Page 75 of At Last

I kiss her forehead and snuggle her tighter against my body.

“Alright.” Tommy places a hand on my shoulder while the other officer types on the tablet where he’d recorded my statement. “You told Officer Woodward everything?”

I nod.

“Good girl,” comes his patronizing response.

Before I get sucked into a depression, because forcing a person to relive such a hideous situation especially so soon after it occurred can cause a person to get sucked into a depression, bike engines and an extended cab pickup rumble onto the scene. The pickup about thirty seconds behind the bikes.

Hero and Crass hop off their bikes to head first to a very dead Aiden. Tommy leaves me to join them. Boss and Elise hop out of the truck to get to me. “Had to drop off the bike. Figured you’d like your friend.”

Elise kneels down at my side to wrap her arms around me and Jade. The hug is so welcome and comforting, I almost break down again.

“Can she go?” Boss asks Officer Woodward.

“Sure, she’s finished her statement. She’s free to go.”

Both he and Elise take an arm to help pull me—and thus my daughter, who has her legs wrapped around my waist, holding on for dear life—up onto my feet. They walk me over to Duke’s truck, but before I get in, I yell over to Tommy to remember the dead druggie inside the trailer.

With Jade in her booster, Elise takes the keys from my hand. “I’m driving you to see Duke. Beau will meet us there.”

And like a true friend, she doesn’t ask me to go over anything that happened, choosing to turn on the radio instead. I need that reprieve. Then once we’re down the mountain, back in town, she pulls into a drive-thru to get me a large hot coffee before continuing on to Mercy Medical Center. It takes us another twenty-five minutes to get there.

Duke is already in surgery when we arrive. They’re trying to stabilize him enough to be moved. I won’t cry. Not here. Not now. Though my resolve starts to slip when a sleepy Jade’s eyes begin to water. “He’s my daddy,” She tells the receptionist.

We’re dirty and look like we’ve been to hell and back, which we have. But I don’t have two cares to give at the moment. I want my Duke. I want to hold him, cuddle up next to him while we watch movies. I want to make him stuffed peppers and Limoncello cake again. To kiss him, to love him. To wake up every day for the rest of my life next to him. Is that so much to ask?

No. No it’s not. We deserve our happily ever after.

Mercy transfers him over to Lexington where they keep him for a week. A very long week since when my biker old man begins to feel better, he begins shouting down the walls that his woman is a doctor so he can be discharged. Thankfully Lexington doesn’t agree with him, although I assure them Icantake care of him. I’d prefer not to.

I drive the new truck to pick him up, smoother ride and all. He bitches at me to hand over the keys, but for once he has to takemyorders. His doctors haven’t cleared him to drive. Funny thing is, I was gone for maybe three hours tops. But when we walk back inside the doublewide, literally all my furniture is there, and they’ve even situated everything exactly as I had it at the rental.

None of Duke’s old furniture remains.

“What’s all this?” I ask, practically stumbling over my words.

“Moved you in. No sense you paying rent on a place you’re never gonna be at. This is our home Doc. You, me, and Peaches. Ain’t letting you go.”

There it is, his declaration.

The man is a horrible patient. I’ll bet Lexington was glad to be rid of him. Never a man to stay idle for long, the continued bed rest and recovery time begins to weigh on the both of us.

Though even if we haven’t said the words yet, this is us. For better or worse. I’ve had to remind myself of that a couple of times.

Two weeks after that night, after I made him stuffed peppers and Limoncello cake. After he helped me tuck Jade into bed despite the pain it caused him to bend over, and against my advice, I might add. After I’d undressed him and we’re lying in bed, he begins to tease me, rubbing his finger over my most sensitive areas. It’s torture. He grows hard right in front of my eyes.

“What are you doing?” I, well, pant would be the word for it.

“What’s it look like. We’re gonna fuck, but you’re gonna have to do the work tonight, honey.”

“We can’t have sex. You were shot.”

“Yeah, I was shot. Didn’t break my dick. Now climb on.”

“I’m not climbing on.” I protest.

“That fine ass won’t hit my thigh wound, so we ain’t got nothing to worry about.”

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