Chapter Seventeen
Turner
I can’t help but blame myself entirely for what happened today. I lean up against the wall listening to the doctor describe panic attack symptoms to watch for and the medication he would like Clove to take to help control them. She’s been through too much, and I pushed her over the edge with my outburst.
Even so, everything I told her was the truth. I did what I had to do to keep my sanity. The thought of another man touching her, sleeping next to her in our bed, is an image I’m not sure I can get rid of. How the hell does one forget that?
I let loose my anger, on my wife of all people. Do I suppress this shit eating away at me, bottle it up inside until one day I really let loose? Or do we take it day by day, center solely on Journey, and try to get our life back on track? The answers are out there somewhere. Right now, my wife needs me to be strong for her and my beautiful little girl and I need to get to know each other.
The doctor’s voice changes tone as he speaks to Clove now, bringing me out of my thoughts.
“I’ll get a nurse in here to help you with that shower, and if things go smoothly tomorrow with Doctor Joppa, I see no reason why either you or your little one can’t go home.”
“Already?” I ask, startled.
He swings around in my direction.
“Yes, they’re both perfectly fine health-wise, and your wife’s anxiety can be treated at home.”
The doctor turns his attention back to her, continuing his instructions.
“I don’t need a nurse to help me. I am perfectly fine to shower on my own,” she protests. “In fact, I would prefer it if you don’t mind.”
God, I love the sound of her voice. I sound a bit nuts I know, but there has always been something about that voice of hers, that palpable connection in my conscious mind. I love how she knows exactly what she wants and she’s not afraid to tell you. The hairs on the back of my neck will stand up because I am so sensually centered on hearing her scream my name when she comes. Fuck, I have missed her so bad.
“You lost over there?”
Her long legs swing in the opposite direction as she gets out of bed, leaving me with only a glimpse. My dick twitches; it’s been too damn long since I have been inside of my wife. We’re nowhere near being intimate with one another yet, so why in the hell am I standing here with my dick growing hard? Fuck, now she’s bending over, showing me her bare ass as she picks up the bag my mother brought earlier. Jesus Christ! Turner, you fucking asshole. Think about something else.
She’s now directly in front of me.
“Hey. Are you all right?”
“Yup. Just soaking in everything the doc said. You need help with your shower? With keeping that IV out of the water, I mean?” I add, my voice strained.
“I’m good, thanks. Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’m fine. God, take your shower.”
I push myself off of the wall, adjusting myself in my pants the minute I am away from her. I bend down and pick up the basket of food off of the floor that Krista dropped off earlier.
“Where did that come from? And, oh my God, is that your mom’s chicken?”
Clove perks right up, licking those plump lips. I think I will just leave this basket dangling in front of me while she inspects inside. It seems to be the perfect buffer to hide my aching cock.
Her eyes light up as her hands dig around in the basket, inhaling the aroma of the food coming out of it.
“It is!” she squeals. “Your favorite! Is there somewhere this can be warmed up? She has mashed potatoes and corn in here, too. I am devouring that food when I am done.”
“It’s actually from Krista, not my mother, and I am sure they can heat it up for us. While you’re showering I will get it all taken care of.”
It feels good to talk with her like this, like normal. We have a long way to go, we both know it. It doesn’t matter, though, as I gaze up at the clock on the wall. In four and a half hours, a whole new year for us as husband and wife begins. Last year I mourned her, spending our wedding anniversary in a damn hospital exactly like this one. This time I won’t have to be alone.
As soon as Clove disappears into the bathroom, I set up a small, makeshift dinner table that one of the nurses helped me find, along with a vase of flowers. I sit her anniversary gift on top of her paper plate.
“How romantic,” I laugh to myself.
“Shit!” I hear Clove call out.
The first thing crossing my mind is that she’s somehow fallen or seriously hurt herself. I rap my knuckles urgently on the bathroom door.
“You need any help in there?”
The door opens and steam billows out from the shower, my wife’s wet hair spilling down her shoulders.
“Um. If you don’t mind, I could use some help.”
I release a relieved sigh knowing she’s okay, but fuck me. When she opens the door all the way, she’s standing there with a skimpy white towel wrapped around her, her face freshly cleaned, her big eyes staring up at me. In this instant I realize I am completely and royally fucked, and not in the way I want to be, either.
“This stupid IV is in the way and I need help getting dressed.”
Fucking hell has no fury like my poor dick.
“I can call the nurse if you would rather not,” she says after I am silent for a moment too long. “In fact, that’s a good idea. Let me go call her.”
She tries to get past me but I halt her with a squeeze on her shoulder.
“No, it’s okay. I can help.”
She drops her head toward the floor.
“Are you sure, because…”
“I want to help you.”
I reach for her panties, bend down, and help her step into them. Her legs go on forever and they feel so silky smooth as my fingers run across them. I never once take my eyes off of her panties, even though all I want to do is dip my head forward and run my tongue up the middle of her pussy. She can have all the damn chicken, my dinner is right here.
I can smell her arousal as I pull them the rest of the way up under the towel. She sucks in her breath as I reach around and pull them over her ass. A lump stays lodged in my throat, and I feel fucking dizzy as a son of a bitch, but I bite my tongue. If I could tuck my dick between my legs, I would, but that shit ain’t happening, either.
Clove hands me a pair of yoga pants and we repeat the whole process. I stand up and so does my cock. It can’t be helped when you’re standing so close to something you crave so fucking bad, something you can smell and want so desperately to run your mouth over, because you already know it’s the sweetest thing you have ever tasted.
“I’m going to have to go without a bra.”
I lay my head back against the wall, deciding right then and there that I don’t give a shit if she sees how hard this is for me. I know it’s hard for her, too. I can see it in the way her entire body is reacting to mine. Her breathing has become heavy; her eyes glazed over. I swear if we were not in this damned hospital, I would rip those clothes right back off of her, bend her over, and give her what I know we both very much need.
“This is harder than I thought it would be,” she says, breaking the silence between the two of us.
“You ain’t kidding sweetheart,” I scoff, and run my hands through my hair. “Hand me the gown.”
She hands it to me and turns, dropping the towel in the process, giving me a full view of the side of her breast.
“God, just being near you right now is making all my senses come alive. Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?”
I itch to touch her. My fingers take hold of her long hair and move it over her shoulder so I can stroke down the length of her spine and back up again. I stand there mesmerized as goose pimples coat her shoulders and sparks flow throughout me like an electrical current that reaches the very depth of my soul.
“Turner.”
My name comes off her tongue in a rush that has me sliding my hand around her neck and drawing her into me.
“I’ve missed this so much, babe. You, me, and everything we had, I have missed.”
“Me too,” she whispers.
I kiss the top of her wet head and even though I hate to let her go, I do. I help her into the clean hospital gown, snapping it securely shut at her shoulders, tying it up in the back.
“Come on, I have a surprise for you.”
I lead Clove out of the bathroom and hear her gasp loudly behind me.
“Oh, my God!” she exclaims, taking in my hasty decorations.
I look over at her, her eyes shining.
“I know it’s nothing fancy, but-”
She shushes me.
“No, it’s perfect! I missed this,” she adds almost shyly. “I missed us.”
I pull out one of the hospital chairs for her to sit down and then I sit as well. We dig into the food, eating in silence as we both clean our plates.
“This was so good,” Clove says as she swallows her last piece of strawberry cheesecake. She reaches for the present I told her she had to wait to open until after we ate. “Can I open this now?”
“Don’t laugh when you see it. I found it in the gift shop,” I tell her.
“I won’t,” she promises, ripping open the paper as she talks.
“Oh, wow.”
She holds up a small, stained glass eye catcher. Tears form in her eyes as she reads out loud what it says.
“The love between a mother and daughter is forever.”
“I know our anniversary isn’t for a few more hours, but it just felt right to give it to you now.”
A contented smile graces her lips.
“I think this is the best gift you could ever have given me for our anniversary, Turner. I love it. Thank you.”
“You’re a wonderful mother, the mother of my child.” I lean across the table and gently press my lips to hers. “Our daughter is the best anniversary gift you could have ever given me.”
After dinner, I toss our dirty plates, then we both climb into Clove’s hospital bed.
“Can I ask you something?”
She licks those darn lips after taking a drink of her water.
“Uh. Sure,” I say, sounding like a high school boy when his crush speaks to him for the first time.
“Where were you shot? I mean…”
“How did I survive?” I finish her question for her.
“Yes. I thought you were dead, Turner. It was horrible, worse than horrible, actually. When I saw you lying on the floor after Trent shot you, that felt like the true meaning of living in hell. I don’t even remember much of what happened next, all I knew was I there was no way I could go on; nothing made sense to me anymore. A… a life without you in it seemed senseless. I tried to kill myself afterwards. I wasn’t going to live without you.”
I thank God again that she didn’t succeed. The notion of her trying to kill herself sends my mind into a tailspin of worry. She was just a few weeks pregnant with Journey at that point. The thought of losing them both scares the shit out of me now that I have her back and Journey is here.
I tell Clove the whole story, taking my time and leaving out not one detail about that horrible night and the months that followed; my broken bones, my surgeries. Even the excruciating pain of heartbreak and how my life spiraled downward into a deep, dark depression; the anger, sadness, and more when I learned the truth about my brother and father and what they had done.
“Those first few nights away from you, I fought with everything I had in me to get back to you. That first night I was so damn out of it. Trent beat the living shit out of me.”
I can’t look at her. I know her so well. One look and I will fall apart.
“My hands and feet were tied to a chair and both he and my father kept screaming at me about twenty million dollars. Fuck, you know I had no idea that money even existed.”
“Stop,” she pleads, sitting up with tears welling in her eyes. “Please stop. I can’t listen to anymore, not now. Not yet. I don’t know if I ever want to hear the things they did to you.”
Clove’s weeping turns into full-fledged body wracking sobs. In no time, I gather her into my arms. Her body shakes; she clutches onto my shirt and doesn’t let me go, even when I try to ease her back down onto the bed.
“No! Don’t let me go! Don’t ever let me go. Please,” she begs, clawing at my shirt.
“God, baby, I will never let you go. I never will,” I vow.
Some people may call crying a healing process, a way that we can let out all of our frustrations, anger and sadness. I hold my wife, clinging to her just as hard as she is clinging to me, and crying for the exact same reasons that she does. So help me God, as long as I live, I swear that those two motherfucking animals who did this to me and my family are somehow, some way, going to pay. There will be a reprisal like no one has ever seen before.