Total pages in book: 64
Estimated words: 64352 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 322(@200wpm)___ 257(@250wpm)___ 215(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64352 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 322(@200wpm)___ 257(@250wpm)___ 215(@300wpm)
I grinned. “Then you’ll be my nurse?”
Even grinning made my head hurt.
I should stop.
“No.”
My eyes went to her. “Why not?”
She shrugged. “Because you’re not a sure thing.”
I would’ve laughed if I didn’t have first-hand knowledge of the fact that it’d make my skull feel like it was splitting open.
“Oh, I’m a sure thing,” I teased lightly.
“It really does work,” Alana said. “I can tell you what needs to be done, and you can take care of him. Oh, and you can watch my kid, too.”
“Negative,” I said. “Kids don’t like me, and how am I going to heal with a baby around?”
Chapter 11
Pants? You mean leg prisons?
-T-shirt
Rhys
A week and a half later
“Fuck me,” I groaned and rolled over, wondering what had happened to wake me up.
I’d been sleeping soundly, and by the light coming through the curtain, it wasn’t time to get up yet.
Get up being a very loose word.
I was still on mandatory time off, per my doctor’s—Henley’s friend Bradley’s—orders.
After my headache only continuing to get worse, Henley and Alana had ganged up on me and forced me to allow a doctor to come over and take a look at me—which happened to be a friend of Henley’s. His name was Bradley, and he was a neurosurgeon—and also one of the doctors that had taken care of me during my stay in the ICU.
He’d been very familiar with my disappearing act and had at first refused to treat me. But, Henley had helped convince him—and he’d reluctantly done it despite his more than obvious aggravation with me leaving.
According to him, I wasn’t allowed to let my heart rate to get up for at least another two weeks, and even then, I doubted he meant much more than a brisk walk.
My head still throbbed with each step I took, and I didn’t argue. Until the day came that I could function while walking, then I’d put up a fight.
My room lit up with a flash of lightning, and I winced, preparing for the loud boom of thunder.
It didn’t disappoint, and I felt the hard pound of the world around me deep in my chest.
Oh, and the throbbing in my head.
With nothing else to do but get up, I did. Reluctantly.
I stood up and looked out the window, wincing slightly when I saw the first piece of hail hit the ground.
Then another, and another.
I looked farther to my baby—a 1970 Chevelle SS—sitting at the curb instead of the garage where I usually parked it and cursed my friends once again.
Damn them for thinking that they needed to come over and check on me. If they hadn’t, I wouldn’t have parked at the curb instead of the garage where they’d blocked me out of.
A piece of hail the size of a golf ball hit the ground a foot away from my baby, and I made my decision.
Shuffling fast down the hall, I stopped at the alarm panel and keyed in the code to disarm the alarm and walk/ran straight out of the house, and down the driveway.
I held my hand up above my head in a vain attempt to keep any stray hail from hitting me—because that was the last thing I needed—and moved toward the car.
My heart slammed in my chest from the exertion. It was the most I’d put my body through in the weeks since I’d had my accident. Oh, and my head felt like someone was hitting the inside with a fucking hammer.
But other than that, I was doing okay.
Until I got to the edge of the driveway, that was.
The rain started, and the hail started to pick up as well.
It was a brutal mix of the two, and a single piece of hail dinged the side of my mailbox, rolled off, and on top of my car.
I whined low in my chest, hoping that there wouldn’t be a dent.
“Are you fucking crazy?”
I didn’t turn at the sound of Henley’s voice.
I didn’t need to turn around to know she was pissed.
But she didn’t know the sentimental value this car had. She didn’t know that it was my grandfather’s. She didn’t know that it was the one thing on this Earth that had always been mine.
Instead of turning to confront her ire, I walked the rest of the way to my car, slid into the seat, and started her up.
Moments later I was reversing it away from the curb.
Moments after that, I was backing it straight into the garage—just in time, too.
Because the moment that I got out, and met Henley at the front of the car, the bottom dropped out of the sky.
Large pieces of hail hit the road with a sharp clack-clack.
I rounded the hood of my car and winced when I saw Henley’s angry eyes.
“The doctor told you, as well as my sister, not to get your heart rate up!” she yelled, pointing her finger at me.