Page 27 of Baker
“No, we’re good. Call and let us know where we’re needed to help, and we’ll be there. We can split up to get our shit done as well as help out. Show the city boys how us country folk pull together.” Lappy grinned up at me. Ollie gave me a slap on the left shoulder and wheeled Lappy out the doors. I glanced around, sighed, and carried my cup of cold, rancid coffee to the lone empty seat to wait my turn. Looked like it might be a while.
***
Five hours later, I exited the ER with a cumbersome cast, a prescription for pain meds, and a headache the size of the Ferris wheel at the Oklahoma State Fair. Hanley glanced up from his phone when I was escorted out by a lovely nurse, Patty McNair, who had graduated high school with me and was just doing her job on a particularly busy morning. She’d been quite kind considering I’d been like a grizzly with a thorn in its paw all morning.
“Hey.” Hanley pocketed his phone as he rose. “Looks like you broke it,” he added with a nod at the cast sitting in my old sling. Patty gave Hanley a look and glanced at me.
“He’s a friend,” I explained. “And my ride.” She nodded at Hanley. “It’s just a crack,” I mumbled, then stopped at the admissions desk to see about talking to someone to set up a payment plan. “A few aspirin and an ice bag, and it will be fine.”
“He has discharge papers with aftercare. Knowing Baker like I do, the hardest part will be keeping him from overdoing it. Remember to elevate and use ice. Wiggle those fingers and roll the wrist. Keep the cast dry. And do not put any weight on it, which would also include tossing feed bags or hay bales around. Follow up with a set of X-rays in two to three weeks to make sure the bone is healing properly.”
“His brothers will take good care of him,” Hanley said with a charming smile that seemed to work on nurses as well as it did on cow pokes.
“I need to go to billing,” I grumped and walked off. My whole morning had been wasted with this silliness. Texts had rolled in from home. I should have been on the ranch helping clean up and getting ready for the cattle, not sitting here on my ass being covered in plaster of Paris.
“Oh hey. No you don’t. The bill is taken care of already,” Hanley called as he and Patty easily caught up with me. I hit the brakes, spun, and gave him my best glower. “Dodge has it covered.”
“Like fuck he does.” I stormed around them, heading to the exit with a full head of steam.
Patty and my lover raced up to me. Patty was doing her best to escort me outside, which was probably part of her job, and Hanley was trying to be a decent dude. Both could have saved it. I could walk perfectly fine without assistance. Did I look like my grandmother? Not that Granny needed help to get around…
“Where are we parked?” I asked as I scanned the full lot before spying my truck. “Never mind.” I stomped across the lot, each thundering step making my arm bounce just a bit, making it ache. Stupid trees. Stupid wind. Stupidhalf-brothers waving their big city cash around like it was…well, cash. I climbed into the cab, full of piss and vinegar, and then watched as Hanley settled behind the wheel and turned slightly to shoot me a rather stiff look.
“Okay, so here it is,” he said and sighed, placing his left arm atop the steering wheel as his attention fell solely on me. “I know I’m a stranger here, and your family business is private. I also know I’ve kind of been thrown into some personal drama that centers on your brothers—”
“Half-brothers,” I snarled while trying to buckle my safety belt.
“Right. Half-brothers, and probably your recently deceased father.” My gaze dropped to the belt and then back to him. I was not in the mood for a lecture. “That being said, I realize I don’t know your history with your dad or your siblings, but right now, you’re acting like a real dick. Not only to that nurse, but to me as well, two people who have just been trying to help you out.”
Shit. Shit. Shit. He was right. I was being a dick.
“I’m sorry.” I exhaled the words as I let the belt retract. “I’m just…”
He reached around me to pull the belt out and buckle it at my hip. I watched him being so kind, so gentle, and felt even worse about my behavior.
“I know you’re in pain. And I know that you’re feeling all the feels. I honestly think that your brother is just doing the best he knows how to do. Some people solve things with money. And he seems to ooze money.”
“Yeah, he had this big pediatric dental practice in Sacramento that he sold to come out west to pretend to be fucking Gene Autry for his kid.” I found myself lost in his jade eyes as words kept flowing out of me. So many words. They just gushed out of me like a levee breaking. He nodded along, patiently, as I vented about my brothers showing up out of the blue and taking the hell over. He knew all the dirty parts already. About my dad, my mom, and my childhood. I’d vomited dialogue all over him previously when he’d spent that night in the barn. But here I was doing it all over again. What the hell was it about this man that made me want to lay every burden I had in his hands? “Fuck. I’m sorry. This isn’t your worry. Not your fault I have such a delicate ego that I can’t stand the thought of anyone helping me out.”
“I’d call that an overabundance of pride,” he answered in a soothing voice. “You’ve carried that ranch and its problemsalone for a long time. Alone, save for an elderly woman. Anyone would be resentful of virtual strangers moving in and tossing cash at everything while you worked your ass off to make ends meet.”
“He means well,” I muttered as my sight flicked to the right as an ambulance rolled up to the hospital doors. Another person hurt or suffering from the storms last night, I assumed.
“I think so, yeah. They all seem like okay guys. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing to let someone else shoulder your burdens now and again?”
I knew all of that. Deep way down in my gullet, I knew it. But knowing something and accepting it were twoverydifferent things.
“I’ve never been good at handing control over to other people,” I confessed, even though it hurt my pride to do so.
“I see that. And I am more than willing to do what I can to help. I like you. I like what we have going here. And I like what we do atop my sleeping bag—a lot.”
“Me too.” I wish we were there now, him deep inside me, leading me with gentle but sure control so that I could just for a little while be lighter. It was a magical thing to be given that freedom. I’d not really understood it until now. I longed for a man who would run things in the bedroom. Or tent. Wherever the place may be. I’d not really made that connection before. I’d just shirked it off as wanting a dude to rough me up, bark a little, and tell me what to do. And while I did enjoy being with a woman, most women were meek when it came to sex. Not all, obviously, but most were waiting for the man to lead. “I love how you free me from my fetters.”
“The magical power of a magnificent peen,” he teased, leaning over to press a kiss to my cheek. I folded into him as much as I could, despite having a seat belt around me and an arm in a sling.
“You do possess a glorious peen,” I mumbled into his collarbone.
“I know. It’s a hog.” He kissed my hair. “All peen bragging aside, I see what you are struggling with and am touched that you feel safe enough with me to let go. It’s hard as hell for someone who had to assume the mantle of an adult as a child to let go. Above all else, we yearn for what was taken from us at far too tender an age.”
