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My brows rose with disbelief. Demon snorted next to me. Klutz groaned in misery, and then cried out like a baby when I unwrapped his foot none too gently. The kid needed to toughen up. Hell, I wasn't even sure if he'd stopped growing yet. He was a few inches under six-feet-tall and as thin as a rail.
"Tell me again what you see in this kid?" Demon growled as I examined the damage.
Snake crossed his arms and glared down at Klutz, aware that Demon was pissed. Klutz's eyes bolted open for the first time and zeroed in on Demon.
"Please don't give up on me, Prez."
Well, fuck. Demon, Snake, and I all exchanged looks. It was clear from his tone that he was disappointed in himself. He was looking for something alright—a place to belong to, and a family. Snake had found the kid living on the streets, sleeping behind a back ally dumpster, cold, hungry, and scared, but after seeing him fight off a couple of street thugs, Snake had been convinced that with time and conditioning Klutz would be a good fit for the MC.
No one had seen that the boy was accident prone until after Snake had decided to sponsor him.
Demon blew a loud puff of air out of his nose and spun around to leave. "Fix him up," he ordered over his shoulder. "Then come see me."
I grabbed a pair of gloves from the box on the side cart and slipped them on, then got a bottle of saline solution and some gauze and began to clean the blood off Klutz's foot so I could see what I was dealing with. Once all the blood was gone it didn't take me long to see that all he had was a flesh wound. The bullet had grazed the side of his big toe, taking off a healthy piece of flesh and just missing the bone. He'd gotten damned lucky.
"You'll live, kid." Using clean gauze, I dabbed around his toe to dry it off. "Your boots probably got the worst end of the deal." Those I couldn't repair.
"Will I be crippled?"
I looked up at him to see his gaze focused on the ceiling as if he were afraid to look at his foot. Snake and I made eye contact, smirked, and shook our heads. If Klutz didn't look so fucking petrified of what my answer might be I'd have made some joke about needing to amputate his foot.
"You might limp for a little while." Honesty was the best policy. "We're going to have to watch it while it heals. Infection is your worst enemy. Keep the wound clean and dry." I walked over to the medicine cabinet and took out what I needed. "I'm going to give you a shot of antibiotics, and this cream." I held up the small tube. "Follow the directions on the tube. Tylenol will help with the pain." I bandaged his toe while I spoke." I cut my eyes to Snake, who'd remained silent the whole time, his expression hard. "Get me those crutches over there, Brother."
With a heavy sigh he spun on his heel and did as I ordered. As he walked back to the table, I could see it in his eyes—he would have liked nothing better than to clobber Klutz over the head with them. I smirked. "He's going to need to stay off his foot as much as possible," I said to Snake. "He won't be able to get his foot into a boot for a while anyway."
"Shit." He wasn't happy with that news. “How many days we gonna lose?”
“At least ten.”
Klutz pulled himself into a sitting position and took the box of gauze I handed him. Snake smacked him in the back of the head, causing the kid to shoot him a questioning glare.
"That means the other prospects are gonna have to take up the slack," Snake huffed with a scowl. "They ain't gonna be too happy with your ass."
Klutz rubbed the back of his head. "I'll make it up to them."
"You fucking will," Snake snarled, showing no sympathy.
I began to clean up as Klutz and Snake ambled toward the door. "Hey, kid—"
They both paused and turned my way.
"Keep it clean and dry." I repeated my earlier advice, feeling like I needed to. “If you notice any changes let me know immediately.”
“Got it, Doc."
I pressed my mouth, doubting that. Klutz's brain was as malnourished as his underdeveloped body. Snake had better get a handle on the kid if he expected him to survive prospecting for the club. Get some meat on his bones and muscle him up. Just because he was scrappy and had managed to beat a couple of guys up didn't mean shit. The men we came up against weren't half-starved kids living on the streets.
I sterilized the table and tossed the used gauze and gloves into the trash. When I turned to leave, I came to a jarring halt. Standing in the doorway, looking just as surprised to see me as I was to see her, was Harlow. She looked like a deer in the headlights. Her baby blues were opened wide and held mine prisoner. Plump, glossy lips parted slightly, just teasing me to take another taste.
I wondered what her other lips would taste like.
It'd been a while since I'd seen Harlow, and she was just as beautiful as ever, even in scrubs that didn't begin to disguise her killer curves. She'd pulled her thick, platinum hair back into a soft bun at the base of her neck. Soft wisps of hair had escaped the elastic and danced around the side of her face. She must have come here straight from the clinic. I swallowed and pulled myself together.
Even though I instinctively knew why she was there, I asked anyway. "What the fuck you doing here, Harlow?"
Her eyes widened at my gruff, less than friendly tone of voice. She knew how I felt about her being there.
I watched her swallow and then take a breath. "Demon called me. Something about one of the prospects shooting his foot. He asked me to come by if I had the time."
