Page 23 of Whiskey Shivers

He turned to look at me and gave me a smile as one of the nurses approached him and said something. His attention whipped back to her but that half-smile of reassurance he had just cast at me left me sort of numb and reeling.

I mean, the temptation wasright there,and I couldn’t help but think how things could be so different. How it was so easy to talk and to laugh with Hex and how he’d so selflessly been here for me when my own fiancé, the man who was supposed to love me until the end of time, couldn’t even be bothered to show up.

I looked down at the tan line on my empty ring finger, my hand kept tucked in close to my ribcage in its sling, my posture corrected by a series of figure eight straps and craziness to allow my collarbone to heal, and it was a profound moment.

I thought of Mark and everything felt desolate, cold, and ashen. Whatever love I’d held for him was gone, slowly burned out of me with his inattention and abandonment.

When I looked back up at Hex’s broad shoulders tapering down to a narrow waist, all I could think about was how warm he made me feel and I wanted that. But it broke my heart too, knowing that it could and probably would end in the same way.

How many times had I been treated like a shiny new kitten with a set of new and eager foster parents, only to be passed off to the next set weeks or months later? How often had I switched schools and how many nights had I slept on an office couch in some child protective services building because there hadn’t been any available places to put me?

How often had I been shifted out of a loving environment for once because I was a good kid and easier to place than the next kid who needed this home more than I did?

…and now here I was, a fully capable adult, a contribution to society; and still,stillit was like no one saw me. Like no one cared… not even the person who was supposed to care for me the most. I was both so very sad and so very angry and just full of resentment over that fact.

I sat red-faced in that damn wheelchair and waited patiently once again for others to figure out what to do with me because the people who were supposed to care and be responsible for me couldn’t be bothered to show up. Dammit, I hated it. I loathed it. I felt just like that unwanted child, that invisible teen, and my heart hurt so badly and still,still, a part of me worried about Mark, and I hated that, too.

Hex racked a stack of what was presumably discharge paperwork against the wraparound the nurse’s station and gave a nod to the nurse standing there who blushed a pretty pink. I sighed inwardly, thinking to myself,girl, same.

He returned to me and tucked the papers into the top of the bag and said, “Someone’s going to wheel you out front where I can pick you up easier. Then I’ll take you to your place. We’re going to stop at the in-hospital pharmacy first and get your scripts—”

“No pain meds,” I said with a grimace. “I want to try and get off those.”

“Yes, pain meds,” he said. “I won’t fuckin’ argue with you about it. You don’t have to take ‘em but if you wind up needing them, it’s better you have them than you don’t, I reckon.”

I glowered at him and he smiled and huffed a laugh. “You’re adorable when you do that,” he said, peeling off the prescriptions from the top of the paperwork and setting them apart from everything, before zipping things closed.

“We are not friends for five whole minutes,” I grumbled under my breath, and he laughed.

“That just means you’ll be over it by the time you need to get your pretty little ass in my truck,” he said.

I scowled at him, my mood pretty bad, but still trying to lift under the starry twinkle in his liquid-brown eyes.

“Let’s get you out of here, beautiful. You definitely deserve your freedom.” He gently set my purse in my lap and I put my good hand over it to keep it from sliding. The rest of things he shouldered and a volunteer appeared a few moments later to wheel me where we needed to go.

I made sure to say goodbye to the staff that was here who’d taken such good care of me on my way out. A thing that Hex didn’t begrudge me at all. He simply stood aside and waited patiently, not saying a word.

Had it been Mark, I was sure at this point, that he would have rushed me.

The pharmacy downstairs was a bit of a wait, and I apologized to the poor volunteer, an older woman in her late sixties, perhaps early seventies, who just chuckled lightly and waved me off.

Hex gathered the white paper bag with everything in it and paid before I could even get my purse open, by tapping his phone against the screen at the payment kiosk thingy.

“Okay, I’m going to go on ahead and get my truck. You ladies take your time, and I’ll see you out there, alright?”

“Alright, we’ll be there!” My volunteer chuckled and wheeled us in the direction of the hospital lobby as we watched him forge on ahead of us.

“You’re very fortunate,” she remarked mildly.

“Oh, we’re just friends,” I murmured, as much to not let me get my hopes up and wind up hurting my own feelings as anything.

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” she said. “That boy dotes on you. I think it’s more than that, yeah? In any case, the only thing nicer than watching him coming, is watching him go.”

I spluttered and couldn’t help but laugh, which jarred my shoulder and sent a lance of pain through my neck and chest from the broken bone.

“Oh! I’m so sorry,” she cried.

“No, it’s okay,” I said. “It was just unexpected. To be honest, I needed that laugh.”

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