Chapter 21
Twenty-One
I am not the bigger person. I will curse your bloodline.
—Birdee’s secret thoughts
Birdee
Two days later, I was all but bouncing on the balls of my feet as I waited for Charleigh to pull around in her car.
I officially had three weeks of paid vacation ahead of me, and the explicit orders to stay at home and not go anywhere at all. To take it easy and let someone else do the heavy lifting for once.
Which was a joke, because a support system, I didn’t have.
Charleigh pulled up in her car, and she started to get out, but Medina waved her off. “I got her. You stay there. No reason for both of us to be freezing.”
Freezing was right, too.
It was pushing ten degrees, and by the looks of the clouds in the sky, we were about to get nailed with another storm.
The newscaster had been talking about it all morning, and I’d hoped to be home, and have Charleigh home, before it hit.
My luck was holding, but just barely.
“Ready, Freddy?” Medina asked as she put the lock on the wheelchair.
“Ready,” I confirmed, getting up with minimal help from her.
I’d found that it was fairly easy to bounce back from having your brachial artery severed, but that didn’t mean that people didn’t still worry like crazy that you were overdoing it.
Charleigh and Creed had been here with me the entire time, and it was only today that Creed had been called out with an emergency involving a couple of aggressive elk on someone’s property.
Which ended up working out really well with me getting discharged.
I didn’t want Creed to feel any more obligation to stay with me after I got out, and thankfully Charleigh hadn’t heard that I wasn’t supposed to be alone for a few days.
I didn’t think anything too bad would happen as long as I took it very easy.
“All right,” Medina said as she helped me get settled. “You take care now. And don’t overdo it, okay?”
“I won’t.” I smiled at my new friend. “Thanks, Medina.”
She patted me on the arm. “I’m headed upstairs to go eat that smorgasbord that your company delivered. That was so thoughtful of them. Tell them thank you for us.”
“What’d Great Dane’s get them?” Charleigh asked as she slowly pulled out from under the awning.
“A little of everything from every restaurant in town,” I replied. “I think they got a shit ton of cakes, too.”
“That’s sweet of them,” Charleigh said as she came to a complete stop before pulling out in front of a snowplow.
“Sorry,” she said. “I just didn’t want to get caught behind them the entire way back to Sawtooth.”
“I’m not saying anything,” I said as I leaned back into the comfortable car seats. “How’s work going? Do you like Chris Gates?”
“He’s okay,” she admitted. “He’s very formal and unforgiving. He yelled at Hershel, and I got pretty mad at that. It’s not like Hershel could’ve prevented what he’d done. It was a perfect storm all the way around.”
“I agree,” I said. “Hopefully he’s not always mean. Hopefully this is just a once in a lifetime thing that you’ll never have to deal with.”
“I hope so,” she grumbled as she drove. “Did you ever call your family?”
“Nope,” I answered. “Why bother?”
She bit her lip. “I wouldn’t ever tell them.”
She’d been pretty vocal about her opinions of my family since we’d first met each other—it was kind of hard to hide what was going on when your mother’s issues were so high profile—and she hadn’t changed her opinion much.
Not that I blamed her.
It was starting to dawn on me just how outside of my family that I was.
I mean, every once in a while, I got texts from Mable and Cody, but not in more than just a “hey are you alive” kind of way.
We’d probably never be friends.
There was just too much bad blood between us to ever be okay with each other. These past few days had just cemented the fact that I wasn’t on their priority list.
“I don’t have plans to talk to them about it,” I said. “Shade’s already threatened to push my dad’s snowplows off the mountain.”
“You should tell him to calm his tits so he doesn’t end up going to jail.” She laughed.
Her and Shade had gotten along swimmingly in the few minutes that they’d talked when Shade had visited. She’d even teased him about his unhealthy looking appearance at the explanation of what had happened to me.
He’d promised to visit me after I was home, but I was sure it’d be another two weeks or so before he got the balls to come back. He wanted to make sure that there was zero possibility of me bleeding anywhere around him.
Charleigh had gotten the biggest laugh ever out of Shade’s discomfort.
The two had been talking about my health on and off for the last few days.
I liked that they were friends.
It made my life easier to have Shade like Charleigh, especially since she was beginning to mean so much to me.
“Shade’s learned his lesson,” I said. “Losing his job was embarrassing for him, but it was also a wake-up call. He shouldn’t have done that, and he knows it. Sometimes he just doesn’t react the best where I’m concerned.”
“Are you two…” Charleigh gestured toward me.
“No. Shade and I are, and will always, only be friends.”
“Ahh.” Charleigh nodded. “I got that vibe off of him, but sometimes it’s hard to tell, you know?” She hesitated. “Plus, it’s good to know Shade won’t be an ass where Creed’s concerned. Especially since it’s so obvious that Creed has the hots for you.”
I scoffed. “Yeah, right.”
Charleigh took a left onto my road and slowly accelerated down the street. She came to a stop beside Creed’s truck.
“Yeah, right my ass,” Charleigh said. “I think he’s pretty into you.”
Creed stood up and walked down the length of my front walk, heading right for my door.
“How did he know I was getting out?” I grumbled.
“That would be me.” She winked. “You’re staying with him.”
Before I could express my shock at her words, she got out, closing the door on my words.
The passenger door opened and Creed got down to his haunches. “I got your packed bag. Got your doors fixed, too. But I need to head to my place. Gotta feed my cat. You ready?”
I blinked. “Ready for what?”
“To come back to my place,” he said. “We just gotta transfer you over to my truck. It’s running.”
I carefully got out of the car, ready to argue.
That argument died on my lips as Kurt Huber called out, “What the fuck is wrong with her?”
I grimaced at Kurt’s abrasive tone.
He seriously was disgusting.
“Nothing’s wrong with her.” Creed narrowed his eyes. “Mind your own goddamn business.”
Kurt puffed on his cigarette, then tossed it into the yard as far as he could get it. It landed in Boone’s yard.
“You might want to pick that up,” Charleigh suggested.
“Why would I do that, Tits McBarbie?”
“Because if you don’t, I’ll fucking make you. With your freakin’ eyelid as I shove your face into the damn ground,” Boone snarled. “Don’t litter in my yard. In fact, don’t litter at all.”
Kurt rolled his eyes. “So dramatic.”
“So not kidding, either.” Boone took a threatening step forward.
Kurt threw up his hands and walked down his porch steps in…underwear.
He was in nothing but underwear.
Dirty underwear with holes in them, at that.
We all watched as he picked up the cigarette butt and tossed it into the overflowing trash can next to his front porch.
“Ten bucks says that’ll light up the entire can,” Boone muttered as he turned to me. “Glad to see you alive, girl.”
I shrugged. “Glad to be alive.”
Boone studied me for a long moment before saying, “Your door’s nice and fixed.”
I looked behind me to find…
“Is that a brand-new door?”
“Painted it,” Creed muttered. “Too fucked up to not replace all the siding around it. It needed painting.”
“Oh,” I breathed.
“Shouldn’t you be in the truck already? Didn’t you just get out of the hospital?”
I turned to find Huxley calling out from down the road.
“Yes, sir,” I called out, then muttered under my breath. “There’s a lot of testosterone choking the air right now.”
“You said it,” Charleigh concurred. “I’ll visit you tomorrow. If you need anything from your house, let me know. But I think I got everything when I came by this morning.”
Charleigh stayed behind to talk to Hux and Boone.
Meanwhile, Creed deposited me in his truck and then rounded the front to hop inside.
“I figured we’d go get a bite to eat before the storm hits,” he said. “I’m off for the next week. Major’s covering my area.”
Before I could say that I was fine, that I could eat something at his place, he was backing out of my drive and talking about the diner.
I opened my mouth to argue, but he spoke over me, talking and talking and talking.
He spoke about his sister.
He spoke about her coming back to Montana.
He spoke about the club.
He spoke about his work.
He spoke about his entire freakin’ life, and by the time we ended up at the diner sitting in the parking lot for a solid half hour as he chattered on and on, it was cemented deep into my soul.
I was one hundred percent, irrevocably, romance novel worthy, in love with this man.
He was the one. He would be the only.
And he would never know.