Rescue Me: A Bad Boy Military Romance (2 page)

“I’d be climbing the walls if I were you,” Roger says. “Not knowing where you’re headed next? Whew. Forget about it. It would drive me absolutely crazy.”

“Oh, trust me, she is,” Sam chimes in. “She’s been using her days off to scrub our apartment top to bottom over and over again. I have to hide all my stuff so she doesn’t throw it away in one of her cleaning frenzies.”

The whole table laughs.

“I’m not
that
bad, am I?” I ask her.

She nods. “You really are.”

“So what’d you put down on your list?” Martina asks.

“Well, I applied late so a lot of the spots were taken. But I mostly chose places like Hawaii, parts of California near the border, Texas, Washington state, and West Virginia.” I hold onto the last bit of information, the one place I had to write down as my last resort. Because it was the only one left.

“Those all sound like great ones,” Roger says. “We were stationed in Maui for a few years when Sam was a kid. It was like heaven down there.”

Martina laughs. “For
us
it was. Because we had your military paycheck and base housing. A lot more people are living hand to mouth than not, and on top of that, they have to make it seem like they aren’t for the tourists’ sake.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure I won’t get that, honestly. I’m hoping for California at this point.”

“So you can come and visit
me
in my grand plastic surgery residency in Santa Barbara,” Sam says flamboyantly.

“You’ll be raking in money and I’ll be scraping by on a family practice salary,” I say with a laugh. But we all know it isn’t a joke, not really.

Sam and I stumble into our apartment later that night, tipsy from good red wine and the glow of familial conversation. I go to brush my teeth and Sam screams from the living room. “Ella!”

I nearly choke on my toothpaste and run into the living room, my brush still hanging out of my mouth. “What?”

Sam’s eyes are wide and sparkling. “It came.”

I run back to the bathroom to rinse out my mouth. I don’t even bother drying it, running back into the living room with dripping hands. I grab the envelope. It has about fifty inked stamps on it saying “undeliverable,” “misplaced,” and “damaged at facility.” It’s been taped about as many times as it’s been stamped. It’s covered in an unidentifiable black grit.

“That letter looks like it had quite the adventure,” Sam says.

I nod, unable to speak.

“Well? Are you going to open it? What are you waiting for? Come on!”

“What if it’s a terrible place?” I ask. “What if I made a terrible mistake?”

Sam shrugs. “It all works out. It always does.”

“Spoken like someone whose parents’ paid their way through med school,” I grumble.

She sighs and rolls her eyes. “Don’t give me that, Ella. It is what it is. Now open it before I tear it out of your hands and do it for you.”

I retrieve a knife from the kitchen; this thing has been mummified with packing tape repairs. I carefully slice it open and slide the paper out. It’s tattered, but readable.

Ms. Hanover,

We are pleased to inform you that your arrival in Buxwell, Texas at the family clinic is greatly anticipated. We expect your arrival promptly on the fifth of June, two thousand and sixteen.

I stop reading and fold the paper, feeling like the world has slowed down to a caterpillar’s crawl all around me. Sam is looking at me with expectant eyes. “Well? So?”

“I’m going home,” I say. The words don’t want to leave my mouth. “To Buxwell.”

CHAPTER THREE

ELLA

ELEVEN YEARS AGO

I walk through the hallways with my books in my hand, my head ducked down. My curly, frizzy hair forms a protective shield around me. Someone bumps into me and I drop my books. “Sorry,” I hear myself saying. I’m not sure why I’m apologizing;
I’m
not the one who ran into someone else.

I glance behind me as I hear a gaggle of girls laughing at me. It’s Amy Waters and her gang of awful, terrible, horrible mean girls. They’re everything you think of when you think of regular high school bitches, only with sweet, Texas accents. Amy flips her straight, shiny blonde hair and keeps walking. I pick up my books one by one when I see a strong arm reach down.

“Need some help up?” a guy’s voice asks me.

I look up to decline the offer but hesitate when I see the face of Luke Davis: all green eyes and blonde curly hair that falls softly around his face. His jawline is perfection, and if he weren’t just your typical country bumpkin? He’d probably be the face of some teenage clothing line. “No, thank you,” I reply. I gaze over at his posse of football star friends and assume that him helping me up is probably a trick.

I pick up the rest of my books and stand on my own two feet. I realize the two of us facing each other are like islands parting the stream of people who pass around us. I push past him and he grabs my arm. “Hey,” he says. “I think we haven’t met yet.”

I push my glasses up the bridge of my nose and roll my eyes. “We’ve been in the same physics class for the last six months together.”

He furrows his perfect brow. “Are you sure? I think I’d remember that.”

“Right, okay,” I reply, wiggling out of his grip. My cheeks burn as I feel his friends staring at me and talking. The bell rings and everyone scatters.
Great.
I’m late for class. I take off at a run through the now-empty hallways. I have to make it all the way to the other side of the building.

I hear footsteps squeaking behind me. “Wait!”

It’s Luke again. “What?” I ask him, more harshly than I intended to when I turned around. “You’re making me late.”

He grins at me, crossing his arms across his white fitted t-shirt. I can see his biceps straining against the fabric of his shirt. He’s junior quarterback. He’s a god around here. “I didn’t get your name.”

“Ella,” I reply simply, feeling my stomach do a backflip.

“Ella,” he repeats. He seems to be chewing over the simple syllables in his mouth. “Ella what?”

“Hanover,” I say to him. “Ella Hanover.”

“I’m Luke Davis,” he says with a blinding white smile, reaching out his hand.

I laugh. “Yeah, I know.”

“You gonna shake my hand or no?”

I reach out, still not sure if this is a trick. I take his hand and electricity shoots through my fingertips and up my arm, leaving a trail of goosebumps in its wake. I tug my hand away from him, feeling the telltale blush of embarrassment rushing up my face. “I gotta go.” I turn on my heels and walk as fast as I can.

I risk one look back when I reach my intended doorway. Luke is still staring at me from down the hallway, that same smile on his face. I wrench the door open and make myself forget about it.

Guys like him don’t look at girls like me.

CHAPTER FOUR

LUKE

PRESENT DAY

“You about finished up in here?”

I nod and wipe the sweat off of my brow with the back of my hand. “Just about.” I swipe paint across the bottom of the wall with a flick of my wrist. I’m so good at this by now I don’t need any tape to block off the baseboards I finished by hand. I hammer the lid of the paint tin back down and wrap the paintbrush in plastic wrap. I walk over to the industrial freezer and stick the brush in there.

I turn around and see Tim staring at me. He’s the owner of the ice cream shop I’m helping remodel. “You wanna hit the road with me tonight?”

“It’s Wednesday night, Luke.”

“Thanks,
mom
.” I walk past him to the front door of the shop. The sun is setting. I turn back around, twirling the keys around my paint-splattered fingers. “You coming or what?”

Tim locks up the shop and hops into my truck. I peel out of my parking space and speed toward the highway. “I didn’t shower or anything,” he says.

“Air conditioning is finally up and running. Trust me, we don’t need showers.” I see Tim staring at my paint-covered hands. I rub my jaw, feeling the stubble of several days growing on my skin. “Women love a guy who works with his fucking hands. Trust me. It won’t be an issue.”

Tim taps his fingers on the door of the truck. “Shop’s looking good.”

I nod. “Should be another few weeks and you can open up, I’d say.”

He leans back in his seat and puts his boots up on my dashboard. I reach over and push them off. “Sometimes I think you love this truck more than you’ve ever loved another human,” he retorts.

“It’s close, I’ll say that much.”

We make it to the highway, which is mercifully uncrowded. It’ll get worse as we fly toward Dallas, but I’m not worried. It’s past rush hour, and I know my way through back and side roads better than the people who actually live there. I make this trip four times a week, sometimes five.

“This thing must use up a lot of gas driving down here as much as you seem to,” Tim says. I can tell he’s trying to keep his voice light, the judgment out of it. He’s failing pretty miserably at that.

“If you’re worried about my budget you should pay me more for the work I’m doing for you,” I say. “So even a single dollar an hour would help out a poor guy like me.” Tim is my best friend. We grew up together. I’ve been helping him get his place set up for free, as a favor to him.

“Fuck off,” he says in his Texas drawl.

“Your momma better not hear you talking like that,” I say jokingly.

“My mom doesn’t need to know about my life.”

“I’m sure Tanya knows already. The whole town seems to know just about everything there
is
to know, I think.” I switch lanes to speed around a semi-truck, passing it on the right.

Tim laughs. “Woman has eyes in the back of her head. The joys of living in small town America, right?”

“Something like that.” We keep driving, talking about work and women, and I see the bright lights of Dallas come into full view. I speed around the city and park my car in a tiny parking lot with cracked pavement. I cut the engine and turn to face Tim. “Rule number one: don’t fall in love with any of them. Rule number two: same as rule number one. Oh, and I usually end up at the hotel down the road. You can’t find me? I’m there. I’m spending the night.”

Tim groans. “You didn’t tell me that. I wouldn’t have come; I’ve gotta be up tomorrow early for the code guy to do an inspection. Gotta make sure that you didn’t do something that’ll burn my place down.”

I punch him on the arm. “You need to learn to have more fun.”

“I will if you can promise me we’ll be back in Buxwell tonight,” Tim replies.

“Alright,” I say. “But when I disappear-“

“Hotel down the road. Got it. Just meet back at the truck by midnight, okay?”

The music in the strip club pounds around me, and I breathe in the smell of sex, alcohol, and smoke. The dull pain I always feel in my injured leg fades into the background as I look around at the women dancing and serving drinks. I have to pull Tim away; he’s staring slack-jawed at the topless woman onstage. She’s a blonde with perky tits and an ass that won’t quit. “Easy there. You don’t want the women thinking you’re a country boy.”

Tim is jerked out of his reverie. “Is it that obvious?”

“Only to people who have eyes,” I retort, pulling him toward a table next to the stage. I order two tequila shots and a Coke from a waitress with long, red hair and pink nipples.

Tim smiles goofily after her. “You know who she kinda looks like-“

“Stop,” I say to him. “No.”

Tim rolls his eyes. “It’s been eleven years, Luke. You ever gonna be over-?”

I cut him off. “Tonight is for fun, Tim. Not for strolling down memory lane.”

“Suit yourself,” Tim says, taking one of the shots from the waitress. “Bottoms up.”

I push the second shot of tequila towards him as if I can feel the pills rattling around in my pocket, warning me not to drink. I take the Coke.

“You sure?” Tim asks.

I nod. “I don’t drink anymore. I can’t mix painkillers with alcohol unless I want to be half-naked and bleeding in the alleyway behind this place with no recollection of what happened the night before.”

Tim knocks back the second shot. “That’s oddly specific.”

“Yeah, I didn’t make that scenario up. Happened about two years ago,” I reply with a smile. I keep staring at the redhead. She does look a lot like...I look away when I see Tim staring at me with a smile.

“Told you so,” he says without explanation.

I wave over twins and pay them fifty bucks to give Tim a lap dance. He deserves humiliation for bringing up old history and pushing the subject. The dance has the intended effect. Tim looks caught somewhere between humiliation and enjoyment.

“I can’t decide if I love you or I hate you right now,” he yells at me.

I leave him to the lap dance and take a stroll over to the bar where the redhead is talking to the bartender. “Hey,” I say, leaning up against the bar.

She smiles at me, blushing a little. “Hey yourself.” She even has a Texas accent the way I remember
her
having one.

“Five hundred dollars,” I say to her. “To go with me to the hotel down the street.”

She looks surprised and steps closer to me, her pale tits jiggling, her hair barely concealing them. “I would have done it for free, sexy.” She walks away, her ass wiggling in a neon green thong.

A half an hour later, we’re standing in a top-floor room of this five-star hotel that I just paid an unseemly amount of cash for. She’s wrapped in a trench coat and her black stilettos look less shiny in the full light of this room. She walks over to the windows and stares out at the city. A few minutes later, she turns around and smiles at me.

I pull out the cash and hand it to her. She smiles and slides it into her pocket, beginning to take off her coat. “No,” I say to her, my heart beating quickly. “Leave it on for now.”

She grins and tilts her head to the side, running her hands down my t-shirt. “Alright, we’ll start with you, then.” She pulls my shirt up and runs her hands under the fabric. “What’s your name?”