“Yeah yeah,” I grumbled.
“I’m serious!” he said, leaning down over me. “You almost died. Almost killed a sweetbutt and started a fight with two of the craziest motherfuckers in the Highwaymen too, but that’s to discuss another day.” He sighed and stood back up, dragging a hand down his beard. “For now you lie there, you take your meds, you rest, and you do as you’re goddamned told, you hear me? Because that’s a fucking order.”
Anyone else would have had their ass handed to them on a silver platter for talking to me like that, but he was my prez and I also had vague memories of putting a gun to the sweetbutt’s head and arguing with Battle and Fighter. Wasn’t scared of either of those men, but they were my brothers—they were Highwaymen—and that was just wrong.
Besides, in all honesty, at the moment all I could think about doing was sleeping anyway.
“Sure, Prez, whatever makes your dick hard,” I grunted.
He shook his head. “My wife makes my dick hard, and that’s where I’m going now. I expect to find you still in this bed when I get back.” He took my hand in his, and I was about to call him out on being such a pussy but I saw the worry lines on his face and knew that shit must have been serious. Especially if he’d brought Belle there to take care of me. Knowing who her boyfriend was had to have made that decision a whole lot harder for him.
Shooter glanced over to the corner of the room to Belle, who was now fucking around with some equipment I was attached to. It was like being back in the hospital, but in the comfort of my own room and minus the connection we’d had previously. Whatever had been there was gone now, and all I felt from her was a coldness.
Shooter jerked his head toward the hallway when she looked his way, and she nodded and put down whatever it was she had been doing.
“No drugs, no alcohol, Beast.” He turned and headed out the door and Belle followed him out.
She was dressed in tiny bed shorts and my leather jacket and my dick twitched at the sight of her. God, what I would have done to see her dressed like that every single day. Wearing my jacket and being in my bed. The smell of leather surrounding us both, her hair soft on my chest, her long legs wrapped around mine.
Fuck, what was wrong with me? I was turning into some kind of… well, whatever it was was stopping now. Belle chosehim…our enemy. Besides, I didn’t come second for anyone. I was putting what we’d shared down to a pity fuck, for both of us, and that’s all it was. She’d pitied me and my fucked-up body, and I’d pitied her and her pathetic existence. And that was fine by me. It had gotten things working for me again. My dick was well and truly alive once more, and I was raring for a woman to sit on it. Any woman other than Belle.
Because Belle…she was nothing but a memory now.
Chapter Seven
~ Belle ~
Shooter had asked Joey, the prospect I’d become friends with at the hospital, to bring me home so I could get some of my stuff. He was adamant about me staying at the clubhouse until Beast was well and truly in the clear. I couldn’t really blame him; Beast had undone all his hard work at the hospital in a matter of days. The drugs, the drink, the adrenaline…it had all sent his body into shock. It couldn’t fight him as well as itself, so something had had to give.
Joey hadn’t said more than three words to me the entire time, and I couldn’t help but be hurt by his cold shoulder toward me. I thought we’d become close, but I’d obviously done something to annoy him. I decided to not overthink it and just add it to the train wreck that was my life.
I got undressed and climbed into my small shower, washing the stench of the clubhouse from my body. I hated that place. Every single part of it. The smell, which was a combination of alcohol, oil, and sex. The people, who were all bossy, overbearing, and aggressive. And everything it stood for…violence, crime, and family. I hadn’t heard or seen from anyone since Shooter had practically thrown me into a van and taken me there four days earlier to care for Beast since Doctor Collins had hightailed it to Bali.
Bali, of all places!
I hated him most of all.
Because he had the money to escape.
I scrubbed until my skin turned red and sore. Until I wasn’t sure what I was washing off my body anymore. Was it the clubhouse, my guilt, or was it my desire for Beast? I was losing my sense of right and wrong the longer I was around him. I no longer knew who I was and everything I had once was now gone.
Jenna.
My career.
My sense of worth.
He’d taken it all with one touch of his calloused hands on my traitorous body.
I squeezed my eyes closed, trying hard not to cry. It was pitiful, and I knew I was blaming the wrong person, really. This wasn’t him, this was me. I had let him do this. I had stepped over to the darkness to be with him without thinking it through. We were two different people from two different worlds, and we could never have worked.
The tears came hot and heavy until I was clutching a hand to my chest and practically hyperventilating. But just as soon as it came, it went. I took one last shuddering breath and decided that enough was enough. I wasn’t going to be bullied anymore, by the Highwaymen or by my own guilt. Or by anyone else, for that matter. I had made my bed and I would lie in it, but I’d do it with pride and confidence. I’d do it without shame, because what was done was done.
Beast had gotten what he wanted and so had I. Now I needed to deal with the consequences of my actions and get on with my life. Despite Jenna’s shock at my revelation that I was quitting the hospital, I knew it was the right thing to do. The more I’d thought about it, spinning the idea around and around in my head, the more certain I was of it. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my life yet, but working there wasn’t it.
I stepped out of the shower and wrapped a towel around my body with a new determination. I had money saved up from caring for Beast at the hospital—enough to put a deposit down on a decent apartment—and then my mom could take the trailer, because if there was one thing I was certain of, it was that I couldn’t live with her. She was a stranger to me; a stranger that had abandoned me, no less. She would be out in a couple of weeks, and now that her probation officer had checked out the trailer and deemed it okay for her to stay in, that’s what we’d do. I’d leave some things there so it looked like I was still living there, and I’d come by when I knew the probation officer was coming to check up on her, but I wasn’t staying there with her. Absolutely not.
I’d originally intended to give all the money from caring for Beast to Jenna as a gift. It was, after all, her job that I had taken, but since she wasn’t currently speaking to me and I had no idea if she ever would again, I figured it was necessary that I spent it on getting out of there as soon as I could.
