Page 38 of The Heart We Guard
Atom arrives next. “You should have messaged Ember sooner than this morning,” he says without a proper greeting. “She’s been worried sick.”
“I had my reasons. I’ll speak to her again once church is over. I needed space to do this, first.”
Grudge walks in with a bottle of whiskey and a stack of shot glasses. “Figure we should drink to Butch being back.”
And that’s what we do. When everyone else has arrived, we throw back a shot, and it burns as it goes down. I had raging shakes for the first couple of days at Greer’s, and I’m not sure it was all the injuries. Some of it was the absence of alcohol firing through my veins.
When we’re done drinking, Grudge turns to me and says, “Let’s fill you in on the new player in town and what we’ve learned.”
“If it’s the Midtown Rebels, I already know.”
The news we won’t have the break I hoped for after dispatching the Bratva is disappointing.
But more so is feeling that I no longer care.
11
GREER
Six days.
That’s all it took for Butcher to bust his way into my life, set my belief system on its head, give me a hint of what it might be like to have a man like him on my side, and then leave.
And six days to put a dent in my heart that will take quite some time to smooth out.
As I touch the cool part of the bed, the place where, last night, he held me like all this mattered, it’s impossible to pin down my emotions.
Heartache is the loudest. A yearning for something I allowed myself to believe I could have.
But beneath it is rage. That he would think so little of who we are, of what I did for him, that he would think it okay to creep out. Why? Was he embarrassed? Did he think I might make a scene? Was he worried I was catching bigger feelings for him than he was for me?
Was he disappointed by the sex?
My heart sinks.
That must be it.
I’m a fool for thinking a man like that would think of me as anything other than disposable. It’s embarrassing that I feel anything at all for a man who would choose violence over commitment.
I was nothing but a pastime when he was holed up in a suburban home.
But even the anger and frustration that those things might be true isn’t enough to quell the swell of grief.
It doesn’t even matter what he felt for me, because what I was starting to feel for him is enough to mourn.
I curl up on the bed and tug the sheets he slept beneath into my arms. The scent of him surrounds me.
“You’rethe fool,” I say out loud to Butcher, even though he can’t hear me.
And you’re a fool if you spend any more time lamenting him.
I toss the sheets away and roll my body to the edge of the bed before climbing out. Needing to be free of reminders of him, I tear the bedding off and traipse it through the house to the basement laundry. Once it’s dumped in the machine, I add double my usual detergent and softener. So much that it’s guaranteed to no longer smell like Butcher.
And nothing clears the mind like a busy schedule where you don’t have time to think. I’m going to write a detailed business plan for my mobile hospital. Everything from the financials to staffing to practicalities. I need to decide what I’ll treat. Emergency triage is at the top of the list. But will I treat other on-going medical conditions like diabetes? Childbirth would be hard because it would occupy the mobile vehicle for too many successive hours. I could treat twenty patients with knife wounds in the time it takes for one birth. Cancer would be difficult to accommodate too. I know I won’t be able to diagnose or save a patient with a brain tumor in the back of amobile vehicle. Nor would I have the specialist equipment and machinery to deliver any kind of treatment. There has to be a line of what is feasible, and I intend to push it.
Or am I really longing for an independent hospital with philanthropic support for high-end equipment, and doctors who take a severe pay cut to work there?
No. Mobility is important to me.
