Page 22 of Whiskey Shivers

I sniffed and tried not to let the threatening tears spill. I was gutted. I wasn’t angry this time. I was justhurt.

When she came back to check on me after another half an hour, I asked for the specific book that’d Hex had written his number in and for the phone. Mine was in my purse and I didn’t want to waste any more of the poor woman’s time, digging around for it.

It took some fumbling one-handed to get the cover of the book propped open and to handle the phone at the same time, but I managed.

He picked up on the first ring. “Hello?”

“Hi, um… it’s me,” I said. Ihateddoing this to him after he’d already done so much already.

“What’s wrong?” he asked immediately.

“Um, they’re ready to let me go here and Mark knew what time to pick me up. It’s been a couple of hours and, well, I’m still here…”

I couldn’t even ask him for a ride home. He just said, “I’ll be right there,” and I heard him call out to someone in the background and the line simply went dead.

I closed my eyes and listened to the silence over the line and just breathed.

I think my panicked mind was working a little overtime by this point. I mean, I had abandonment issues, I knew I did, and Mark… well, he knew too, and yet he keptdoing this to me. I mean, it wasn’t the first time. Still, what was making me angry now was that I felt like such a doormat in that I couldn’t stop worrying about him and making excuses in the echoing back chambers of my mind. Things likewhat if he was in an accident on the way here?What if he was downstairs in the emergency room right now. and I was up here mad at him for something that wasn’t his fault?

I tried his phone one more time. carefully pushing the numbers on the handset with my thumb.

“This is Mark Chetta. Please leave your name and number and what this is regarding after the tone.”

I sighed and hung up, knowing if I left any kind of message, saying what Iwantedto say, it would just cause a fight later.

I took several deep cleansing breaths and wrestled the handset back up onto the bedside table. I pulled myself forward with my feet against the floor to slide my book back into the open top of the bag in front of me.

I swear it wasn’t ten more minutes of me sitting and fretting before heavy boot tread fell behind me and I twisted as much and as carefully as I could to see Hex, once again, coming to the rescue.

“Hey,” he said and the hand he put lightly to my back at the base of my neck was both heavy and warm, yet gentle and light, with its touch. A shiver went down my spine and I swallowed hard.

“So, uh, you don’t just ride, you’re a biker?” I asked.

He frowned slightly and then looked down at himself and swore softly. “Uh, yeah, about that…” he said, coming around and dropping onto the bed to be a little more even with me when he met my eyes.

“I keep it on the down=low because the school and all of that, but I’m actually the VP of this particular club. I know it’s got a bad reputation but La Croix – that’s the president – and myself, we’ve been workin’ hard the last year or two to clean it up.”

I could read the sincerity in his eyes and tried to make light of things by swallowing hard, nodding carefully, and saying truthfully despite how my voice shook, “Actually, I think it’s kind of hot.”

He snorted a laugh and bowed his head, bouncing it in a nod before finally looking up at me and asking, “No call – no showed on you again, huh?”

I bit my lips together and turned my head very carefully to look past him and out the window behind him. I sniffed.

“Oh, hey, don’t do that, Fable,” he said consolingly. “I’ll get you home, no worries. We can decide what you wanna do from there.”

I nodded slowly and said, “Thanks.”

“Let me get your things together and have a quick chat with your nurse. Okay?”

“Okay,” I murmured, and I felt my tense posture ease. All I could think to myself was how I should have honestly called Hex in the first place. That by God, it wasnicewhen he stepped in to handle things. That it took such a weight and a pressure off me.

He disappeared out into the hall, and I worked my feet against the floor and turned the wheel on my chair with my one hand so I could see out my room’s door. He leaned over the nurse’s station and I felt my mouth just absolutely water over the fit of his jeans over his ass. Broken in and comfortable looking, the denim faded around the square of his wallet.

I followed the chains of his wallet up where they disappeared under his leather jacket covered by the rough-looking leather vest with its dirty but colorful patches. At the skull leaning out from the big gold fleur-de-lis with its rictus grin and purple top hat, it’s one green eye bulging from behind its monocle.

I hadn’t heard much about the Voodoo Bastards but what I’d heard wasn’t exactlygood.It shocked me that he was one of them.

It confused me, too. I mean, could they really be that bad if their vice president was a high school custodian? I mean, you had to pass background checks, drug tests, and all the things to even think about working at a school, which,clearly, he had if he was working there now but…

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