Tank (Moonshine Task Force Book 2)

by Laramie Briscoe

The way Trevor and I left our relationship wasn’t good. We had unfinished business, and I swore we’d get around to it, but lately I’ve ignored his texts because I know he doesn’t understand. In this instant, I blame myself for the misunderstanding. It would have been easy for me to lay everything out for him and just be honest. Instead, I’ve been playing a game, hoping he’ll decide I’m worth all the trouble when I decide to give him a chance again. I keep saying it’s not fair of him to ask me to give up my job, but it’s also not fair of me to not be straightforward with him. I’ve never wanted a man who insisted I stay at home, but fuck it, I would for Trevor. I truly think I would for him.

  We loved each other, and I took it for granted, imagined we had all the time in the world. With my past, I should have known – accidents happen. Time isn’t always on our side, I should’ve known.

  It’s the biggest regret I’ve ever had right now. Giving my report to the air evac nurse over the radio, I see I have two minutes left with him. Two minutes to make him want to fight, to let him know exactly how I feel about him. Wiping the tears off my face and clearing my throat, I lean down to his ear, hoping like hell he can hear me. If there’s any time for me to be honest with him and lay my heart bare, it’s right now.

  “Trevor, you fight. You fight for me, your mom and dad, your sister, your niece, and you fight for what we tried to throw away. I didn’t want to listen before, but I’m listening now,” my voice falters and cracks. “I love you, and I want a chance to make this work. Please don’t give up on me. Don’t give up on us.” I lean down, kissing him on the forehead, pushing his sweaty hair back, knowing how badly he’d be irritated that the curly link had escaped and was now in his face.

  The ambulance comes to a stop and it’s the worst feeling to hand his care over to someone else. Even if I do know the nurse and she assures me she’ll do the best she can to get him to the hospital with the greatest chance of survival.

  Standing as close as they’ll let me, I fight against the wind, pushing my hair back from my face as the helicopter takes off. I watch until I can no longer see it’s rotating blades in the dying sun.

  With startling clarity, I know I can’t sit here and wait for someone to give me word on his condition. There’s no way in hell I’ll be able to sit in our station and be updated when people remember to call us. I need to be with him, need to be there in case he doesn’t make it out of this alive. “Take me back to the station, back to my car, Logan. I’m heading to Birmingham.”

  “Fuck that,” he shakes his head, his dark eyes flashing with sympathy. “You’re in no shape to be driving. I’ll take you. We’ll find out what’s going on with him together.”

  I nod my okay, because it’s all I can do. Either I go with him or I don’t, and if I don’t, I’m not positive I won’t jump out of my own skin trying to make it there.

  I have no idea how that trip to Birmingham will end up changing my life.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Tank

  Everything fucking hurts. I’ve never felt this kind of pain before in my life, not even when I was in the military. What’s worse is I don’t remember what I’ve done to cause myself to be in this agony.

  The last thing I can recall is driving to the bottoms with my windows cracked, hard rock playing as loud as I could handle it, and my thoughts on the red-head spitfire who’s been ignoring me for months. I was formulating a plan to get back in her good graces, to let her know her job didn’t mean jack shit, if it meant my ultimatum kept her away from me. She called my bluff and when I got to my fishing spot, I was going to text her, let her know I’d deal with her job because fuck – I missed her.

  After that all I remember is pain.

  “Trevor, can you hear me?”

  I’m trying to tell this woman who keeps screaming at me that I can indeed, fucking hear her. She’s shoving something into my side near my lung and it’s killing me.

  I go to grab for it, feeling plastic. Maybe it’s a tube. What the fuck is going on?

  “No, don’t be pulling on that!”

  More noise, more bustling.

  “Can someone get his hands? He’s going to yank the tube out before we can get the collapsed lung taken care of. He might be out of it, but he’s strong.”

  Collapsed lung? Now I’m starting to freak out and jerk my head from side to side until someone steadies it with their hands.

  “Stop, Trevor, you’re going to hurt yourself.”

  I want to scream at the person speaking to me like I’m a child that I’m already fuckin’ hurt. If I’m in the back of an ambulance or at a hospital there’s only one person I want, one person who I feel comfortable enough to hand my care over to.

  “Blaze,” I whisper, wetting what feels like cracked lips with the edge of my tongue.

  There’s the metallic taste of blood and the indention where my lip has been split. Has someone beat the shit out of me? If they did, I’d hate to see the other guy because I know I wouldn’t have gone down without a fight. If I’m fucked up this bad, they probably aren’t living right now.

  “Blaze,” I try again, this time my voice is a little stronger, because I can hear it in my ears.

  “What are you saying, Trevor?”

  I can feel someone lean down so they’re next to my lips. “Blaze,” I try again. “I want Blaze.”

  “Can someone go out there and find out who Blaze is?”

  With the knowledge they’re going to go get the one person I want to see, I slip back into the blessed darkness where I don’t feel anything.

  * * *

  The next time I come to, instinctively I know it’s been a while and I know it’s late at night. Fighting to open my eyes, I take in my surroundings, waiting for my vision to adjust. The room I’m in is one of the darkest I’ve ever been in, including some of the hellholes I was in while I was in the service.

  Everything hurts again, more than it did last time. I attempt to move my leg, but it’s fucking heavy. My arm is heavier than normal, too. I force my eyes to open wider and see an IV in my hand, limiting my range of motion. What the fuck is going on?

  A noise, I can’t tell if it’s a sigh or a moan, comes from my left. The shadows and the sliver of light given off by the machines I’m hooked up to allow me to figure out someone sits in a chair not far from me. Because of the darkness, I can’t quite make out who it is. With my teeth gritted, I lift my hand to show them I’m alive, and promptly let out a barely audible fuck me as I let it drop back down beside me. The one little movement took a lot out of me, but I’m glad I was able to manage. It feels like a major accomplishment.

  The person in the chair jerks awake at my noise, or my words, puts their feet on the floor, and moves quickly toward me. Once they’re in the dim light, I see it’s Blaze.

  “Damn I love you, I’ve wanted to see you all day, after I came to when they were putting a tube in my chest,” I close my eyes as I feel her hands on me. The words are hard to force through my throat. My voice is scratchy, everything feels swollen, bearing the evidence of the hard day I’ve had. I’m so fucking tired.

  “I love you, too,” tears slip down her face. “God Trevor, you have no idea how scared I’ve been.”

  My mind is going a hundred miles an hour. There’s only one thought repeating back and forth in my head. I croak out the question I’ve been dying to know the answer to. “What the fuck happened to me? What day is it?”

  “You were in an accident. Brooks Strather hit your truck head on going almost ninety miles an hour at the bottoms. You’ve been in and out of consciousness for two days. You had surgery and a collapsed lung. You’re lucky as hell you’re still alive Trevor.”

  Two days, I’ve lost two days of my life. I hear something in her voice, a monotone that sometimes we use when we’re delivering bad news to families. It’s a way to keep our emotions out of it and do the job we’ve been hired to do. I dread asking her the question, because I think I know the answer.

  “Babe,” it kills me to ask,
it hurts me because I know it hurt her. “Did you respond to the call?”

  Her green eyes show an anguish I’m not sure I can ever understand. She deflates right in front of me, this woman who’s always such a badass. She’s usually so strong and full of life with the colors of the tattoos she sports running down her arms, but right now that woman is nowhere to be found. I watch her completely draw within herself. I watch as she leans back, grabbing the chair, sitting down before she obviously falls down. Blaze collapses in it, putting her face in her hands for a long minute. She takes what appears to be a fortifying breath and then answers my question.

  “Yeah, Ryan and Ace responded first, but Logan and I were the closest medics available,” she bites her bottom lip, holding something in.

  Fuck me….guilt eats at me. My best friend and my girl both saw me in the worst shape I’ve ever been in. I can’t fathom how I looked in the truck and what I’m sure I must look like laying in this bed, but I need her to be honest with me. If there’s anything we need at this juncture of our relationship, it’s honesty.

  “Baby, tell me about it, let it out. It’s okay.” I know from my own experiences that you should talk about it, even if it’s with the person you’re trying most not to let in.

  “I wasn’t worried, ya know?” she starts, grabbing my fingers in between hers. Hers are freezing, and I have the fleeting thought maybe she’s in shock. She plays with the tips of them, rubbing at my fingernails. “I knew you weren’t on shift, because you’d texted me the night before, asking if we could talk. But I ignored you, because I didn’t know how to talk to you, to face you after what all we said to each other the last time we argued. I was one thousand percent positive you weren’t on shift though, it never even crossed my mind it was you. I even sent you a text, warning you of the wreck, telling you to stay where you were. I said maybe we could have dinner, because sometime over the past few months, I realized the argument we had wasn’t just me or you, it was me and you,” she stops to take a breath. “I’ve been worried I’d never be able to say those words to you. As much as I was pissed at you, us breaking up was partly my fault too. I’m willing to take the blame with you.”

  I hate hearing the pain in her voice. Feeling the aches I do, I know it was bad when they came on the scene. I feel like I’ve gone fifteen rounds with a pro boxer and then tumbled around in a washer spin cycle. Everything on my body hurts and aches, including my teeth. I don’t even want to think how I’d feel if I wasn’t on the pain meds I know they’ve given me.

  “When I got to the scene, I saw two regular pickups. So I yelled to Ace saying it had come over the radio that there was an officer involved. When he told me it was you, I felt like my life was over. I fell to my knees in the middle of the road, and for the first time in my life, I didn’t know what to do to help someone. Ryan came crawling out from under the back of your truck looking like he’d seen the devil himself. He was so pale I thought he was going to pass out, covered in mud, probably shit, and your blood.”

  She continues playing with my fingertips and I welcome the connection. It makes me feel alive, and I need that right now. I need her warmth and the vibrancy of life she carries with her on a daily basis.

  “We waited for the jaws to cut you out, and then they told us we could go over. I’ve never seen you like that before, and hand to God, the way you looked was in the top five of bad patients I’ve ever seen. I fought like hell to keep you alive until we got to the air evac.”

  So I’d been helicoptered to Birmingham. It’s all kind of starting to click. My receptors are coming back online after being off for so long.

  “Logan drove me, and I haven’t left. Your sister brought me some clothes and we’ve talked every time she’s come in here. She loves you a lot and she’s one tough chick,” her words are strained, and I can hear her trying to keep the tears in check. It’s killing her, it’s killing me.

  “Whitney is badass. How’s the baby?”

  “She’s had some contractions, but the doctor said it’s not unusual with the shock you gave all of us.”

  We’re quiet for a minute. I can’t take my eyes off her, can’t stop trying to map the contours of her face. I watch her breaking in front of me. See her chin trembling, her teeth holding on tightly to that bottom lip to keep the seam of her frown together, and the spot between her eyes pulled tight to keep the tears from falling.

  Then there’s a kink in the armor as one tear slides down her cheek. Her shoulders jerk with the effort she’s exerting to hold it all in. I do the only thing I can.

  “Blaze, help me sit this bed up and crawl in here with me. I don’t care if it hurts; I have to have you beside me, right where you fucking belong.”

  She reaches over, tears dropping onto my skin as she moves the bed so that I’m elevated.

  “Lower the railing and climb in next to me, I need to feel you against me. I can’t take away what you saw and erase it from your memory, but I can be here.”

  Doing what I ask her to, I allow her to cuddle up next to me, and it’s the best medicine in the world even if it does hurt like hell. Somehow I manage to reach over with my IV hand and curl it around the nape of her neck, letting her bury her head against my shoulder. Gingerly and biting back a groan, I lean down, kissing her hair.

  “Let it out and let it go, because I’m gonna need you babe, more than I’ve ever needed you before. If you’re serious about us being together, then I’m going to want you with me every step of the goddamn way, and there’s gonna be a lot of steps. A lot of long days. If you’re in this for the long haul, I need you to be all in.”

  She sobs against me nodding as I talk to her, holding my hospital gown tightly between her fingers, and when my voice breaks too much I can’t speak anymore. I let the tears fall too, because damn if I haven’t realized just how close I’ve come to dying.

  And I haven’t done half the shit I want to do yet. It’s most definitely not my time, and I’ll never waste another second of what I do have with this redhead lying next to me.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Blaze

  “With him, I wouldn’t be good driving. I wanna be back here, making sure he’s comfortable until we hand his care over.”

  Logan nods, and we race like hell for the helipad where the air evac will meet us to take him to the nearest trauma center an hour away. I administer anything and everything I can to make him more comfortable, watching his low blood pressure and heart rate with a critical eye.

  Suddenly his already low pressure begins dropping. “Trevor!” My hands shake, and for the first time, I don’t know what to do. My normally instinctual training is gone and I’m scared to death. “Don’t do this to me,” I look around in the back of the ambulance, everything looking foreign to me.

  His blood pressure drops further, beeps going off everywhere and I’m lost. Tears are streaming down my face and I’m hyperventilating, unsure of what to do to help him. He’s dying in front of me, and I can’t help him.

  I gasp, jerking awake so hard that I fall off the cot I’ve been sleeping on the past few days here in the hospital. As my body connects with the hard floor, I cry out, hopefully not loud enough for Trevor to hear, but it’s enough to get me out of the nightmare I was living in my dream world. Exhausted, I glance at the clock, seeing it’s six am. I’ve gotten maybe four hours of sleep, but I know I won’t be able to drift back.

  Leaning over Trevor, I check to make sure he’s breathing and alive before I grab my purse and head downstairs. After the nightmare I just had, I don’t trust the machines. Coffee sounds really good right about now.

  * * *

  I’m sitting outside Trevor’s hospital room, my knees drawn up to my chest, head down, and crying. I’m not sure why I’m crying. Maybe it’s from relief that Trevor is going to be okay, stress from everything we’ve been through since the call went out, or just the emotional release I need after being at his side for the past few days.

  Today, he gets to come home. Surprising eve
ryone, he’s healing quicker than any of us imagined he would. Proof of how stubborn he is.

  Getting up and moving away from the door, I walk down the hallway to where there’s a glass window spanning from floor to ceiling. Whoever wants to can look out over the Birmingham skyline. It’s peaceful. Up here, I can’t hear the bustling of the street, the roar of the cars, or the impatient honking horns of the drivers. It makes the noise in my head louder, letting the memories of what I saw when I got to Trevor’s truck force their way into my awake hours. The silence rings loudly between my ears and I want to scream at it to go away.

  Try as I might, I can’t get the image of Trevor’s face when I first saw him at the crash site out of my mind. I can sleep for a few hours every night, but sometime during the slumber the vision comes to me and the ending to the story changes dramatically. I jerk awake quickly and then have to look at him for myself, just to make sure he’s okay.

  When he was first brought to the trauma center, I wasn’t sure if he’d make it home, but like everything Trevor does, he’s excelled. Being in good shape helped, being stubborn definitely helped, but last night he told me I helped more than anything.

  The strength of our feelings scares the hell out of me. When you’re faced with the possible death of the person you love most in this world, you realize what you have and what you value. It’s thrown into your face with the velocity of a major league pitcher’s fast ball, and you either duck out of the way or you take the hit head on. We’re both taking the hit head on, and we both want this second chance, me more than anything. I messed up once with someone in my life, I don’t want to mess up again, but I need him to see me for the woman I am. I need him to really look and accept me for who I am. I’m scared I’ll have to go into a dangerous situation again and then we’ll be back to square one. We both want it to work, but is it that simple? Can we both put aside thought patterns ingrained in us for years? I guess we’ll have to find out together.