“She’s doing well. She’s a police officer now, but she did struggle after she lost her mom,” I say, and she winces.
“I was a shit friend,” she mutters, and I chuckle and remind her, “You were a kid, stop beating yourself up,” then I ask, “Who’d you have lunch with then?” hoping to change the subject from Kodi.
Where that girl is concerned, Belle turns a little green.
She clears her throat and instead of looking at me, she reads the chart and mumbles, “Myself, I felt like a loner, so you owe me one.”
I laugh just as we hear, “Ah, Belle, there you are, can you give me a hand please,” and I look up to see Dr. Love, the hospital's fifth year resident. He has a beer gut, and believes he’s God's gift to women, walking over, he trails his eyes over my blue scrubs, lust etching in his dark brown eyes that make me want to curl away from him. “Congratulations, Clark, I heard you were going into nursing,” he says, all without taking his eyes off my chest, and I take a step backward.
“Thanks,” I mutter before I look at Belle, who is looking between Dr. Love and me with a frown, and I say, “Text me later, Belle. I need to continue doing rounds,” and she nods as I walk away feeling the need to scrub myself.
I cannot stand that doctor. I shudder and rush over to room three, ready to follow Amber's lead in taking blood, hoping to get that look from Dr. Love out of my mind.
I only have eight hours left of my shift, and then I can go home and spend time with my little girl before school. I’ll have a little nap and then pick her up before her father gets home and spend the evening with him. With that thought, a smile sits on my face, and I practically skip towards the patient, and hope builds in my chest.
Everything finally feels like I don’t know…I guess perfect, like nothing can break this.
Chapter 22
Trick
I rev my bike as I follow our full van off the intersection towards Rose Hill. We’ll stop here for half an hour out of town to meet up with Psycho, the VP of the Dark Angels, in a different spot than last time while keeping an eye on our surroundings.
We’re taking ammo to the Dark Angel’s, something we don’t normally do, but this time around, due to some shit that went down with Fury's woman and Blade's mama. She’s hospitalized because of some fucked up patch chasers, who should be lucky they are now dead. So, they needed us to do the drop off, which we don’t mind doing.
After speaking with the Cartel last week, Cage managed to convince them to drop over four hundred pounds of ammo and over five hundred guns at one of our warehouses instead of The Dark Angels riding out to meet them. We had our most trustedprospects, whom I supervised, handle half the shipment and load it up.
I rev my bike to keep up as we drive around a large bend. Blaze is at the front, Crash to the left, then my dad to the right, who demanded to come this time round during church two days ago. Apparently, he wants to spend more time with me or some shit, while two prospects are in the van.
We’ve been on the road nearly three hours after getting stuck in traffic, my back hurts, my knees ache, and I fucking miss my wife like crazy.
This her doing nights shit—I don’t think I like it. I really fucking don’t. My therapist said it would be good for both of us to have some distance, so we can miss each other after I basically blindsided my wife when I refused a divorce, something she thought I’d want but I still don’t like it.
It was weird as shit waking up with Willow snuggled up to me instead of her this morning. Don’t get me started when I tried to do the girl’s hair in a bun. Her mama always perfects it, whereas me, I fucked it up big time.
I’ve never seen such disdain from my five-year-old before and I had to call Clark’s mom. She was definitely shocked, but there was no way I was calling my mom. Drew has just had a baby, so I didn’t call her either even though I know she would have gotten me to take Willow to her in an instant.
It was just a cluster fuck, and then there was the clothes I’d gotten out for her.
Fuck me, my child was acting like a teenager when she scolded me for trying to put her in jeans and a tee, and again, my mother-in-law had to take over, dressing her in her leotard and a skirt.
I swear, give me a fucking boy any day…
I check my mirrors as we turn right, but frown seeing the same black truck I saw when we got five minutes out of town, butquickly disappeared. Suspicion builds deep in my gut, a feeling my dad taught me, despite ignoring Mom’s fucked up ways, not to ignore, and I quickly press the button on the bike that I had wired.
“Yeah?” Blaze answers instantly, and I check my mirrors again, the truck growing closer, but with the blacked-out windows, I can’t see jack shit, and that feeling pulls deeper.
“Black Ford truck I mentioned when we left town, but had disappeared, is back behind us, and something doesn’t feel right, brother, take the next right and see if they follow,” I say.
“Got it!” he growls in return before the van goes right, and I follow suit while looking in my mirrors only to curse.
“They’re fucking following us,” I say, and within seconds the van turns at the next left, and I follow suit again while keeping a subtle eye on the fuckers behind that follow without indicating, and my jaw ticks.
Fuck, we’ve got hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of gear in that van, meaning I’m going to have to do something stupid that will most likely have me in the doghouse.
Shit.
“Keep going and call Blade, let him know we have a follower and need back up. I’ll distract them with Crash’s help,” I grunt, then hang up before he can disagree, also knowing how my wife can go from zero to sixty in seconds with her temper.
