Chapter Two
Scorch
HAYES REED HAD BEEN talking since he walked in the door, which tracked, because Hayes Reed had never once stopped talking in the year since he’d patched in.
He’d brought a black tee and black sweats—the ones I’d asked him to grab two days ago—and I had them on now instead of the gown.
The club called him Cricket. It had taken about four days to figure out why.
“—so Brim says the Comal Saints confirmed their full headcount, and the Pecos Devils are hauling in from Odessa Friday morning, which puts them on the road by six, six-thirty, and Brim wants you on-site by noon at the latest because somebody’s got to run the logistics on the ride-out Saturday and Detour keeps volunteering and nobody wants that—”
“Cricket, come on.”
“—because last time Detour ran a route we ended up on a county road the county stopped maintaining in 2019, and Brim said and I quote, ‘never again in my lifetime’—”
“Cricket.” I held out my hand.
He looked at it. “What?”
“Hand it over.”
He dug the Whataburger out of his backpack and handed it over. It was cold. It was also the best thing I’d eaten in two days, which I wasn’t going to say out loud because it would only encourage him.
“Finish the briefing,” I said.
Cricket finished the briefing. It took eleven more minutes.
The short version: rally was on, three clubs confirmed, Brim wanted me on-site by Saturday noon, and if I wasn’t there Detour was going to volunteer for the ride-out route again and nobody wanted that on their conscience. I ate the last of the burger and handed the wrapper back.
“Tell Brim I’ll have the route to him by morning.”
Cricket’s gaze moved to the IV pole. The monitor. Back to me. “You sure you’re going to be out tomorrow?”
“I’ve been sure since the day I got here.”
“Brim’s going to ask me if—”
“Tell him I’ll be there.”
Cricket opened his mouth, reconsidered, and stood up. He stretched in the way of a man who was about to say one more thing and was heroically choosing not to, and moved toward the door. He got it halfway open and nearly walked into her.
SHE WAS IN THE SAME navy scrubs as yesterday, chart tucked under her arm, hair up with a few pieces working loose at her temples from a long shift.
She stepped inside and did the thing she did—two seconds, the whole room accounted for, Cricket and the tray table and the IV pole and me, sitting on the bed in Cricket’s tee and sweats like I hadn’t been planning anything—and held the door for Cricket with the kind of smile that thanks you and ends the conversation at the same time.
Cricket, because he was twenty-three years old and had never once encountered a situation he didn’t think he could improve, aimed his full wattage at her anyway.
“Hey, hi—Cricket.” He got it all out at once, the grin going ahead of the words, the easy confidence of a man who’d never once had to work very hard for a good reaction.
“I’m with the club. Just came to check on him, make sure he’s good, which he obviously is—you’ve been doing great work in here.
” He said the last part with the enthusiasm of a man who believed it.
She looked up from the chart. “Scorch is running a hundred and forty over ninety,” she said, pleasant, eyes moving back down.
“Which means his pain level is higher than he’s reported, he’s been upright longer than he should be, or someone’s gotten him worked up.
Since he was on his feet when I came on shift and you’ve been here forty-five minutes—”
Cricket’s grin held.
“—I’d call it the company,” she said.
The grin didn’t fall. It just ran out of somewhere to go.
“It was good of you to come,” she said, looking up at him with a smile that meant it and still showed him out. “It matters that he has people here. Twenty minutes next time.”
Cricket looked at me. I didn’t have anything useful for him.
He left without a word. I hadn’t seen him manage that before.
I PUT HER AT FIVE-FIVE, maybe a little under.
The scrubs were supposed to be professional, not interesting.
Whoever designed them hadn’t accounted for a woman built the way she was built.
Full chest, the fabric doing more work than it was designed for, and when she turned to drag the chair around I got a clear read on what she was working with from the waist down and my cock registered it immediately.
That was a problem. I had a surgical repair to heal and my cock thickening in a hospital room wasn’t going to help any of it.
Honey-blonde hair coming loose at her temples and capable hands and she covered the room the way someone covers it when they’ve done the same job long enough that they don’t have to think about it, every step landing where it should.
She pulled the chair around and sat down with his file, and I thought about Cricket walking out that door looking like a man whose best play had been called before he ran it.
He’d run his best material. She’d received it like background noise, not rude, not dismissive, just somewhere outside whatever frequency Cricket was broadcasting on. In a year of watching Cricket work a room, I’d never seen that happen.
I’d worked three nurses on this floor since I got here, gotten an orderly to bring me food, and talked my way into getting two attending notes softened before they hit his record.
Cricket had watched all of it and taken mental notes like it was a masterclass.
She’d walked in for sixty seconds and taken apart everything he’d tried, and she’d done it easy, and she hadn’t even looked at him to do it.
“How’s the pain?” she said, not looking up.
“Zero.”
Her eyes came up. The look she had, level and patient and not especially fooled, held for a moment. Then she wrote it down.
“Dinner plans tonight?” I said.
She moved to the side of the bed. “Arm.”
I held out my right arm. She wrapped the cuff and I watched her work, checking the position, adjusting it, settling back.
She kept a neutral expression while she moved around the bed, nothing coming through it, and I’d been watching her since yesterday morning for the moment that expression cracked.
She’d given me exactly one—when she’d pulled my name off the chart and used it, and I’d gone still.
“That wasn’t a no,” I said.
“It wasn’t a yes either.” She stripped the cuff.
Her fingers found the inside of my wrist. Two of them, light pressure, counting. My pulse jumped before I could stop it—one hard spike. My other hand closed on the bedrail. She counted out the rest with her expression exactly where she’d put it. I watched her hold it there. She let me watch.
“Zero,” she said, eyes still on the page. “Your blood pressure’s at a hundred and forty over ninety.”
“That’s resting.”
“That is not what resting looks like.” She made a note. “I’m talking to Dr. Patel about your pain management before I leave tonight.”
“You don’t need to do that.”
“I know that.” Her eyes stayed down. “I’m doing it anyway.”
I watched her reach past me to check the IV drip rate, and the antiseptic-and-soap smell that was part her and part this whole building came with her. My jaw tightened before I got ahead of it.
“Site looks clean,” she said, and pulled back. “Sutures.”
She stepped around to check the suture line, leaning over to get the right angle, and the top pulled forward and I had a clear view of exactly what the fabric had been barely containing.
I kept my eyes above the collar. She ran through the line thorough and unhurried, not showing whatever she found, and Patel had done what the wound needed on a job that had options for going worse, and she wrote her notes and straightened up.
“Healing well,” she said, and covered the incision. “Dr. Patel’s going to be pleased.”
“Patel can add it to his win column. I’ll be in Bandera.”
She looked at me for a beat. Then she went to the foot of the bed.
She was already using the charm attempts against me—I could tell by the way she’d timed the blood pressure cuff. The opening wasn’t there yet.
“You’re being discharged tomorrow,” she said.
“I know when I’m leaving. I’m leaving now.”
“You’re not being discharged until tomorrow,” she said, same patient register. “You’ll need a driver when you are.”
“I’ve got one.”
“Wound care twice a day for the next week.” She tucked the paperwork under her arm. “And you’re not riding for ten days.”
“Seven.”
“Ten.”
“I’ll be mostly sitting. It’s a rally, not a—”
“Are you explaining how motorcycles work to me right now?”
“I’m explaining my specific situation.”
“Your specific situation is a knife laceration that needed surgical repair and sutures holding together your external oblique.” She looked up. “If you torque that muscle, you’ll know it immediately and Dr. Patel will know it thirty minutes later when I call him. Ten days.”
“Eight.”
“Do you know what I’ve never once seen improve a surgical repair?” She waited. “A man deciding eight was close enough to ten.”
I was going to tell her I’d been in worse shape than this when the door opened and the orderly leaned in, the evening-shift kid I’d talked to this morning about getting my personal effects before checkout. He had a plastic bag in his hands. He set it just inside the door.
My jeans and boots were in it.
She looked at the bag. Looked at me. The expression she had was not surprise: a woman who’d been right about this all along, working out what to do about it.
“I’ll be right back,” she said, and went into the hallway.
The door fell shut.
THE BAG HAD HIS JEANS and boots. I swapped the sweats for the jeans—that took longer than it should have, every move pulling at the suture line—and the incision had something to say about every part of it.
The boots took longer still; crouching to lace them pulled at the wound and I went slow.
The cut was in the closet where it had been since they brought his effects up.
I had it on before her footsteps hit the hall.
The door opened.
She took in the jeans, the boots, the cut on my back, and me sitting on the bed like I hadn’t moved. A muscle shifted in her jaw. She came inside, let it close behind her, and sat down in the chair across from me.
Then she crossed her legs, set her hands in her lap, and turned her eyes on me.
“Shannon,” she said.
Not clinical. Not the register she kept for discharge paperwork and blood pressure readings. Low, and specific, and aimed.
Not the freeze from yesterday—that had been reflex, a man caught cold. Low in my chest, wider than anger, already settled in like it wasn’t going anywhere. I’d known since yesterday she was a different kind of problem.
I leaned forward. Put my forearms on my knees. “We’ve talked about that.”
“We’ve been over it.”
“I told you what I go by.”
“I know you did.” She didn’t move. “You’re not getting out that door.”
“I got dressed.”
“You’re dressed and sitting on a hospital bed with an active IV line,” she said. “And I’ve already talked to the night nurse and the charge nurse on the floor below this one. If you walk past either of them, they’ll stop you.”
I looked at her. She looked back at me. Neither of us moved.
“Shannon,” she said again.
Heat crawled up the back of my neck. I held her gaze and kept my voice even. “You want to be careful with that.”
“I’m being very careful.”
Four feet of hospital room between her chair and the bed.
The heat that had been running under every exchange since yesterday, the pulse she’d felt jump, the jaw she’d made tighten twice, how she’d used my name like a key she’d found and hadn’t decided what to do with yet, hung in the space between us. Neither of us moved toward it.
I sat back.
She uncrossed her legs and picked up the clipboard.
“Tomorrow,” she said, same register as before, professional and level, the warmth underneath running like it always did.
“Dr. Patel signs the discharge orders. Someone picks you up, gets you somewhere you can rest for a few days before you make the drive. You call the number on your paperwork if anything changes with the wound.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“You will be,” she agreed, “if you don’t do anything stupid between now and then.”
She waited. I didn’t take it. She let another beat pass and set it in her lap. She’d noticed.
She stood up. “Get out of the jeans. The wound needs to stay flat and you’re not sleeping in those.”
I opened my mouth.
“I’ll send the aide in to help if you need it,” she said, with the pleasantness of a woman who knew exactly what she was offering.
I didn’t need the aide.
I watched her head for the door. She paused at the threshold without turning around.
“Good night, Scorch,” she said, and went.
THE MONITOR BEEPED. Down the hall a cart rattled, voices went by low and professional, and the floor dropped into its after-hours gear, machines still running, everything just turned down.
She was back on shift in the morning. I hadn’t gotten her number. I hadn’t gotten a yes on dinner. I lay back and stared at the ceiling. I had all night.