23. Grayson
23
GRAYSON
T he hospital clinic was busy as always, just how I liked it because it meant more and more people within the community were finding out about us and coming in for treatments they so sorely needed. I bustled around, telling Kara stupid jokes whenever I passed her because she always laughed at them, and her laughter was infectious. It brought smiles not only to me but to any of the patients who might have been within earshot of the sweet sound.
I’d heard her repeating the terrible jokes I spent each evening memorizing, and I liked seeing the patients’ reactions to the way she told them.
Anything that spread a little happiness around what was essentially a room full of suffering made the time pass easier.
“Doc!”
I drew my gaze away from the pretty brunette, who had an elderly man chuckling over my joke about a donkey and a rabbit.
Hawk waved me over to a patient in the corner of the waiting room.
I made my way through the crowd of people, sidestepping those sitting on the floor because we’d run out of chairs hours ago, and stopped at his side.
He spoke before I could even ask what the matter was. “Female, forty-three. Came in complaining of headache, nausea, and vomiting.”
I glanced at the patient and smiled but then turned to Hawk. “Has she been through triage?”
He nodded but then frowned at the woman. “She has, but she downplayed her symptoms, didn’t you?”
The woman gave a chagrinned grimace. “I don’t want to be a bother to anyone. You all work so hard here, and there’s other people in worse condition than me—” She let out a yelp and doubled over, clutching her stomach.
Concern had me crouching in front of her and pressing my fingers to her neck to check her pulse.
Hawk rubbed a hand down the woman’s back but focused his attention on me. “You’re gonna find her heart rate is sky-high, and look.” He pointed to the woman’s wrist, peeking out from beneath her sweater. “Rash. I can tell just from touching her that she has a fever. She can’t be sitting out here in the waiting room.”
“I’m fine, truly,” the woman protested, straightening as the pain passed. “I’ll wait my turn like everyone else.”
I held a hand out to her. “Guess what? It’s your turn! Kara will take you into exam room three, okay?”
I’d raised my voice when I’d said Kara’s name, and she glanced up, listening to my instructions and scurried to do as I’d asked. Carefully, she helped the protesting patient out of the waiting room.
By the time I turned back, Hawk was already rushing into a cubicle. Vomiting noises came from behind the curtain, mixing with Hawk’s deep voice offering reassurances.
“Would you look at that,” I mumbled to Willa, one of the head nurses who gave up her time here each week. She followed my line of sight, both our gazes landing on Hawk, who was disposing of the vomit bag.
“He’s great,” she agreed. “Kara too. They’ve both been the biggest help the last few weeks. It’s a shame they aren’t qualified. Because I’d happily have either of them on my staff.”
I glanced at her. “Really?”
She nodded, rubbing at the old burn scars on her neck absentmindedly. “Absolutely. Hawk has brought a few patients to my attention, and he was spot-on the money each time. He and Kara both work harder around here than most of the paid staff do. Neither of them ever complains about the shitty jobs we have them do either.”
I’d noticed the same, but I’d thought that was because I was paying Kara and Hawk more attention than I would any other volunteer.
I saw another couple of patients and was on my way to collect a third when whistling caught my attention. I did a double take when I realized it was coming from Hawk, scrubbing his hands at the sink.
He noticed my expression, and his quickly turned into a scowl. “What?”
I tilted my head, my curiosity piqued. “Are you…happy?”
“I’ve spent all morning cleaning out vomit buckets and piss pans. Do I look happy?”
I laughed. “Actually, yeah, you do. You’re walking around here smiling and whistling, despite the low-level jobs we’ve given you to do.”
He shrugged. “It’s not a big deal. Whatever.”
I just waited. “You like this job.”
He sighed. “Don’t turn a shitty volunteer job into something it’s not. Maybe I just got laid. Whatever.”
I shook my head. “Didn’t need to know that.” I glanced at Kara, smiling kindly at Mr. Holdsworth, who came in every week just because he was lonely.
Hawk elbowed me. “Hey. Not her. Fuck off. I don’t want her thinking I’m walking around here blabbing about our sex life.”
I raised an eyebrow. “But you did get laid. If not her then…” I widened my eyes at him, remembering the man he’d been with when they’d brought Kara to the hospital. “Oh! I didn’t realize you and Hayden were actually brother husbands in the biblical sense..”
He sighed, tugging me aside. “It’s not like that.”
“Isn’t it?”
He glared at me. “You’re doing that shrink thing where you keep turning it back on me.”
“Isn’t that why you’re telling me though? Because you want advice?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know why I’m telling you.”
“Do you want me to guess?”
He glared at me. “Do I?”
I sniggered. The answering questions with questions thing was annoying at times, though it was effective, which was why I did it. It wasn’t my place as a doctor to push my own beliefs and opinions onto a patient. Only to help them sort out how they felt about a situation. And clearly, Hawk needed to talk to someone. “You don’t have anyone else to confide in,” I stated. “Either your friends and family wouldn’t accept it, or you just think they wouldn’t. Third option being it’s you who doesn’t want to accept whatever happened between you and Hayden.”
He thought that over for a minute. “I think I’d rather clean bedpans than talk this over with you.”
I nodded, not wanting to rush him. “Fair call. But I’ll be over at your place for my first session with Hayley Jade after I finish up here tonight, in case you change your mind.”
“I won’t.”
“Also fair enough.” I chuckled, watching him walk away. But then I called him back. “Hawk?”
He stopped and looked back over his shoulder. “Yeah?”
“When are you going to get your GED so we can start training you properly?”
He paused. “Never.”
I sighed at his stubbornness. “That’s a waste of natural talent. You know that, right? You’re good with the patients. Surprisingly good, considering…”
“Considering I’m a biker.”
I smiled. “I was going to say considering you’re an asshole the rest of the time, but sure, let’s go with biker if you prefer.”
He scowled and, laughing, I walked past him.
“Seriously, Hawk. Get your GED. I can point you in the right direction after that. Don’t be too proud to ask for what you want. I’m in your corner, and I’m pretty smart. I can help.”
He glared at me. “Why?”
I frowned. “Why what?”
“Why help me? I’m a high school dropout from Saint View.”
“You’re more than that.”
“You don’t know me.”
I shrugged. “I don’t. But I’m a psychologist. So I pay attention to people, and maybe I see more than you think I do.”
“Don’t you doctors deal with facts? Sounds to me like you’re just doing a lot of assuming.”
That he didn’t want people to know he was actually a good guy on the inside was what made him so fascinating to me. Despite his assumptions, I had been paying attention, because he was with Kara.
And Kara was damn hard to ignore, even when I’d vowed to just be her friend.
I eyed Hawk and the stubborn set of his jaw. Besides Kara, had he ever had anyone see the good in him? The good I saw every day he worked here? It kinda pissed me off that perhaps nobody had ever seen the potential in him. “You’re a man who held a little girl, who isn’t his, because it made her feel safe in a scary hospital where people were trying to poke and prod her. You’re a man who protected that girl’s mother when you thought she was in danger.”
“I punched you in the face.”
“Sure. I was the perceived danger in that situation, and your intuition was way off, but you did what you thought was right. I respect that, otherwise, I wouldn’t be standing here, trying to make you believe you’re worth more than you think you are.”
Hawk breathed out slowly, giving in to my badgering. “I failed the GED already.”
“So study harder and take it again.”
He blinked. “Just like that?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“Because I’ll look like a dumbass when I fail again.”
“Why does it bother you what you look like to other people?”
Hawk groaned.
I held my hands up, backing off. “Sorry, sorry. I’ll stop with the questions. But you know I’m right.” I grinned at him. “I always am.”
He shook his head and went back to his work.
He and Kara left just before three so they could go pick up Hayley Jade from school, but I mouthed the letters GED at him as he left.
Instead of a wave goodbye like I got from Kara, Hawk just gave me a middle finger.
The sun was low when I saw out the last clinic patient and locked the doors for the night. I was normally tired after I finished a shift on the psych ward, but the clinic always left me feeling invigorated.
It wasn’t like I didn’t believe psychology was important. It absolutely was, and I found people endlessly fascinating.
But there was also a part of me that was a whole lot more satisfied by the work we did with the underprivileged. There was a sense the work I did here one day a week made more of a difference than the hours upon hours I spent listening to married couples fight about stupid shit, or rich snobs from Providence blab about all the problems they’d created for themselves by having too much goddamn money that would have been better spent on a donation.
I left the clinic on the same high I always did, my heart full, my head determined to find a way to do more.
But first I needed to see a little girl who was still refusing to speak. As well as her pretty brown-eyed mother, who had so firmly put me in the friend zone it was sad.
I followed Kara’s directions to the clubhouse, taking the winding road through the woods and whistling beneath my breath at the imposing gates at the top of the driveway. The skull figure in the middle with a scythe in its bony fingers was terrifying.
As was the huge tree trunk of a man who stepped from the shadows, a shotgun in his hand.
“What the hell do they feed these guys?” I rolled down the window and stuck both hands out so he would know I wasn’t armed. Then louder but with barely more certainty, I called, “I’m a doctor. Kara invited me here to see Hayley Jade.”
The tall blond man leaned down and stared in the window at me. “Get out of the car.”
“I’d really rather not,” I said before really thinking about it.
I changed my mind pretty quickly when I found myself facing down the barrel of the shotgun. “On second thought, it’s a lovely afternoon. Maybe I would like to get out and stretch my legs.” I reached for the handle slowly and released the lock so the door could swing open.
“That’s what I thought.” The biker gave me a warning look, as if daring me to run or make any sort of move.
He needn’t have worried. I wasn’t about to try to outrun a bullet. Plus, I had nothing to hide, which he soon found out as he poked around my car, checking for God knows what.
When he straightened, his expression was slightly less murderous. “You’re good to go. Sorry about that. But we had a security breach not all that long ago, and now I don’t trust anyone.”
I offered him my hand, trying to show I wasn’t a threat. “No hard feelings. I totally understand. I’m Grayson.”
He took it. “Fang. But you aren’t here to exchange pleasantries with me. Go on through. The road will take you straight to the clubhouse. Hayley Jade and Kara are waiting for you there.”
“Thanks.” I got back in my car and drove it slowly through the gates and down the hill, a big, rectangular building rising from behind the thick trees a minute later.
“Fucking hell.” I stared up at the building. Bikes were parked outside the doors, cigarette butts were discarded in an ashtray, and a club jacket slung over an outdoor chair. There wasn’t a welcome mat or a cheery front door wreath in sight. The entire place screamed “get out.”
I’d promised Kara I wouldn’t judge her home though, so I concentrated on just getting myself out of the car.
Because there was a little girl on the other side who needed me to help her.
And because I needed to see for myself that she and her mother were safe here. I still didn’t fully understand what had happened the night Kara had ended up in the hospital. The story they’d told about her being partially buried when an embankment had given way was full of holes, but it had been clear that it wasn’t Hayden or Hawk who had hurt her. So that had been enough for me and the rest of her medical team to release her. But Fang’s comment about there being a security breach a few weeks back rang in my mind, and I couldn’t shake the feeling it had something to do with how Kara had gotten hurt.
If that was the case, then I would happily let them search me and my car anytime they wanted.
I forced myself out of the car and over to the door. I rapped my knuckles across it, but when nobody came to the door, I let myself in. “Hello?”
A young woman at the bar looked up, her gaze widening as she took in my suit and tie. “Holy shit. Where did you come from? You lost, handsome?”
I shook my head and smiled at her. “No. At least, I don’t think so.” I strode across the room and offered her my hand. “I’m Grayson.” I held up my medical bag that held the few basic supplies and paperwork I carried everywhere. “I’m a doctor.”
She raised an eyebrow and slipped her fingers into my grasp. “Well, well, Dr. Grayson. I’m thinking you are indeed lost, but I’m glad for it. Sit. Have a drink. Ice pours them strong, though…” She leaned in, pushing her fake round tits against my chest. “I’m sure you can handle it though, can’t you? I bet you handle a lot of things real nice…”
Her hand traced down my chest and stomach and then lower, trying to grope me.
I pulled away sharply, backing up two steps. “No drink needed. I have an appointment with Kara.”
The woman laughed. “Kara?”
I nodded.
The smile fell off the woman’s face, and she lost interest in me in the same second. She turned back to the bar and Ice behind it, complaining to him like I wasn’t even in the building. “She already has Chaos and Hawk. How much dick does one woman need?”
Heat crept into my cheeks. “It’s not like that. We’re just friends.”
The woman eyed me up and down. “Then you’re available? Single?”
I didn’t know how to tell her I was single, yes, but there was only one woman I was interested in. And it wasn’t her. “Is Kara around?”
The woman sighed. “Kara!”
I winced as the woman screeched down the hallway, but it did have the desired effect of a door opening and Kara’s head popping out.
“Hi! You’re early. I’m so sorry, I was planning on meeting you out the front, so you didn’t have to…”
The woman scowled at Kara. “What? Be accosted by me?”
“I didn’t say that, Amber.” Kara looked down at her hands.
The woman slid off the barstool, tugging at her short skirt. She strode along the hallway. “Hawk know you’ve taken a third lover?”
Kara didn’t say anything.
Amber glared at her, clearly irritated at not getting a response. She banged on the door behind her, though her gaze never left Kara’s. “Hawk! You know your woman has another man out here? How many does that make now?”
The door behind her opened, and Hawk stood framed by the doorway. He reached up to grab the top of it, his gaze sliding to me. He laughed. “Get the fuck out, Amber. He works with us. They aren’t screwing.”
Kara’s cheeks were scarlet.
Even in the midst of her embarrassment, she was still so damn pretty I couldn’t think straight. She’d changed out of her work scrubs, and her skirt clung to the curve of her hips deliciously.
Amber shrugged as she passed me. “If you ever do want to do some fucking, Doctor , I’m always available…” She shot a dirty look over at Hawk. “Since some people are now getting their needs met elsewhere.”
Hawk leaned into the stretch and rolled his eyes. “Jealousy isn’t pretty on you, sweetheart.”
Amber flounced down the hallway, disappearing into a room at the end of it.
Hawk crossed the room to Kara and put two fingers beneath her chin, forcing her face up and her eyes to meet his. “Hey, Little Mouse. Look at me.”
She did.
Something passed between them that didn’t need words.
Kara’s spine straightened. Her shoulders pulled back.
A soft smile spread across Hawk’s lips, and then he lowered his head and pressed them against hers, like I wasn’t even in the room.
“That’s my girl. Go do your thing with Gray and Hayley Jade.”
“And then we’ll go to Hayden’s restaurant opening afterward?”
Hawk groaned and pressed his forehead to hers. “Seriously? You’re going to make me go to that?”
“Please.”
He let out a huff. “You know I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”
She smiled at him as he dragged himself away, and then she glanced at me, jumping a little, like in Hawk’s presence she’d forgotten I was even present. “Oh, sorry. That was terribly rude of me. Let me get Hayley Jade.” She hurried toward the door next to Hawk’s.
I caught her hand before she could pass by.
Both of us stared down in surprise at my fingers wrapped around her. Her skin was so warm. The pulse at her wrist flickered too fast beneath my fingertips.
I realized I was staring, as well as crossing a professional line. I dropped her hand. “Wait. I like to start by talking to the parent first. Can we sit somewhere and talk privately for a moment?”
Kara cringed. “I was kind of hoping you wouldn’t want to do that.”
“I need to know what’s been going on with her, so I know where to start. Especially because she’s currently nonverbal.”
Kara surveyed the clubhouse with a critical eye. “It’s not exactly very private around here. Do you mind coming into my bedroom?”
I wanted to groan. Refuse to see the place she slept, because I had no doubt in my mind that where Kara was at night, Hawk and Hayden probably were as well. She led me into her room, closing the door quietly behind us, but all I could do was stare at the bed, imagining her naked in it, with Hawk’s and Hayden’s big bodies sandwiching her between them while they writhed around, pleasuring each other.
This was so damn unprofessional.
I squeezed my eyes closed, irrational jealousy coursing through me that I had no right to feel. She had men in her life. She wasn’t available for me to desire the way I did, just because she was sweet and kind and so broken I was desperate to fix her.
There was nowhere to sit but her bed. She perched on the edge and then indicated I could take the spot next to her.
Friends. Friends. Friends.
I pulled my phone from my pocket and showed her the recording app I used during all my sessions. “Are you okay with me taping this? It doesn’t get shared with anyone. It’s purely for my own notes.”
She nodded, and I set the phone to record and put it down between us.
“What do you want to know?” Her hands twisting around each other gave away how nervous she was.
“All of it. Every reason you can think of as to why Hayley Jade might have stopped speaking.”
She let out a shuddering breath and nodded.
The story came tumbling out in a rush of words I didn’t have a hope of slowing. Like she’d been holding it all together for too long, all of it on the tip of her tongue, the story desperate to be shared in every horrifying detail.
Somewhere amongst the avalanche, Hayley Jade’s story became Kara’s.
Cults. Forced marriages. Assaults. Hayley Jade’s birth. Josiah. Hawk. Hayden. Rebel. Her sister’s death.
More trauma than any one person should ever have to endure.
She clutched her stomach, as if setting free the words had caused a physical ache. “All of it is my fault, isn’t it?”
I grappled to maintain a professional distance when watching her break down felt like pins being stabbed into my skin one at a time. “No, it’s not—”
“I took her back there, Grayson! I stayed for five whole years, convincing myself that her future could be different than mine, when I knew all along she was never going to be safe. I’m a failure. In so many ways. As a mother. A wife. A woman.”
I wanted to help, but the doctor part of my brain had completely left the building. All I could focus on was the way her heart was breaking and the pain spilling from it, brimming over, right onto me.
“What do you need?” I asked, voice graveled and choked by the rush of need to protect her from everything hurting her.
She shook her head, but then she laughed bitterly, wiping at her eyes. “I don’t know. A hug, maybe? Someone to just hold me and tell me it’s going to be okay.”
Despite her efforts, tears rolled down her cheeks, silently at first, but then they turned into sobs, her shoulders shaking as her body released the weight that had been sitting on her soul for far too long.
It wasn’t unusual. Patients cried in my office on a daily basis.
But I didn’t typically feel my own heart breaking when they did. I didn’t normally gather them into my arms and hug them, because the sounds of their sorrow were too hard on my heart to bear it.
“You’re not a failure,” I whispered back. “Don’t ever say that.”
I smoothed my hand down her back in gentle circles, not knowing what else to do but wanting to take the hurt away from her in any way I knew how.
I was walking a dangerous line and I knew it.
One of complete and utter unprofessionalism. One I could be reported for, and probably even lose my license.
But in that moment, with Kara staring up at me with big brown eyes and needing reassurance, I would have ripped up my own damn medical certificate. She’d asked for human contact. Touch. Assurance. I wasn’t going to tell her no.
“What if she never speaks again?”
It was clear to me that was Kara’s biggest fear. That her actions had permanently damaged her daughter. Without even talking to Hayley Jade, I knew it was Kara who needed this therapy more.
Maybe she knew too.
I brushed her tears away with the back of my hand. I wanted to promise her everything would be fine, but I also knew I couldn’t make promises I might not be able to keep.
Instead, I just pulled her closer and let her cry.
It had been so long since I’d held anyone like this. Since I’d cared enough about their feelings to feel their pain with them. I hated that she’d been betrayed by people who were supposed to love her.
I knew exactly what that felt like. It cut deep and never healed, the wound always there, weeping, just waiting to end your life if you let it take hold and drain you dry.
I didn’t want Kara feeling that pain the way I had. I didn’t want it festering inside her, the way I’d let the pain of losing my wife and my shitty upbringing eat away at me. The places those feelings took you were bleak.
So I held her, murmuring soothing things in her ear, even though it wasn’t my place or my right.
The door crashed open, Hawk in the doorway.
Kara jumped a mile, skittering away from me on the bed.
Hawk’s gaze landed on me, his eyes darkening. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Ah, shit.
“He wasn’t doing anything. I was upset—” Kara’s leg bounced, her nervous energy filling the room.
Hawk’s anger fed on it. “And what? He thought he could just use your vulnerable state to put his hands all over you?” His gaze went hot with fury. “I fucking trusted you with her!”
Irritation bubbled up inside me. “Settle down.” I instantly regretted it. It was probably the worst thing to say, but all the right words had up and left the building a long time ago. All I had left was pathetic attempts at explaining myself. Which truthfully, I couldn’t. But Hawk was going to kill me if I didn’t try. “I hugged her when she was crying. That’s all.”
“You hug all your patients like that?” he demanded. “Tucked in tight to your chest, inhaling her fucking hair while getting a hard-on?”
Kara gasped. “Hawk! Stop it! He wasn’t doing anything wrong! I asked him to.”
“You don’t know how men think, Little Mouse. He’s been crushing on you ever since we stepped foot in that hospital.”
I shook my head angrily. He wasn’t exactly wrong, but it pissed me off that he was so wrapped up in his jealousy that he hadn’t even stopped to listen to Kara and what she wanted. “Don’t do that. Don’t dismiss her feelings.”
I wasn’t even surprised when Hawk launched himself across the room at me.
Or when Kara tried to force herself between us.
What was surprising was the scream of pain that stopped the three of us in our tracks, all of us swiveling toward the doorway and the rooms outside where more shouts and the rushing of feet came.
“Call an ambulance!” someone bellowed from somewhere down the hallway.
It was probably the only three words that could have had both me and Hawk forgetting our squabbles and running in unison from the room to help.