Page 5 of Daddy's Little Patient

Chapter Two

Oh, dear God, she just wanted to go home.

No one had ever accused Kelly of being a social person, not even under the best of circumstances, and nothing that had happened since the accident had been the best of anything. She hurt. Her muscles all felt torn from her bones. She had a deep, dark purple diagonal line from her right shoulder to her left hip, down her breastbone and around her waist from where she’d slammed against the seatbelt. She had cuts. She had stitches. Right now, heaven would be the ability to wash her own hands or her hair… what she had left of it. Admittedly, hospitals weren’t known for their hair-styling surgeons, but still. She trailed her fingers glumly over the stubble where they’d shaved the entire right side of her head down to the scalp. Between that and her pink and blue mesh ‘gloves,’ she was halfway to looking line an 80’s Cindy Lauper cosplay fanatic. So, she had that going for her.

All day long, the hospital staff had been teasing her with the promise of finally going home until they sprang that, ‘We can’t release you under your own care’ bullshit. Seriously, what was that? She was twenty-eight! She’d been on her own since she wasnineteen, and frankly, if one counted growing up with a single mom who worked two jobs and partied on the weekends, she’d pretty much been on her own since she was eight.

She could take care of herself. Would it be awkward? Sure. She had casts on both her hands; awkward was a nice word for how weird she expected this to get before it was over. But would she cope? Yes, of course, she would. Life was all about learning how to adjust. She would figure it out.

Hugging her right hand to her chest, she wiggled her fingers in the hopes a little extra movement might finally get the dull throbbing to stop. It didn’t, but what else was new? Everything hurt, why not her hands?

Head falling back to rest on the back of the seat, she sighed.

“How fast was he going?” Cole asked, breaking the silence.

“Who?”

“The guy who hit you.”

Shaking her head, Kelly shrugged with her eyebrows. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t remember getting hit, but when the police came by to get a report, they said there was a witness who stopped to call for help and keep me company until first responders got there.”

“But the car rolled?”

“Mm-hmm, but it landed on its tires so it’s not like I was trapped underneath it while it burned. It didn’t even catch fire for realsies until after I was already out.” She looked out the window again. Either the last round of pills they’d given her at the hospital was kicking in, or three days’ worth of sleepless nights was finally catching up with her. She was so drowsy. “I don’t think I was all the way unconscious, though. Like, I don’t remember getting hit, but I do sort of remember trying to steer out of the swerve, and I don’t remember rolling, like the sensation of it, but I remember suddenly being in a snowstorm… You know the kind where the snow hits like rocks on your face?I remember that, how the wind was blowing it around in all directions, but I swear I remember the snowstorm, like…vividly. How cold it was, how hard the ice chips felt, and how dark the night was… and then the car finished rolling and thumped down on all four tires and it was like I woke up without every going to sleep, kinda crunched up between the steering wheel, the seat, and the caved-in roof of my car. It was a weird feeling,” she mused, staring at the window but seeing only her own eyes looking back at her in confusion. “You’d think that realizing that the ‘snowstorm’ was just the broken windshield hitting my face would let me remember it that way, but nope! My brain is convinced that in the middle of a car crash, I teleported to Alaska or something for three seconds before warping back to the car.”

It was night, but there were so many cars whizzing past on the other side of the freeway, the inside of their car was anything but black. From the corner of her eye, she saw Cole’s shocked stare, snapping from the road to her and back to the road again.

“You sound so calm,” he said in disbelief.

“What’s not to be calm about? I survived.”

“You got hurt, Kelly,” he exclaimed, and she honestly couldn’t tell if he was upset or surprised. “Most people would be upset about that. You’re acting like you don’t care.”

“I care,” she protested, then shrugged again. “I just care more about going home and finally getting to relax. It’s been a long four days, Cole. I just want to be quiet for a while.”

He looked at her, then back at the road again. Hitting the blinker, he pulled onto the offramp.

“Okay,” he finally agreed. “That’s fair.”

“Thank you.” She closed her eyes, stretching her legs as much as she could in the passenger seat. Those muscles ached too, but she didn’t have much farther until she was home. “I’m sorry I didn’t call, but I didn’t want to distract you from your business trip. I didn’t want you to get hit by all this the second your planelanded, either, but I had to get out of there. I’d have taken a cab if only they’d have let me.”

“Don’t you think there might be a good reason why they didn’t?”

“Maybe, but they don’t get to be the boss of me just ‘cause they wanna be.”

He hit the brake, and her eyes shot open. For a moment, she was sure he was stopping because she’d used her Little voice and popped a bit of attitude. But no, there was actually a stoplight at the bottom of the freeway offramp, and it was changing color.

“Okay,” he said, stern but calm. “If your Little pops off again, my Daddy Dom is going to deal with her. So, if you don’t want me to put on my bossy pants, you need to keep your Big in full control of your attitude.”

Tired as she was, her stomach still clenched tightly, the way it always did when he started laying down ultimatums. She blamed the hospital drugs for her sudden willingness to push his buttons. There really was no other reason. She knew him and exactly how he was going to respond if she did it again.

And still, she couldn’t help herself. “You’re not the boss of me, either.”

His low chuckle did all kinds of terrible, wonderful things to her tummy. “Uh… yes, I am. I’m Daddy.”

“Only at the club,” she protested.

“And anytime, anywhere, your Little decides to start acting up. Yes, ma’am, I am Daddy in public or private and everywhere in between. I’m Daddy right now because you called me to break you out of the hospital. That’s number one. Number two, I’m Daddy until you’ve healed enough to do things on your own. Until that happens, I’m not leaving you alone… period. I’ll call my boss first thing in the morning. I can work from home and camp out at your place for a while.”

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