Chapter Eight
Lindsay Love is no slacker. She’d proven that over and over, and her speedy recovery from the surgery was no exception. Once she got past the first twenty-four hours in a haze of lingering anesthesia and narcotics, she improved markedly every twenty-four hour period afterward, until she had the nurses lobbying for her earlier-than-expected release. Not that they didn’t love her. They adored her. But she wanted to go home. So, home she came, five days post-surgery.
The chemotherapy was to begin four days later, so she used the days at home to try and eat, and when that didn’t work out so well, drank protein shakes to build her stamina. The creepy tubes coming from her surgical sites she drained herself, matter-of-factly, without asking for anyone’s help. The visiting nurse Daddy had lined up could usually be found sipping coffee or playing cards with Mama instead of tending to her medical needs.
But chemical poison is chemical poison, and the first round of chemo sent her into a cycle of puking, crying, weeping, and wailing, and not allowing a soul near her but Daddy. He sat with her in the bathroom upstairs with the door closed, his low, soothing voice underlying her—at times—screeching one.
“God had better watch Himself,” Dom said while he heated up one of the many casseroles dropped off by church folk. “Lindsay is righteously pissed off at Him.”
“Mm-hmm,” I said, staring out the kitchen window and trying to ignore the whole thing. I wanted to help, but had no idea how I could, since she refused every time I offered.
“Go and strip those walls. That’ll help me,” she’d say, hands covering her face, her whole body shaking with the effort not to puke and puke and puke until her very guts came out her mouth.
So I did. I spent hours at it, ear buds in, jamming to the loudest, most profanity-riddled rap I could stand. Aiden made a few jabs at it, but was busy working for Antony and, I suspected, trying to figure out how to steal his woman. I tried not to think too hard about that, because it made me mad. But it wasn’t my business. So I let it go.
I stripped the hell out of that paneling, all day every day. I’d eat, usually with my father and one or more of my brothers, from the never-dwindling supply of dishes dropped off daily, but only in the evening. My lunch consisted of a piece of fruit and glass after glass of water. I’d forgotten how good the water from the well on our property tasted.
Long about day eight or nine, when Daddy brought Mama home from her chemo and they’d had their hour or two alone in the bathroom, I looked up from my dinner to see a familiar face at the door.
“Hey,” Bobby Foster said, giving me a little wave. “Heard you were home.”
I grinned and let him in, let him hug me, and offered him food from the freshly replenished pantry and fridge.
Later that night, we swam, and of course we kissed. Bobby … now Robert, he informed me, now working at the insurance company Crystal’s parents owned … had been my first love, my first sexual experience, and the first boy I’d ever let in on my secret. The one about my mother hating me. He used to tease me about it just to break the tension when I’d sneak into his basement after curfew so we could screw and smoke pot. In hindsight, a girl really could have done worse for a first. Bobby had a pretty solid set of skills early on. He had not been a virgin, and he’d been madly in love or lust or something with me.
“Hey,” he said softly as he pressed me up against the side of the pool. I’d turned off all the outside lights, hoping to get him to do this. I was pretty pent up, having been used to a steady diet of sex, at least in the last six months or so.
“Hey, yourself,” I whispered, reaching into his shorts.
“I missed you, Angel,” he sighed into my ear, gripping my ass with one hand while I stroked him under the water.
“Shut up and kiss me some more, Bobby.” He did, his lips and tongue and very taste so much a part and parcel of the life I’d resumed here, it seemed just about perfect. He teased my nipples under the cheap bathing suit top I’d unearthed from one of my mother’s endless plastic bins, each labeled with the name of one of her children.
My body went into overdrive at his touch, and I shifted so his thigh was between my legs, giving me the friction I required. He teased and stroked and I squeaked out an orgasm on his leg, still gripping his cock, my other hand tangled in his hair.
He chuckled, studying me as my breathing calmed and I got my second wind. “I’m afraid to do this, Angel,” he said, hips thrusting against me as I stroked faster.
“Don’t be. I’m on a magic birth control shot now. You aren’t diseased, are you?” My breathing was short again. I needed this. I wanted him inside me. I could taste the need on the back of my tongue.
“No,” he groaned when I turned and gripped the pool’s edge. “Oh, Jesus. God, I have missed you.”
He slid my bikini bottoms aside and shoved into me, making me gasp. My body pulsed, hummed and throbbed all while he stroked and fucked me until we both came with a shudder, Bobby’s face pressed into my shoulder to absorb his groan of pleasure.
“Mmm,” I said, reaching up to grip his hair, not wanting him to stop. The connection was too real, too important to me at that moment, never mind that it was with the man I hadn’t spoken two words to since that abortion my mother paid for. I turned to face him, kissing him and realizing I might be setting myself on a path that would be hard to step off when the time came. But I no longer cared.
“Let’s do it again,” I whispered, biting his earlobe. “You have a place?”
“Yep,” he said, smiling and kissing my nose before pulling his shorts up and climbing out of the pool. He reached down to assist me, and when he tugged me all the way into his arms, I had a brief qualm, but smothered it under the delicious thought of having as much sex as I wanted for the next few hours.
I ran inside, kissed Daddy on the top of his head, and grabbed some clothes from my room.
“And where do you think you’re going?” Dom was also there, oddly out of place on a weekend night, clutching a beer and staring at the TV.
“Out,” I said. “I’ll be back in the morning.”
Before either of them could protest, I was out the door and in Bobby’s front seat, the music blaring while we barreled through the darkened streets of our hometown toward his apartment.
When he dropped me off the next morning on his way to work, all suited up and slick, and looking mighty fine, if I do say so myself, I was sore as hell between my legs, but my mind was calm for the first time in days. When I reached for the car door, Bobby snagged my leg and kept me in place, leaning over to kiss me in such a way that I nearly told him to blow off work and take me to his tiny apartment for a few more hours.
“Can I take you out tonight? Dinner?” He kept his hand on my leg.
“Not sure. I’ll text you once I get the mood of the house.”
“Sounds good. It sure was a nice reunion.” He grinned and waggled his eyebrows at me. I studied him a second, taking in the all-American good-looking face, his short blond hair and broad shoulders.
“Yes, it sure was.” I grinned and got out, waving before he reversed down the drive. With a sigh of satisfaction, I turned toward the house.
My mother was standing in the doorway, hands on her hips, looking like she’d never had surgery or long episodes of puking in the bathroom.
In fact, she looked about as pissed off as I’d ever seen her.
“Young lady, I am not running a hotel.”
I frowned up at her, my happy, sated mood destroyed. “What are you talking about?” I tried to get past her, but she blocked my way. “Mama, excuse me. I need to take a shower.”