Page 24 of Whiskey Shivers

She chuckled and said, “He reminds me of my late husband. My Harold was like that.”

“Aw, I’m sorry,” I said.

“Oh, no… it’s been several years now and it’s alright. That’s part of why I come here, though, to be useful and keep busy. Much better than pining away at home alone.”

I said, “I understand.”

“Still, when a man treats you like that, you’ll want to hang on to them,” she said with a wink, putting the brakes on my chair and standing next to me under the overhang along the pickup-and-drop-off zone outside the hospital’s main entrance doors.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I murmured and simply breathed in the muggy fall air of late October New Orleans, with its green smell of the Mississippi River and surrounding swamp. Sweet, living, with its slight edge of decay underneath.

“Are we close to the river?” I asked.

“Not terribly so,” she answered. “Just the wind blowing in the right direction, I think.”

We made small talk about the weather and the smell when the rhythmic sound of a big, well-oiled, diesel engine brought me looking up to the intimidating gray work truck in front of me.

“Oh, dear,” the woman tsked as Hex came around the front.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” he promised, opening the door. The runner board whirred down and clicked into place. I took a deep breath as she straightened from putting the wheelchair’s foot things up out of my way.

“Easy, darlin’,” Hex said, taking my purse and opening the back door of the truck to put it atop my other bags. He shut it and came around to my right side, reaching down to brace me. I put my hand in his warm, rough one, and leveraged myself up out of the seat, groaning a little bit.

Two weeks essentially in bed the vast majority of the time certainly hadn’t done me any favors.

“Go on and get up there. I’m here to catch you,” he said. He stood at my back as I pulled myself up onto the runner board first by the “oh-shit” handle, pausing there for the pain to diminish before hoisting myself carefully the rest of the way into the truck.

It wasn’t that bad, but it wasn’t good either.

“Thank you,” I called down to the volunteer who smiled up kindly and gave me a wink that made me blush as Hex shut me safely into his truck.

I turned my head to watch him get in. He pulled the seatbelt across me and clicked it into place for me.

He’d taken off his colorful vest and it hung from the back of his headrest of his seat.

“It doesn’t really bother me. You didn’t have to take it off,” I murmured, and he smiled at me, this little smile like he thought I was cute.

Hanging his hand off the top of his steering wheel by his wrist, he said, “It’s not that. It’s a rule, you don’t wear your cut in a cage. It’s a disrespect to the colors. We don’t do disrespect. Same principle as not letting this great nation’s flag touch the ground kind of a thing.”

“Oh,” I said.

“You wanna tell me your address? I’ll put it into the GPS here and we’ll get going.”

I told him my address and he put it into the big screen in the middle of everything, and took a deep breath letting it out slow.

“Alright, now, let’s go,” he said, twisting the dial into “drive.” Checking things out, he pulled smoothly into the drive to take us on our way.

Anxiety crawled along my skin and I honestly felt like my stomach had turned to lead. I guess we would find out why Mark wasn’t answering his phone on a Saturday.

CHAPTERTWELVE

Hex…

She was quiet but practically crackled with nervous energy on the drive. I tried breaking the silence and her discomfort by asking, “Now that you’re out of there, what’s the first thing you want to do when you get home?”

She didn’t even hesitate. “I want ashower. A real one. My hair feels gross and I don’t feel like I’ve been genuinelycleanfor forever. I just want a shower in my own shower, with my own shampoo, and my own conditioner, and my own soaps and face wash and smell-good comfort things.”

I nodded, smiling to myself. I’d never heard someone sound so wistful or longing over a damn shower before. It was cute. What was not cute was that her fiancé hadn’t picked her up, her level of agitation, and that she practically vibrated with emotion – none of them good – in the seat beside me. She was stressed, which in turn was damaging my calm and was making me want to damage her useless fucking boyfriend.

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