse,” I said.
“Alright, I’ll send her in,” came the response.
A few minutes later, a guy who looked like he permanently belonged on a beach in Malibu entered the room wearing blue scrubs printed with green palm fronds. He approached Katherine’s bed.
“What can I do for you?” he asked her.
“Where’s her regular nurse?” I demanded. “Laney? Lacey?”
“Stacey,” he corrected me. “She’s with another patient, so they sent me.”
“Well, I’m un-sending you,” I said firmly. She needed to go to the bathroom, and there was no way I was letting a male nurse anywhere near her.
“Luke, I really have to pee,” Katherine whined.
“Hold it,” I ordered her.
I turned my attention back to the male nurse who glared at me, but retreated. At least he got the message.
“What the hell was that about?” Katherine demanded. “I have to go. Now.”
“Not with a male nurse, you don’t,” I argued with her. “Stacey will be here soon.”
“I don’t care who takes me,” she whined. “I have to go, and I can’t wait.”
She threw the blankets off herself and tried to stand up. Before I could object, her regular nurse charged into the room.
“Hey, hey, lie back down,” Stacey said, pushing her gently back. Katherine’s face was lily white. “Your catheter probably slipped out of place or the container needs to be emptied or something. Let me check.”
Stacey shot a glance at me, and I realized suddenly she wanted me to leave the room, which I did immediately. Whatever she was about to do, I wanted no part of, anyway. I was just glad Nurse Surfer Boy wasn’t involved.
I paced the hallway until Stacey emerged and said, “She’s alright now. You can go back in.”
I headed back into the room and Katherine was staring at the ceiling again. I flicked on the television and turned on a football game.
“Who’s playing?” she asked.
“Carolina and Clemson,” I answered.
“Go Tigers,” she smiled weakly.
“I never figured you for a Clemson fan,” I said.
“Who did you figure I’d root for?” she asked.
“I figured you as more of a tennis kind of girl,” I shrugged.
She laughed and said, “My Dad was a Clemson fan. My blood runs orange. Who you rootin’ for?”
“Roll Tide,” I answered.
“Oh, ‘Bama? Good team. Real good team. Good coach this year.”
“Yeah, but the Bulldogs ripped them apart last week,” I said.
“Did they? How’s the rankings so far this year?” she asked.
“You’re not going to be happy,” I informed her. “Clemson’s like eighth right now I think. ‘Bama’s second.”
“And first?” she asked.
“How ‘bout them Dawgs,” I answered.
“Really? My buddy Chad must be thrilled,” she said. “He went to UGA for two years. Huge fan.”
“Chad,” I muttered, a darkness sweeping over me. “Who’s Chad?”
“Just a friend I hang out with sometimes,” she shrugged. “Just me, and him, and a small group of friends.”
“So no one-on-one time?” I asked, clenching my jaw.
“What exactly are you getting at?” she demanded.
“Are you dating him?” I blurted out a little more harshly than I intended to.
“Chad? No way. Strictly platonic,” she said. “Why?”
“Just wondering,” I shrugged, trying to act as cool as possible. “You know. Making conversation.”
I was so going to hell for the thoughts running through my head about the girl who was about to be family.
“Would it bother you if I was dating Chad?” she asked, staring at me intently.
“Why would it bother me?” I asked.
‘Bother me’ was not the term for it. Destroy me. Crush me. Kill me.
“I don’t know, you just seem a little concerned about it, that’s all.”
“You’re about to be my stepsister. I’m supposed to worry about you, right?”
“You hardly even know me,” she pointed out. “We met, I nearly died in a car accident, and eight months later we’re talking for like the second time ever.”
“Well, after eight months I kind of feel like I do know you a little bit,” I said.
“How? It’s not like you’ve been here every day.” I said nothing, and she added, “Have you?”
I shrugged dismissively, and her eyes widened.
“Have you been here every day?” she asked.
“Well, obviously not every day,” I said. Her face fell, and I added, “I had work and stuff. But I was here pretty much every second I wasn’t at work.”
A gust of air pushed out of her lungs, and she swallowed hard.
“Why?” she whispered.
“Is it hot in here?” I asked, pushing out of the chair and storming into the hallway. “I’m going for drink. Do you need anything?”
She shook her head, and I barged out of the room before I ended up saying or doing something I’d regret.
Chapter Nine
Katherine
Luke let the heavy wooden door slam behind him, and I stared at it as if I could somehow force him to walk back in.
Had he really been here nearly every day for eight months? Why would he do something like that? Was it some sad sense of obligation because our parents were getting married? That had to be it. Maybe he just had some kind of old-fashioned nobility or something.
I tried to piece together everything that had happened. Maybe I missed something. I was still a little groggy, and some of the details of the accident had somehow muddied themselves in my addled brain.
Let’s see. I met him and his father. We ate somewhere. Mexican food, wasn’t it? The beach. Car accident. Then I woke up in the hospital. Nope, that was it. He’d known me for all of two hours before the accident. There was nothing that should make him feel obligated to spend every day for eight months stuck in a hospital instead of going out with his friends and living a normal life.
It just didn’t make sense. I mean, he’d called me—what was it? Oh, right… a stuck-up bitch, or something to that effect. He’d just met me, and he
thought he knew me.
He’d been terribly unfair to me, and I remember he’d hurt my feelings somehow. I couldn’t quite remember the details, but I remembered running away from him—hiding—hoping he wouldn’t find me.
But then… he brought flowers. He’d apologized. I’d accepted. Maybe I was wrong about him. But that still wouldn’t explain why he’d come to the hospital all that time. He could have just forgotten about me. He had no reason not to.
The door creaked open, and Mom and Steve walked in. I suppressed a disappointed sigh and Mom smiled and hugged me.
“It’s so good to see you awake,” Mom said, kissing my head.
“I can’t believe I was out for eight months,” I said. “What about Berkeley?”
“They agreed to give you a year of deferred enrollment,” Mom said. “Steve talked to them.”
“Thank you,” I said to Steve, and he nodded. Then I asked Mom, “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course, honey, anything,” she answered.
“Luke said… was he… did he visit me any?” I finally managed to ask.
“Every day,” she answered. “We all did. Luke didn’t even miss a day when he sprained his ankle at work.”
“Really?” I asked.
“He’s a lovely young man,” Mom said. “What a sense of duty to his family.”
Family. Right.
“Well, I’m awake, now,” I said. “He doesn’t have to keep wasting his time coming up here anymore.”
I heard the door creak, and it closed as if someone had been standing there and decided not to enter.
“I’m sure he’ll still be up here pretty often,” Mom said, patting my hand.
“Maybe,” I shrugged.
“Of course he will,” Steve said.
But that was the last I saw of him for a long time.
Chapter Ten
Luke
Hearing her say that was like a punch in the gut.
“Well, I’m awake, now,” she’d said. “He doesn’t have to keep wasting his time coming up here anymore.”
That statement just kept playing itself over and over in my head. Was she really so ungrateful that I’d spent practically every minute of free time I had by her bedside for eight long months?
Eight months. I’d given up eight months of football games. Eight months of Netflix and chill. Eight months of grabbing beers with my buddies now that I’d finally turned twenty-one. Eight months.
So it was a waste of my time, huh? Why? Because she could never give a damn about anyone but herself?
Well, fuck Little Miss Snooty Britches. I was out.
I’d left the hospital in a huff, not even taking the time to don my helmet before tearing out of the parking lot on my bike.
I don’t know why I headed to that old bar. I guess it was the fact that I could finally legally get into it. No more sneaking around and trying to use fake I.D.s. I just walked my ass inside and ordered a beer.
I slid onto a barstool to wait for my drink. I pushed my thumbs into the divots at the inner corners of my eyes and sighed. Then a grating sound yanked me from my thoughts.
“Luke? Oh, my god, it’s been ages!”
I cringed. Oh, please. Not her.
I opened my eyes and turned my head to see a wall of red hair and a huge, fake smile inches from my face. She pushed her fake tits toward me and flounced her hair over her shoulder, batting obscenely thick eyelashes.
“Ashley, please, I’m not in the mood,” I groaned.
The bartender had plunked a brown bottle in front of me, and I twisted off the cap and took a long swig, slamming the bottle onto the bar.
“Oh, come on, honey, you’re not still mad at me, are you?” Ashley pouted.
“For me to be mad at you, I’d have to give a damn,” I told her. “And I don’t.”
Her eyes narrowed and she spat, “Why? Is your little blonde with you tonight?”
I gritted my teeth and resisted the urge to backhand her for her comment about Katherine. Then I realized Katherine didn’t want anything to do with me anyway.
“I don’t have a little blonde,” I answered.
She raised an eyebrow and said, “Trouble in paradise?”
“It’s none of your god damned business, Ashley,” I pointed out. “Frankly, I ceased to be your business when I caught you naked in your parents’ hot tub with those two football players.”
“I said I was sorry,” she huffed. Then she ran her fingers along the back of my neck and whispered in my ear, “How about you let me make it up to you?”
Now, the thing is, I’m a man. And when I’ve got a decent looking girl basically throwing sex at me, there’s a part of me, however small, that has the instinct to accept. Yes, I admit her touch struck a nerve. It had been months since I’d been with anyone.
But I read once that being a male is a circumstance of birth, and being a man is a choice. I chose to be a man.
“Beat it, Ashley,” I tossed over my shoulder as I turned my stool away from her and took another swig of my beer.
“Whatever,” she shot back. “Your dick is too fucking small to satisfy me, anyway. No wonder I cheated on you.”
I turned to her with a smirk on my face and said, “Is my dick too small, or are you just too fucking loose from banging the whole fucking football team?”
Her eyes widened, and she picked up a shot glass from the bar and tossed the contents into my face. I wiped my face with my shirt, and by the time my eyes opened again, she had disappeared.
Yeah, I was in a dark place right then. I ended up drinking too much that night, and I had to grab a cab home. But I knew better than to let Ashley anywhere near me again. At least I had that much sense.
When I got home, I stumbled up the stairs to my room and flopped onto my bed. I’d just closed my eyes when I heard my door creak open.
“I didn’t see you at the hospital all evening,” Dad said. “Everything alright?”
“Tired, Dad. Trying to sleep.”
“Alright, fine. I just wanted to see if something was up.”
“Nope, everything’s fine. Night, Dad.”
The door clicked shut and I slammed my pillow over my head. I guess that’s what I got for trying to do the right thing. I should have known better.
Chapter Eleven
Katherine
Things were not easy after I woke up. I had a few speech difficulties that showed up at random times, and walking was difficult. I had to endure daily rounds of physical therapy and speech therapy. I suppose it would have been easier if I hadn’t felt so lonely, but with Mom and Steve planning their wedding (which they had postponed because of the accident), Steve running his business, and Luke… just gone… I had never felt more alone in my life.
After waking up, I spent another month in the hospital. Almost a year of my life, gone. I’d missed going to Berkeley. I’d missed Christmas, my favorite time of the year. I hadn’t even had fresh air in all that time.
It was April when Mom and Steve came to take me home. I never thought I’d be so happy to be back in the monstrosity of a house Mom had chosen in Encino. But then came the news that they’d decided to have their wedding in June, and we’d be selling the house and moving in with Steve. And Luke.
I hadn’t seen him, or even heard from him, in a month. It was if Luke had just fallen off the face of the Earth. And now we’d be moving in?
No. I wouldn’t do it. I had to get my own place, and fast.
I asked Mom to help me get set up in an apartment, but she’d said, “Nonsense, Kitty Kat! You’re not fully recovered, yet. I need to be close to you so I can take care of you.”
It still made me cringe to hear her call me the name Daddy used to. She’d been using it a lot since I woke up and the time right before it. Maybe trying to make up for some lost time, I guessed. I’d have to look past it for her sake.
Crash: A Bad Boy Stepbrother Romance Page 5