SAVANNAH
My hands gripthe steering wheel tight as I drive toward Cherry Hollow Medical Center, the tiny hospital just outside town. I keep my eyes on the road, taking deep breaths and trying to wrap my head around what’s happening right now.
The hottest man I’ve ever seen is sitting right next to me.
And I just hit him with my car.
I’m still shaking, adrenaline buzzing through me. It doesn’t help that the man is staring at me from the passenger seat, his striking blue eyes drilling holes in the side of my face. I catch his woodsy scent—musk and pine—wrapping around me like a blanket as I drive.
“I—I’m so sorry again,” I say, desperate to fill the silence. “A squirrel shot out right in front of me…I swerved…my car skidded on ice.”
The man makes a noise deep in his throat. “Least you hit a person instead of a squirrel.”
“I know it was dumb.” My face reddens at his sarcasm. “I shouldn’t have swerved.”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s really not fine. I’m so sorry?—”
“Stop apologizing.”
His voice is stupidly deep, rumbling with authority and sending shivers down my spine every time he speaks. My instinct is to keep apologizing anyway. Heck, it’s hard to stop saying sorry to the person you just knocked over, but I bite my tongue.
“I’m Savannah, by the way,” I offer after a few more beats of silence.
“Clay.”
He doesn’t say anything else, but that doesn’t stop me being distracted by him. He seems to take up the whole car, head flush against the ceiling, his body too big for the space. This goliath of a man must be nearly a foot and a half taller than me. Heck, I almost fainted when he got up from the road and straightened to his full height.
I chance a glance over at him as we approach the hospital. It’s barely half a second before my eyes slide back to the road, but it’s enough to make my heart do a backflip.
He’s so freakin’ handsome.
Clay is a mountain of muscle, every inch of him thick and bulging beneath his flannel shirt. The fabric strains around his broad shoulders, tattoos poking out from under his sleeves like dark tendrils of ink creeping across his skin. A thick beard—black and silver-streaked—covers half his face, framing his downturned mouth. His steely eyes are shadowed by a pair of heavy brows, drawn into a frown that makes him look permanently annoyed. I thought maybe it was just the circumstances making him grumpy. But no—his frown lines run deep across his forehead, grooves carved into his skin from years of scowling.
I probably shouldn’t find his grumpiness so attractive. Heck, I shouldn’t find him attractive, period—he’s twice my age and probably hates my guts right now. But I can’t help melting like butter every time his eyes meet mine. They’re impossibly blue,like vivid mountain lakes caught in the moonlight, and I want to dive right into them.
But I keep my gaze on the road.
The last thing I need is to cause another accident.
When we reach the hospital, I pull into the tiny parking lot and jump out of the car. Clay gets out more reluctantly, his gaze clouding over as we head toward the squat building up ahead.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“Don’t like hospitals.”
I see his hand move instinctively to his left leg. There’s a dark socket covering his knee, tapering into a metal pole that disappears into his boot. It’s none of my business, but I can’t help my curiosity as I watch him walk ahead of me. Was his leg amputated? Was he born without it? Either way, he moves confidently on his prosthetic, his strides difficult for me to keep up with as we head through the automatic doors into the hospital.
We enter a tiny waiting room—totally empty except for a nurse passing through with a clipboard. I tell her what happened and she whisks Clay away through a pair of double doors, while I head for the desk to give the receptionist my insurance details. Then I sit down on one of the vinyl chairs, tapping my foot restlessly while I wait. I stare at the wall posters, reading about flu statistics and frostbite symptoms as the clock ticks in the corner.
God, I hope Clay is okay.
An hour passes with no news, and anxiety claws at my gut. Maybe he’s really hurt. Maybe the tests showed he was bleeding internally. Heck, maybe he’s dying on an operating table right now.
I press the heels of my hands against my eyes, trying to quell my growing headache.
Please let him be okay.
