Jos
I finished my call to Quinn and leaned my head back against the wall outside the ICU ward’s double doors.
It had been five days since I’d last seen my son, but Quinn assured me he wasn’t missing me very much. Only at bedtime did he cry for me. I missed Reid so much, but Tanner had seemed to need me more than our son, so I’d stayed.
Seeing as how the first thing the asshole did as soon as he was coherent enough was to hit on his doctor made me second-guess my decision to stay with him for so long. Obviously, now that he was on the road to recovery, he didn’t need me around any longer.
I shouldn’t have been surprised, not with our past, but it still stung.
Ugh. I was such a stupid loser where Tanner Reid was concerned. I should have learned my lesson by now, but clearly, I was addicted to the pain he could inflict on me.
Gritting my teeth, I lifted the cup of coffee Matt had picked up at Starbucks for me and gulped down the rich brew loaded with sugary decadence.
“Can someone take me back to Creswell Springs?” I asked the two men standing across from me, not looking at either of them. They didn’t need to see the humiliation that was barely hidden below the surface. The tears I didn’t want to cry, the feeling of being used. Again. Of being nothing more than a body to fill the void for Tanner Fucking Reid. Again.
“Did you two argue?” Bash asked, his voice tired but calm.
“I need a shower and a few days’ sleep with my son cuddled up in my arms,” I told him, ignoring the question, along with that trademark Reid magnetic-blue gaze. “I’m pretty sure my hair smells like trash right now. And from the way Quinn was talking, Reid is starting to forget what I look like.”
“Will Tanner be okay while you go back to the clubhouse for a little while?” Matt asked, concerned only for his brother.
Not that I could blame him. Tanner had been my number one concern the last few days too. I’d nearly lost my mind this week while we waited to see if he was going to make it through the worst of it. The first time he coded, I couldn’t keep myself from screaming in panic. The sound had brought Matt and Bash running, with everyone else in the waiting room right behind them.
Now Tanner was wide awake, thinking with his dick once again, and I wasn’t needed any longer. Nothing more than a second thought. There for his needs, but forgotten the second a pretty, older face filled his vision.
“He’s a grown man, Matt,” I told the younger Reid now, avoiding his gaze just as methodically as I was his cousin’s. “He doesn’t need me around to hold his hand anymore.”
“Jos, what the hell is going on?” Bash demanded now, no longer sounding calm, but frustrated as hell.
“If no one wants to give me a ride, I guess I’ll call my dad.” Pulling out my phone, I started to dial his number, but Matt jerked the cell out of my hand.
“Jet can take you back,” he assured me. “But only if you come back later.”
I lifted a shoulder carelessly. “Yeah, sure. Whatever.” He didn’t say how much later, and I was going to pretend that “later” meant “never.”
“Go tell Tanner you’re leaving, and I’ll talk to Jet,” Bash commanded.
As Bash walked back toward the waiting room down the corridor, I just stood there, staring sightlessly at the metal double doors. They were locked, but all I had to do was lift the little phone beside the door and ask the nurse at the desk to let me in. Some guy named Cristiano Vitucci set it up with the administrator so I could come and go as I pleased, no matter the time of day.
“I’ll come back with you,” Matt offered, and I jerked in surprise, forgetting he was still there.
“Do whatever you want,” I told him, knowing I was acting like a total bitch but unable to turn it off.
It was all flooding back. All the reasons why Tanner and I couldn’t be together. Mostly because I wasn’t his type. I was twenty years old, which meant I was at least twenty years too young for Tanner. He liked them older, had always compared women to well-aged wine. The older, the better was how he saw it. Age meant more experience.
I had neither the years he preferred nor the experience he enjoyed. Tanner was my first—my only, seeing as Reid and work took up all my time and kept me from finding someone else to earn experience with.
It didn’t matter that I was the one who loved Tanner. Love wasn’t what he’d ever wanted, though. That much he’d made abundantly clear the last time we’d had sex before I ran back to Oakland to lick my wounds.
“Jos?” Matt touched my arm. “I’ll sit with Tanner while you’re gone.”
“Yeah, sure,” I muttered, draining the last of my coffee and tossing the empty cup into the trash can by the door. Picking up the phone, I hit “0” and waited. “I’m ready to come back in now,” I told the nurse when she picked up.
“Of course, Miss Barker.”
The door buzzed, and I replaced the receiver while Matt opened the door. I walked down to Tanner’s room just as the doctor was coming out. Her eyes softened when they landed on me. “Ah, just who I was coming to see.” She clasped my left hand, giving it a squeeze. “I wouldn’t make too much of his flirting, love.”
I gave her a tight smile. “Who is making anything out of it? That’s just who Tanner is. So, surgery tomorrow?”
“That’s the plan. There should be no issues from the X-rays, but the ortho surgeon won’t know for sure until he’s actually putting the arm back together.” Her gaze went to Matt before coming back to me. “He seems to be in his right mind now. But just to be safe, I’ll have the next of kin sign off on the surgery.”
I nodded. “That is Matt, so there won’t be any issues.”
“Of course, you’ll be here in the morning for it as well?” She didn’t sound overly sure of my answer, and I didn’t confirm or deny my future presence. Dr. Gregory opened her mouth to say fuck knew what, but I smiled at her and shook her hand.
“Thanks for everything, Doc. You have been such a big help the last few days.”
“Jos, it really didn’t—”
“Excuse us,” I told her, stepping around her. “I need to tell Tanner I’m leaving. I have to check in on our son.”
She said something else to Matt I didn’t want to hear, so I tuned them out as I pressed the button on the wall outside the room to open the sliding door. The curtain was drawn, offering him some privacy, so I pushed it back and found Tanner sitting up in bed.
His eyes snapped open at the sound of the curtain shifting, and the frown that had been scrunching up his brow smoothed out. “Hey, don’t run off like that anymore. I’m sorry about earlier. I didn’t mean anything by it, Jos. I flirt to make things easier, that’s all it was. You don’t have to be jealous.”
I shrugged. “I know you well enough to understand what you were doing, Tanner.” I picked up the few things I had accumulated around the room. It wasn’t much, but I didn’t want to forget anything. I pulled my hair into a ponytail with the hair tie I’d left on the nightstand just as Matt walked into the room.
“Your brother is going to sit with you while I go back to the clubhouse and grab a shower and a little bit of sleep,” I told Tanner and watched as the color drained from his face. I took no pleasure in the distress that filled his eyes, but I didn’t have the energy to soothe him either. I was drained physically and mentally, but especially emotionally. Fighting back the sting of tears, I stepped away from the bed.
“You can’t leave,” he said, his four-fingered hand reaching out to me. “There are showers here. Beds you can take a nap in. Matt, find her a room so she can do what she needs to do.”
“She wants to go back to the clubhouse,” Matt told him. “Stop freaking out. She will be fine. Jet is going to drive her.”
“No, damn it. She can’t leave.” His magnetic blue eyes were wild, and he pushed the covers off himself, throwing his legs over the side of the bed.
Matt pushed him back. “Take it easy, brother. Jos is a big girl. She’ll be okay. Don’t worry about her.”
“I said no. There’s no reason she needs to leave. How am I going to protect her if she’s not here?”
“No reason to leave?” I repeated. “How about our son, dickhead?”
He jerked like his brother had just electrocuted him. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Matt’s gaze locked with mine, and we both lifted our brows. We’d talked about Reid plenty of times for this not to be news to Tanner now.
I stepped closer to the bed, my eyes going back to Tanner. “We have a son, Tanner. His name is Reid. Is none of this ringing any bells? I’ve told you about him repeatedly over the past five days.”
“We have a son?” He jerked against Matt’s hold on his shoulders. “Where the fuck is he? Bring him here! I have to protect him too. Get him here, Matt. We can’t let Fontana get to him.”
“Reid is safe, man. Butch and Colt are back at the clubhouse with the other half of the brothers. Ain’t nothing going to happen to him. Fontana doesn’t even know about him.”
“Go get my son!” Tanner roared, fighting against his brother’s hold. “Go fucking get him now.”
“Okay, okay.” Matt tried to calm him down. “I’ll go get him myself. Just relax. I won’t let anything happen to him, Tanner.”
He started to relax, but when I began backing away, he started to struggle again. “No. You’re not leaving. Do you fucking hear me, Jos? You’re staying right here where I can see with my own eyes you’re safe.”
“You’re acting completely crazy right now,” I snapped at him. “This is a hospital. Hospitals mean sick people. This is no place for a toddler to be. Do you want him to catch something?”
“I want him with me. With us. He either comes here, or I go to him. I don’t give a fuck right now. I just want you and the boy where I can protect you.”
I wanted to scream at him, but I clenched my hands into fists instead. “Look at yourself, Tanner. You’re in no shape to be protecting anyone right now. Just let me go back to the clubhouse and take care of Reid there, where he will be comfortable and away from all the sickness of a freaking hospital.”
“Matt,” Tanner gritted out, his eyes hard as they drilled into me. “Call Doc. Tell him I want to be closer to home. Make them transfer me to Creswell Springs.”
“Dude, you can’t be moved right now. You’re scheduled for surgery in the morning.”
He glared up at his brother. “They have surgeons in Creswell Springs. Whatever they want to do here, they can do there. Make it happen, or I’m walking out of this place right now.”
“Yeah, okay,” I said with a snort.
“Jos, go talk to Bash. Get him to call Raven and make this happen.” Matt was still trying to get his brother to lie back down. “We were going to have him moved closer to home once he was out of ICU anyway.”
“But he’s not out of ICU,” I snapped at the younger Reid. “This is ridiculous. I’m going back to Creswell Springs.”
“Jos…” My name was choked out, but it had more of an effect on me than if Tanner had shouted it. “Fontana knows you are important to me.”
I closed my eyes, wishing it were true. It was just another one of his hallucinations, though, or a ploy to keep me where he wanted me. Tears filled my eyes, so I kept my back to him. “Then he knows more than I do,” I said, my fists pressed to my chest, begging my heart to stop hurting. “I’m going back to my son.”