Vodka On The Rocks (The Uncertain Saints Book 3) Read online

  His dog took a seat near my feet and laid her scarred head on my knees.

  I petted her gently, becoming more and more aware of the pain in my belly, which really starting to pulse now.

  “Yeah, I don’t feel well,” I told him.

  It wasn’t a lie.

  He narrowed his eyes.

  “I wanted to ask you something,” he grumbled, looking like he really didn’t want to ask me what he wanted to ask me.

  “Okay,” I waited, scratching behind the dog’s head.

  “My mom’s getting married this weekend,” he kept his eyes pointed down at me.

  I nodded. “I heard. Congratulations.”

  He shrugged. “I wanted to see if you’d join me.”

  I blinked.

  “Join you for what?” I asked.

  “As my date.” He looked like those words were ripped out of him.

  “Ummm,” I hesitated. “Okay?”

  He nodded, but when he would’ve said something more, the blonde from earlier wrapped her arms around him from behind.

  “There you are,” she cooed. “What are you doing in here…watching this?”

  She looked like she wanted to scrub her hands at the idea of watching anything to do with home renovation.

  I happened to love Yard Crashers, though.

  “Not anything you need to be concerned about,” he patted her hand.

  He made no effort to remove her, though.

  Ten seconds after he asked me to go to a wedding with him, and he was letting some other woman hang all over him.

  My stomach started to roll.

  I stood up at that thought, thinking now would be a good time to go before I threw up all over his feet.

  He’d probably throw me out then.

  Then uninvite me.

  “Where are you going?” Casten asked as I turned my back on him and Bimbo Boobs.

  I waved at him.

  “My stomach hurts,” I told him truthfully.

  He looked like he wanted to call me a liar, but I really was on the verge of puking, so I hurried out the door without another word to anyone, not even my sister.

  ***

  Casten

  “Well, that backfired,” I muttered to myself as I watched Tasha peel rubber in her haste to get out of my house.

  “Don’t fuck her head up,” Mig said from behind me.

  I looked at him.

  “I’m not going to fuck with her head,” I replied defensively.

  I didn’t sound convincing, even to myself.

  I’d never intended to fuck with her head, and I wasn’t really sure why I’d done what I had tonight.

  Mostly, it was because I didn’t want her to get the wrong idea about me.

  Sure, I’d asked her out to the wedding, but I didn’t want her to think that we were going as anything other than friends.

  But the longer I thought about it, the more concerned I became.

  It was two hours later when I finally decided that I had to see her…to apologize.

  I didn’t want her to think I was a complete dick.

  With that last thought in my head, I got up and hurried out the door.

  “Where are you going?” Ridley called out as he moved up the front lawn to my house.

  I waved at him.

  “Be back.”

  I had to take my old beater Chevy ¾ Ton since it was the only thing not blocked in, and until I was reminded the moment I got in it that I needed to have the transmission worked on.

  She drove, though, which was all that I needed at that point in time.

  Tasha’s loft apartment over the bar wasn’t in my favorite part of town.

  Earlier in the week, I’d gone over there to tell her about her car and had barely contained my fury when I realized what kind of shitty locks she had.

  I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that if any one of the drunks from downstairs wanted up here, it wouldn’t take more than a boot to the door to get through.

  But as I climbed her outside stairs, I realized that the boot to the door wouldn’t be necessary if she left the goddamned door unlocked as she had when she’d gotten home.

  I twisted the knob, much to my annoyance, and went inside.

  I froze when I heard crying.

  “Tasha?” I called loudly.

  “In here,” she whimpered softly.

  I followed the sounds of her quiet sobs and froze when I saw her in a tight ball on the bathroom floor.

  “What’s wrong?” I dropped down to my knees beside her.

  “I don’t know. Stomach hurts. Bad,” she whispered, pain filling her voice.

  “Tell me what you’re feeling. How does it hurt?” I pushed.

  “It’s like everything is all wrenched up inside. My whole belly feels like a dull throb,” she croaked. “And I can’t stop throwing up.”

  I didn’t hesitate to scoop her up.

  She felt light in my arms, and the way her head lolled limply against my chest let me know just how not alright she was.

  She couldn’t even lift her arms high enough to wrap them around my neck.

  “Am I gonna need to grab a bowl?” I asked her.

  She moaned.

  “I don’t know,” she moaned, burying her face into my shirt as she started to cry once again.

  The ride to the hospital was terrible, and the whole time I wanted to scream each time she did.

  I didn’t handle crying women well, but crying women in pain topped the list of torture for me.

  I’d made it through BUDs training and multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, but nothing made me feel worse than this.

  “We’re here,” I told her, pulling up under the ER’s entrance thirty minutes later.

  She nodded her head where it rested on my thigh, and I slowly put the truck in park, got out, and moved around to the passenger door.

  She was exactly where I left her only moments before, and I reached in and pulled her out.

  The security guard saw me, narrowed his eyes and hurried to my side.

  “What’s wrong with her?” he barked.

  I guess it was the biker look that had him concerned.

  I concerned a lot of people, but right then I didn’t have time for him to spew shit about me.

  “She’s having belly pains and is vomiting uncontrollably,” I told him.

  A man in grey scrubs walked out of a side room covered in glass windows, and brought a wheelchair with him.

  “If she stretches out, it gets worse. I’ll carry her for you,” I spoke to the big man.

  He looked like The Hulk in scrubs.

  “What’re her symptoms?” The Hulk asked.

  I repeated what Tasha had told me.

  “Any rebound pain?” he questioned, raising his badge from his pocket and waving it in front of an electronic key pad.

  The doors swung open, and he took me immediately to the examination room closest to the nurse’s station.

  Nurses and a doctor slowly trickled in as I placed Tasha down on the gurney.

  When I started to back up, she reached out like a snake and grabbed my hand before I could make it two steps.

  “Stay,” she pleaded.

  I stayed.

  I wasn’t totally heartless, after all.

  “Sir,” a woman in blue scrubs spoke. “How long has she been like this?”

  I answered questions as another nurse tried, time after time, to get an IV started on Tasha.

  She laid there limply, with her eyes closed and pain etched across her face.

  On the fifth try, I was done.

  “You’re not trying on her anymore, get another nurse,” I informed her.

  The nurse blinked, wide eyed, and it was then I saw the ‘student nurse’ on her nametag.

  “Do you even know what you’re doing yet? Go away so someone who knows what to do can do it and get her some relief,” I snapped at he
r.

  The girl ran out of the room crying, and I couldn’t find it in me to care.

  “Be nice,” Tasha whispered.

  I glared at her hand still holding mine.

  “She was fucking up,” I told her gruffly.

  “She was learning,” she whispered back.

  I didn’t reply.

  She may be learning, but she didn’t need to learn on my Tasha.

  I froze, thinking back over the words that’d just flittered through my brain.

  She wasn’t my anything.

  And I needed to get the fuck out of here.

  “I gotta go,” I said. “I need to call your sister.”

  “My sister’s busy,” she groaned. “I’ve called four times now.”

  Her sister and Mig had disappeared about half an hour after Tasha had left, and I sighed.

  She may be right.

  “What about your parents?” I conceded.

  “Mom’s watching Annie’s kid,” she replied, moaning. “Dad’s out of town fishing.”

  Fuck.

  Just fucking wonderful.

  “Dammit,” I growled.

  A nurse finally got the IV, but as I watched, blood started to leak out of it and onto the floor.

  I watched as Tasha’s blood fell to the white tiled floor.

  Drip.

  Drip.

  Drip.

  One crimson drop at a time.

  “Ma’am,” the doctor, a red headed man who looked like the white version of Steve Urkel with his too-short pants and huge glasses, interrupted. “I’m Dr. Mean. I’m going to roll you over and press on your stomach, okay?”

  Tasha didn’t protest as she rolled over, but the moment that the doctor pressed on her lower abdomen, and then released it, she screamed.

  The scream ripped through my chest like I’d been shot, and I bent down to press my forehead to hers.

  “You’re okay,” I promised.

  I wasn’t sure if she was okay.

  “Appendicitis,” the doctor muttered. “Perfect symptoms.”

  I wondered if that was bad, and then realized about thirty minutes later that it was, indeed, bad.

  “You’re her husband?” the doctor asked.

  I shook my head. “Fiancé,” I lied.

  Hell, I didn’t know why I lied.

  But I wanted them to give me information, and I didn’t want to be left in the dark.

  “She’ll need an emergency appendectomy,” Dr. Mean explained as they rolled a sedated Tasha out of the room. “I’ll be handing her care over to Dr. Stephanopoulos, the surgeon on call.”

  I nodded, watching her until I couldn’t see her anymore. “Thank you.”

  The nurse that’d gotten the IV started earlier smiled at me.

  “I’ll take you to the waiting room,” she instructed me to follow.

  I did and sat down in a waiting room that was half full of people, as I thought about how I’d ended up here tonight.

  Had I not come, would she still be in pain on the bathroom floor?

  Would she have died?

  I closed my mind down on that thought and stared at the red phone on the corner of a desk that an older volunteer was manning.

  Patiently, I waited.

  Nobody sat next to me, and I was thankful.

  By the time the red phone rang hours later, and the man behind the desk called out ‘Tasha Gonzales’ I was about ready to flip the fuck out.

  It’d been over four hours.

  “Yeah,” I jumped up and headed to the desk.

  He handed me the red phone, and I placed it to my ear.

  “Yeah?” I repeated roughly.

  “Hello,” a cheery voice chattered into the phone. “Ms. Gonzales made it through surgery with flying colors and is now resting in room twenty-two-oh-three.”

  “Thanks,” I muttered, slamming the phone down. “You know how I can get to twenty-two-oh-three?” I asked the old man.

  He nodded. “Follow that hallway until it dead ends, then take a right. You’ll see the entrance to the second floor patient room wing that way and follow the room number signs.”

  “Thanks,” I half smiled, speed walking out of there like my heels were on fire.

  The scared looks of some of the other waiting room occupants didn’t slip my notice, but I couldn’t help who I was.

  I walked down the corridor, following the directions perfectly, and found Tasha’s room in less than five minutes.

  They were just transferring her over to the bed.

  “Thank you,” I nodded to the two huge orderlies, who nodded back at me on the way out.

  Tasha laid on the bed, eyes closed, looking like she was dead.

  The monitor that was connected to her, though, said otherwise.

  Her normally bronzed skin looked pale and pallid. Her eyes looked sunken. They’d scrubbed her nails clean of the red polish, making her look for all the world like she really was dead.

  And something clicked.

  Something deep inside of me, that’d never been touched before, slid into place, and I knew.

  Tasha was mine.

  And I’d almost lost her by being a dumbass.

  “Hey,” Tasha’s normally sweet voice, croaked.

  She sounded like her voice box had been put through a disposal.

  “Hey,” I replied softly, moving forward until I was standing directly beside the bed.

  She lifted her hand up slightly, and I grabbed onto it like it was my lifeline.

  “You look spooked,” she whispered.

  “You look dead,” I countered.

  She smiled, and a little bit of her usual self came back into her face.

  “I feel dead,” she confirmed.

  I frowned.

  “You’re in pain?” I prodded.

  She nodded, eyes squeezing shut tightly.

  “Yeah, it hurts pretty damn bad,” she groaned, keeping her voice low so as not to overexert herself by speaking.

  I looked around for a nurse but hadn’t seen hide nor hair of one since I’d gotten in here five minutes before.

  Hadn’t she just gotten out of surgery for Christ’s sake?

  “I’ll be right back to see if a nurse can get you something,” I disentangled our hands and walked out before she could protest.

  I moved swiftly to the first official person I saw, which was a woman sitting on her ass in the corner of the nurse’s station, laughing and carrying on with another woman, who was holding a plastic bag that looked like drugs in her hand.

  “’Scuse me,” I snapped, interrupting the two.

  The conversation they were having halted as I received the attention of both.

  “Can I help you?” the woman sitting down in the corner spoke.

  I turned my glare on her.

  “My woman’s in pain, and I haven’t seen a nurse come in there yet,” I told her, looking down at her badge before saying, “Nurse Tina.”

  Nurse Tina glared at me.

  “What room is your woman in?” she snapped rudely.

  I raised a brow at her.

  “My woman, is in that room right there,” I pointed at the room across from where we were standing.

  The other woman, Nurse Andrea this time, winced, and I could tell she should’ve been the one to be in there.

  “She says she’s in pain,” I emphasized the last word, hoping it’d spur them into action.

  It didn’t.

  “We’ll be right in,” Nurse Tina smiled, hoping to disarm my anger by being sweet.

  I smiled.

  “You will.”

  Nurse Tina frowned, waiting for me to leave, but I didn’t.

  And I knew the second she realized that I wasn’t going to leave until she followed.

  “Isn’t that patient on a morphine pump?” Andrea asked.

  Shouldn’t Nurse Andrea already know what her patient had?

  An
ytime I’d ever come out of surgery, or had friends come out of surgery, there was someone already in the room when they’d arrived.

  That hadn’t been the case for Tasha.

  With a glare at her, I got her moving toward Tasha’s room, and immediately wished for a new nurse.

  The longer the pair was in the room with her, the more upset I got.

  They ‘showed’ her how to use her morphine pump, but she was so sleepy and out of it that she didn’t even catch how to use it.

  Within twenty minutes, she woke up crying due to pain, so I pressed the green fucking button…even though I wasn’t supposed to.

  And I called her sister. And Mig.

  In fact, I pressed and called for well over three hours, just about when the sun started peeking over the horizon.

  “What the fuck, motherfucker?” Mig growled into the phone as if I’d ripped him out of his dream.

  He was a grouchy motherfucker.

  “I’m at the hospital,” I wasted no time getting to the point.

  “If you’re not dying, I don’t give a fuck where you are,” Mig snapped.

  I heard the distinct sound of a smack in the background, but I couldn’t muster the urge to laugh like I normally would have.

  “Why are you at the hospital?” Mig sighed after an intense conversation took place over the muffled line.

  I wanted to hang up on him.

  I wanted to keep Tasha to myself.

  However, I wasn’t a complete dick.

  “Tasha had to have emergency surgery,” I told him in a bored tone.

  “What?” Mig yelled.

  “Mig, what is it?” Annie exclaimed in alarm.

  “Where are you? What hospital? What’s wrong with her? Why are you with her? Why haven’t you called?” Mig bellowed, peppering me with questions.

  I could hear shuffling in the background, and I wanted to hang up, yet again, as Mig started to urgently tell Annie what was going on.

  When Mig finally shifted his attention back to me, I said, “We’re in Marshall.”

  Then I hung up.

  Because he’d get here eventually, and I didn’t want to deal with his shit right now.

  I was on edge.

  I hadn’t slept in well over forty-eight hours.

  I was hungry.

  And Tasha was lucky to be alive.

  It may be a little bit of an over exaggeration on my part, but I couldn’t help how I felt.

  I didn’t do hospitals.

  In fact, I despised them.