CHAPTER 3
Tank
I felt like I had been sleeping for centuries, and now there was a blinding white light surrounding me. I tried to blink my eyes open, and I could finally hear voices around me. My eyes were slowly adjusting to the light. Which wasn’t bright or blinding, as per my initial perception, it was just the sunlight streaming in through the window of the room I was in.
Someone was standing over me, and for the first few seconds, I could only see the woman’s silhouette. Then my eyes started adjusting to the light, and I saw her. She was doing something to me…perhaps tucking in the covers on the mattress? She had a delicate heart shaped face and long brown hair which she had tied in a thick ponytail, and it fell over her right shoulder now. She had thick straight bangs on her forehead, nearly covering her eyes. My gaze flitted over her, as she worked with some concentration.
She was a woman with curves, and she was in green scrubs. The thin material of her hospital uniform stretched over her, over her breasts, at her hips…and I could feel my mouth salivating like I was a hungry wolf. Suddenly, as she worked, she looked up, and our eyes met. Blue, clear and light. She was absolutely gorgeous, or was I drugged? I did feel drowsy and weak.
“Welcome back, Mr. Gowan,” she said, in a soft sweet voice. I couldn’t remember the last time someone had called me that. How did she even know my name? Where was I? My mind was still whirling with memories and conflicting emotions. On the one hand, I was confused about where I was, and on the other, I could feel a movement in my pants from the moment I laid eyes on this woman.
“Where the hell am I?” I asked, in a dry husky voice and the nurse smiled and seemed to stifle a laugh.
“Tank!” I heard a familiar voice, and within seconds, Glock’s face had appeared over me. Now it was the nurse and Glock who were leaning over me, peering into my face.
“Glock. What are you doing here?” I asked him, and he smiled nervously and looked up at the nurse to exchange looks with her.
“It’s normal for him to not remember everything right away, just give him some time and space,” she was speaking to Glock now, and I tried to sit up.
She leaned over me, placing gentle hands on my shoulders and I seemed to melt to that touch. I fell back down on the pillows, and she smiled, quickly turning her gaze away from me.
“You need to keep lying down, Mr. Gowan. You were shot, and you’ve been operated on. We can talk about it later when you’re feeling up to it. For now, all you need to know is that the surgery went very well and you’ll be back to feeling normal in no time,” she said and took a few steps away from me.
Nothing she said had really registered in my head. All I could do was stare at her plump pink lips moving as she spoke. I felt like I had been heavily drugged…I had to have been! Why else was I reacting to a stranger this way?
“What’s your name?” I asked, and my voice came out as a growl, even though I hadn’t intended it. I watched as the tops of her cheeks flushed for an instant, and she met my eyes again.
“Noelle. Noelle Peters. I’m your nurse,” she replied, and her name rattled around in my brain for a few moments. I tried to recall if that name meant anything to me if I knew her from somewhere. Why else did I feel like I wanted to hold her?
“Did you save my life?” I found myself asking, and Noelle’s cheeks flushed again, and she shook her head.
“Hardly. Doctor Mason, if anyone, saved your life,” she said, and I knotted my brows. It felt like she had saved my life.
“I saw you before. Somewhere,” I continued, and she stepped closer to me again, and then, she placed a delicate hand on mine, and I could feel a sizzle on my skin.
“Out in the corridor last night, when they were wheeling you into surgery. We saw each other then,” she said, and I noticed how calm and sincere her voice was. She could put anyone at ease with just one word.
“You were there? For the surgery?” I asked, staring into her smiling face. Her eyelashes fluttered, and she shook her head.
“No. Someone else assisted the doctor,” she said, and Glock stepped in with a laugh.
“Don’t worry, Tank, Nurse Peters here didn’t see your guts spilled out on the table,” he said and laughed hard while Noelle blushed again and quickly took her hands away from me.
At that moment, I could have ripped off all the tubes inserted in me, just to be able to reach over and punch Glock in the face. I clenched my jaws at him, and he saw the look of rage in my eyes and stepped forward.
“How are you feeling, brother?” he asked, trying to soften the situation.
“Are you brothers?” Noelle asked, and I saw her filling in a form on a clipboard that was tied to the end of my bed.
“No, not really, not by blood,” Glock told her, and she smiled and nodded her head, while she kept writing on that form.
I looked at Glock again, while he stared at the bandage around my stomach, where I could still feel a dull aching throb.
“I’m fine. But what am I doing in a hospital? What happened?” I asked him, and he jerked his head over to look at me. He looked about the room nervously, and I was confused for a moment. Why wasn’t he just telling me what happened? The last thing I remember was sitting in the warehouse with Glock smoking a cigarette.
“What’s going on?” I urged him again, now feeling a sudden rush of adrenaline in my veins. He seemed like he was hesitating to disclose the truth and that was making me even angrier.
Noelle was looking at Glock as well, expecting a response and he shifted on his feet before he turned to me with a smile.
“You just don’t remember, man. We went out shooting our guns, you know over behind the Glen?” Glock said with a nervous laugh, and I narrowed my eyes at him. We did go to the Glen to practice our shots sometimes, but I had a feeling that wasn’t where we were the previous night.
“We went to the Glen?” I confirmed, and Glock nodded his head vigorously.
“Yeah, Gunner, Hunter, Sniper, you and I,” he continued, peering into my eyes like he wanted to say something. I took in a deep breath and tried to imagine the scene, hoping that some memory would return to me.
I could sense Noelle’s eyes still on us. She had stopped writing whatever it was that she was writing on the form.
“Yeah, remember? You and Sniper were joking around, hiding behind those wooden crates we’d found?” Glock stepped even closer to me, and his voice had dropped to a near whisper. But the room was small, and whatever Glock said, Noelle could hear.
I peered into his eyes, trying to think of these wooden crates that he was talking about, and it all came back to me in a flash. The cigarette falling to the ground, a shot ringing out, Sniper and me taking cover, walking into a shower of bullets, retaking cover. The bullet whizzing past my earlobe, blood on my ear, blood on my stomach. The Dragon Knights had shot me.
“Yeah, I remember, okay, yeah…” I fumbled with my words, as realization struck me.
“Who shot you?” Noelle’s voice cut through the air like ice and Glock whipped around to look at her.
“I shot myself,” I replied, without missing a beat. Before Glock could come up with a worse explanation.
“Yeah, he shot himself. The silly fucker!” Glock said and added another nervous laugh for good measure. We were both staring at Noelle to gauge her reaction, but she was only looking at me. I realized that was what Glock was trying to indicate to me with his eyes; that this was not a discussion, we should have been having in front of her in the room.
“How did you shoot yourself in the stomach?” Noelle asked, and even though a soft smile grazed her lips, her eyes were narrowed at me. She knew what was going on…I could see it in her eyes. She knew we were trying to cover up something. We needed to change the subject and fast.
Glock shrugged his shoulders, and let out a sound from his lips that seemed like a splutter. He was still acting nervously. He needed to get his shit together.
I stared back at Noelle and clenched my jaw. I had an uncontrollable urge to tell her the truth, it was because of the way she was looking at me. She was asking me to confess the truth to her, and never before, had I wanted to tell something everything.
I studied her face, the curves of her shoulders, the way her bangs fell over her eyes, the lusciousness of her lips…I needed to have this woman, or I was going to go insane.
“We were out shooting, and it was dark, and it was just a stupid mistake, you know?” Glock kept fumbling with his words, and Noelle kept staring at me.
I didn’t want to lie to her. I had already lied to her once, and I didn’t want to say another word that wasn’t going to be the truth, so I said nothing.
She took in a deep breath, gulped and then looked at Glock.
“It’s fine, you don’t have to give me an explanation,” she said in a curt but polite voice. Glock shook his head, and I could see that his brain was working a mile per second.
“No, of course, we have an explanation…” he tried to say, and Noelle gave him a half-smile.
“I don’t plan on discussing this with anyone else,” she reassured him, and Glock clamped his mouth shut. “As long as no charges are being filed, I don’t see why this is nothing more than an accident.”
I watched her as she tucked in some stray dark strands of hair behind her ears, and blinked at me. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking anymore, her expression was blank. Whatever it was, I knew that she had already formed her judgments about me. She knew that I was mixed up in something that was dangerous and had caused me to be in this hospital bed with a gunshot wound in my stomach.
Just by looking at her, I knew she belonged to a different world, a safe world.
“You take good care of yourself, now, Aiden,” she said, and the fact that she had referred to me by my first name made my muscles stiffen. No one had called me Aiden since I joined the Bad Disciples four years ago.
“Thank you, nurse,” Glock replied for me, and then I watched in silence as she turned around and left the room. The door swung shut behind her, and I clenched my jaw, realizing that I had been holding my breath around her. She had a weakening effect on me which I didn’t recognize.
Glock whipped around to me, the moment we were alone in the room.
“Fuck! That was close,” he said and jokingly ran a finger over his forehead to wipe away non-existent sweat beads.
I dropped my head back on the pillow and closed my eyes.
“You guys shouldn’t have brought me to the fucking hospital,” I said through gritted teeth, and I could sense Glock stepping closer to my bed again.
“I know you are pissed man, but the gun shot wound was a lot more than Kylie could handle. You needed surgery.”
I let out a frustrated grunt. Deep down, I know Glock was right. Hell, I knew they were all right when I was sitting in front seat of the truck. I just didn’t want to be the one to bring unwanted police attention to the Bad Disciples because of my stupid fucking mistake.
“Besides,” Glock said. “That nurse is nothing bad to look at.” I opened my eyes when he let out a laugh.
“You can thank us later for that delicious treat,” he said, and I crossed my brows at him.
“Don’t pretend like you don’t know what I’m talking about. You couldn’t stop staring at that ass!” he said and laughed again. I had to do everything in my power to not punch him.