Chapter 10
Ten
I hope that when karma fucks you, you scream my name.
—Bernice’s secret thoughts
Bernice
My job at the doctor’s office in town started off with a bang.
The snow had lasted all of twelve hours.
By nine in the morning the next day, the roads were clear, and I was driving to work.
I did notice, however, that I had a stalker who was openly keeping an eye on me.
Hux watched me get ready for work through my open window.
He didn’t bother to hide that he was watching.
I didn’t seem to care that he was watching, either.
However, when my brother came over and started doing the same thing from his truck parked at the curb outside my office later on that day, I started to feel a little suffocated.
The sense of someone watching my every move started to come back, and the old fear started to take root.
By lunchtime, I was done with my brother doing the stalking.
I marched down the walk toward his truck and crossed my arms, glaring at him.
He rolled his window down, looking sheepish. “What?”
“Go home,” I ordered.
He opened his mouth to protest, but I held up a finger. “Your own club brothers and Apollo said that this would be okay. Trust them. I’m fine.”
He sighed. “I don’t like this. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”
I rolled my eyes. “How about finding out that you’re alive months after you died?”
He closed his mouth.
A door slammed shut, and I turned to find Hux walking toward us with a paper sack under his arm.
“Hux,” Creed said. “What are you doing here?”
Hux held up the sack and said, “Eating lunch with your sister.”
Creed blinked.
I blinked along with him.
“I’m sorry, what?” I asked.
Surely, I hadn’t heard him correctly.
He was having lunch with me?
“It’s cold, let’s go inside,” he urged, catching my hand and leading me back to the front of the doctor’s office.
I looked over my shoulder at Creed to see him looking as stunned as I felt.
But Hux didn’t stop pulling me with him until I was safely back inside out of the cold.
“Um,” I said. “What did you bring for lunch?”
I didn’t question him any further, because I was not a stupid girl.
The alpha male badass that I’d been staring at for months was now bringing me lunch. I’d read enough romance novels to know that you didn’t turn down this kind of opportunity.
I may live in my books, and read to escape, and enjoy smut more than actual stories, but I was not a stupid woman.
This was the golden opportunity I never thought I would have.
Hux was talking to me.
Hux was bringing me lunch.
Hux was the dream guy everyone wanted.
I was going to hold on with both hands and never let go.
“Chicken-fried steak, baked potato soup, and salad with ranch. No tomatoes.”
I blinked. “How did you know that I liked no tomatoes on my salads?”
“The same way that I knew that you left your lunch at home,” he answered. “I’m exceptionally observant when it comes to you.”
He led the way into the breakroom, letting me know that he’d been there before.
He jerked his chin up at Odin, who was on a phone call with a pharmacy, and sat, pulling out containers filled with food.
“I love baked potato soup,” I admitted. “But I never brought it to lunch.”
Which was where I assumed he knew what I liked and didn’t like from. I was practically working right beside him for months. It wouldn’t be something super hard to find out.
His mom gave me enough shit about not eating my vegetables. I was sure that she shared that I hated the food she catered for the shop.
I was a meat, potatoes, and bread girl. And if there was a salad, it damn well better be smothered in ranch and cheese.
When he opened up the boxes, I found that the salad was, indeed, smothered in ranch.
And so much cheese.
Extra cheese on top of more cheese.
Just the way that I liked it.
The chicken-fried steak also had the gravy on the side.
“You ordered it at Hopps once,” he said. “I was at the bar when you came in to place the order.”
I felt his stare on me as I opened up all the boxes and started to dig in.
I wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth.
I was once a starving child.
Deep down inside, I would probably always be that starving child.
I never, ever wasted food. I always took that food home if I couldn’t finish it, but most of the time I stuffed myself to the absolute brim until I was miserably full.
I also made sure to coupon, ensuring that I always had a little bit of everything on hand so if the world came to an end, I could still make bread. Anything was possible with bread, right?
I still remember being in the one-room apartment we shared with my mother, asking my brother when my mother was supposed to come home and feed us. He’d given me this look that said that I was so na?ve, and then left to come back with food.
It would only be later when I realized that Creed had gone out and stolen that food for us.
“Thank you for bringing me food,” I found myself saying.
“There was this one time that Creed stole us some food from this fancy restaurant. And by fancy, I mean Texas Roadhouse. A couple had just left and had this bag of leftovers on a park bench while they posed for a photo. Apparently, they’d gotten some food to go for their son.
It had this massive chicken-fried steak in it smothered in white gravy.
Mashed potatoes. Corn. And all of these rolls and butter. ”
“That why you like it so much?” he asked, watching me devour the meal.
He’d brought me exactly what I ordered from Hopps. However, no offense to Hopps, but nothing would ever hold a candle to that Texas Roadhouse chicken-fried steak.
Hell, at this point there probably were places that could make a better chicken-fried steak, but that place would forever hold a core memory inside of my brain that would never be superseded.
“Chicken-fried steak?” I shrugged. “I don’t know. I think it’s more of a comfort food at this point. I know there are way better things on the menu. I don’t even necessarily like fried things. They make me bloat and I get gassy. But when I’m feeling down, this is the meal that I order.”
He didn’t say anything more, just sat there while he watched me eat.
He never took his eyes off of me the entire time I was eating.
I ate fast, too.
Yet another habit that I’d probably never break.
You ate what you could before you were caught. Or before it was stolen. Someone couldn’t steal a roll out of your belly.
“I can’t finish another bite,” I groaned, looking down at the box of food in front of me.
He pulled the plate toward himself and downed the other half of the food. He ate the steak in three bites. The macaroni was gone in two. The corn in three.
He cleaned off the rest of the box with the rest of the bread, leaving an almost clean to-go container on the table in front of him.
“Were y’all ever poor and hungry?” I asked.
He grunted. “Not exactly.”
My brows rose. “What do you mean, not exactly?”
Before he could answer, Sage, the nurse who worked with us, poked her head in. “I don’t know if you’re finished or not, but your next patient is here. Room six.”
I gave her a thumbs-up, then stood up with a groan.
I leveled my gaze on Hux’s light-brown eyes and smiled. “Thank you for lunch, Hux.”
He grunted and gathered the trash, even going as far as sweeping the crumbs off the table into the to-go container before closing it and placing it in the trash.
I loved me a clean and tidy man.
I had no clue it was possible for Hux to get cuter, but there he was, making it happen.
Loud voices forced me to wave like a dumbass and hurry out, and I came to a stop outside my patient’s door.
I paused and listened to them talk. “No, you should’ve brought him in two hours ago when you called me and asked. I told you to bring him in right then, but noooo. You always know best. You had to get your content.”
I frowned with my hand on the doorknob, listening in and not trying to be circumspect about it.
“I wasn’t trying to get content. I just wanted to make sure she actually needed to go before I took her,” a woman replied to the man.
“I’ll bet if I look on social media, you’ll have a little video up showing how sick your baby is and what are some natural healing remedies you can give her to fix a broken arm.” The man snarled. “You make me sick. I was right. You can’t heal a broken arm with a poultice, Gemma!”
No, you certainly could not.
I opened the door and found myself in a room with a miserable-looking child around the age of thirteen who was sitting on the exam table completely quiet.
The child’s mother was sitting on the lone chair in the room scrolling on her phone.
The father was standing beside his daughter, wearing grease-stained coveralls and a scowl, his arms crossed over his chest.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m Bernice Daugherty. The nurse practitioner. The check-in nurse explained that Kaylee might have a broken arm?”
“We’re fairly sure.” The man softened slightly. “Came for an x-ray to confirm.”
I nodded. “Why don’t you come back with her, Dad? We’ll go get that taken care of now.”
The dad jumped at the chance.
The mother never stopped scrolling on her phone as we left the room.
I got the x-ray all set up, then the father and I stepped out of the room while I hit the button.
“Is this normal?” I asked.
I’d meant it as the little girl being so quiet and withdrawn, but the man just unloaded on me.
“Swear to fucking god,” the man growled.
“Divorced her two years ago because she wouldn’t stop making content out of our lives.
It’s like she’s obsessed with her phone.
Brings our poor kid into it. Like I want my kid’s face on the internet where there are such sick people in the world watching her every move. ”
“Oh,” I breathed.
“I called it quits when Gemma laughed at a comment about Kaylee. Posted it on our personal social media that we had to share because she was insecure about me having one of my own. You want to know what it said?” he asked.
He didn’t wait for me to confirm, which I obviously did want to hear. Who would say no?