by Amy Brent
“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-six and just home with a master’s 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. Da
niels,” 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 noses 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.
All he cared about was getting drunk, getting laid, and hanging on to a bull for eight seconds to get a silver buckle.
I knew it at the time and I knew it now, Luke wasn’t the kind of boy you expected to stick around. He was like an angry Brahma bull: you might get a rope around his horns, but there was no way you were gonna tie him down.
The man lying in the bed in room 518 vaguely reminded me of the boy I’d once known, but as we say here in Texas, he looked like he’d been rode hard and put up wet.
He was lying on his back with his eyes closed and his hands resting over his stomach. He looked a little ridiculous, wearing a pair of blue hospital scrubs tucked into a pair of dusty old cowboy boots.
His complexion was pale, sickly, like he’d been out of the sun for a while. His sandy blond hair was pushed back and plastered to his head, like it hadn’t been washed in days. His chin and cheeks were hollow and stubbly.
I hadn’t seen him in six years, but he looked like he’d aged a couple of decades.
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then stepped forward and tapped on the door. When his blue eyes opened and he smiled, the past came rushing back like a tsunami crashing into the shore.
My old Luke was there within that shell of a man.
I knew it because I felt my body tingle the moment I saw him smile.
Luke
I was lying there with my eyes closed, breathing slowly in and out, trying to will away the burning pain in my side, when I felt like I was being watched.
I opened my eyes just enough to see someone standing in the hallway outside my door. I couldn’t tell who it was exactly or whether she was there to see me or someone else.
It wasn’t until she knocked on the door and stepped closer that I realized who it was. I felt my heart jump into my throat. It was Shelby, Lil Sis, come to take me home.
“I’ll be damned,” I said, smiling when her face came into focus. “What are you doing here?” I held out my arms to hug her, but she just reached for my hands and gave them a loose shake.
“Cody sent me to pick you up,” she said flatly, giving me a smile that I could tell was forced. I tried to remember if I’d done anything to make her mad, as was the case with most women in my past. Honestly, I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d seen her, or if we had parted in good company. Too many concussions will do that to you, I guess.
“He too busy to come get me himself?” I asked, grinning, hoping she would grin back. She did not. She just shrugged her pretty eyebrows at me and said she reckoned so.
Time had been extra good to Shelby. She looked amazing in her tight jeans and little white shirt with her cleavage bubbling out. Her face was flawless except for the freckles that dotted her nose and cheeks. I used to count them with kisses after we made love in the barn loft. She was always the prettiest girl in Calloway County and that had not changed. She didn’t look like an awkward teenager anymore. She looked like a woman; so much so it made my mouth water. I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to make love to her now.
“So, are you ready to go?” she asked, getting right to the point. Yep, I had done something to her and she was still stewing over it. I just wished that I could remember what that something was.
“The nurse will come with
a wheelchair when I buzz her,” I said, wincing as I pushed myself up on the bed. My side bit at me when I tried to sit up. I put a hand over the bandage and pushed through the pain as I pressed the button to call the nurse with my other hand.
Shelby sat in the chair next to the bed, giving me the suspicious eye, like she thought getting gored by a damned old bull shouldn’t have put me in such a sorry state. She asked, “So what happened?”
I lifted my shirt so she could see the bandage and the wrapping going around my waist. “Oh, I just pissed off a bull is all,” I said, my fingers gently going over the tape holding the bandage in place. “He decided to show me some love by sticking his horn in my guts and tossing me around a little. Ain’t no big deal.”
“Do not listen to him,” a voice called from the doorway. It was Nurse Old Bat pushing a wheelchair into the room. She gave Shelby the once over for a moment. “You his wife? Girlfriend?”
Shelby frowned back at her like she’d been accused of farting in church. “No, I’m… family,” she said, though she didn’t sound too proud of the fact. “I’m here to take him home.”
The nurse narrowed her eyes at Shelby like she was trying to figure out if she was telling the truth or not. I would have loved to tell you that Nurse Old Bat looked much nicer when she was at the peak of orgasm at the end of my fingers, but that would have been a lie. That was her face, for better or worse. After a moment, her harsh features softened a little and she nodded at me.