Page 18 of Rough Rider (Bad Boy High)
The girls that work there talk, and none of them ever said anything bad about him in that regard. I’m pretty sure if he wanted sex, he’d have simply paid one of them for the service.
Yeah, I know that goes down there. My mom tells me she only serves drinks topless, but I’m not sure that’s true. For all I know, she does it all.
It’s not legal, but most things aren’t around here. That stops no one. Not when the streets aren’t really run by the police. Everything can be paid for, and I fucking hate that shit. I answer the call because it has to be about my mother.
“Hey.”
“We have a problem.” Of course we do. I’ll add it to the damn list.
“Is she okay?”
“Not sure she’s ever been okay.” I bite my tongue to not snip back at him. It will help nothing, and I’m not trying to make this harder.
“Where is she?” I ask, not touching his comment.
“The hospital.”
“What!” I screech, making a few people pause and glance my way.
“I don’t know what happened. She was out of it, so I had one of the guys drop her off there.” Is this guy serious? She’s worked for that place for years now, and he couldn’t even call for help for her. He just had some random dude leave her at the hospital doorstep.
“You just dropped her there? Which hospital?” I can’t keep the accusation out of my tone. I know she’s not his problem, but he could have a little human decency.
“Sunset Hospital. What the fuck was I going to do? Call the cops?”
“An ambulance.”
“The cops, same shit,” he clips. “Your mom isn’t getting my place shut down because she buys cheap drugs to snort up her nose.”
“Fuck you, Rico,” I say, ending the call, knowing he’s not going to be helpful in the least. That doesn’t stop him from calling me back while I’m trying to pull up my app to call for a car. I’ll spend the money to get to the hospital faster.
I swear, if it weren’t for bad news, I’d have no news at all lately. Every single day another obstacle gets in my way. It’s overwhelming at times.
I take a minute to get myself together while I finish booking the car, which says it will arrive in ten minutes. I send Rico to voicemail for the third time, not wanting to deal with him any longer. I know he’s going to shout at me and call me a few choice names. Men like Rico get pissed when a woman talks back to them or worse, ignores them.
I glance down at my phone, seeing I still have seven minutes until the car arrives.Please let my mom be okayis all I can think. I consider calling the hospital but know from experience that they won’t give me any information over the phone. Have you ever noticed when you’re waiting for something that the seconds tick by so damn slowly? Especially in high-stress situations.
My phone vibrates, drawing my attention to it again. This time it’s a text from Niki. I don’t check it. It will be too tempting to respond, and the last thing I’m going to do is lay more of my shit on him.
Besides, I know at the end of the day, I can only ever rely on myself. I can't start to ever let myself believe it will be any other way.
Chapter Fifteen
NIKI
“The nose candy is too good to resist, but he likes his job too much to foul his own pool,” I tell Bam.
“Smart but not smart enough,” Bam concludes.
“The smartest play is never to start.”
The orders said the good doc could be found on the second floor, his office nestled at the end of the hall among a collection of different services. Lab here. Radiology there. Hospitals are about healing, but I’ve always felt uneasy walking down the halls with the antiseptic smells in the air and the squeak of the nurses’ tennis shoes against the tiled floors. If you scraped away the fresh paint, I’m sure you’d find blood here. This isn’t a happy place.
There’s a small waiting room outside of the doc’s offices. We drop down into the sparsely padded blue chairs. Bam shoots off a message to the gerbil letting him know we’re outside and he should come to us instead of us barging in and embarrassing him. The notification works because less than a minute later, the man emerges, his forehead sweaty and his hands tucked into his white coat.
His panicked eyes meet ours. He jerks his head toward the double door entrance that leads to a stairwell.
“I’m taking a break, Karen. Be back in fifteen.”
