Elizabeth Finn - Unforgiven

He’d been oddly relieved to see her again. It was a confusing combination of feelings, much like it had been the other night in the hospital. In the hospital, he’d enjoyed knowing she was nervous; he’d enjoyed knowing she was in pain. There was no sugarcoating it. If it made him an asshole, a monster, a lousy fucking doctor, fine. He’d had plenty of his own pain, and he didn’t much care if she endured a bit of it. What he found most perplexing wasn’t that he wanted her hurting. That made sense. It was that he kept wanting to reassure her. He didn’t, wouldn’t give her that, but the irrational desire to ease her in some way kept cropping up constantly, and he didn’t understand it. How could he go from wanting to hurt her in one second to wanting to comfort her the next?

He gave up after a while trying to figure out what was wrong with his brain, and he hollered for Macy as he stood from the rocks and started the long hike back up the wooded hillside to his home. It was over a quarter mile of rugged and difficult terrain to his rocky backyard, and as Macy ran out in front of him, barking and bouncing like an idiot, he followed. Macy literally ran circles around him as he pushed himself up the steep incline in a near jog, and eventually, he saw his towering home.

He grabbed an armful of small branches and a few small logs and carried them up the deck stairs. He started a fire in the chimney on the back deck, grabbed a beer from his fridge, and flopped down on a lounge chair by the fire. The sky was fading to pink, and before long the pink had turned to purple and then finally to black. His next shift started early the next morning, and it was going to be an early-to-bed night for him. He just had to get his brain to stop spinning. It was her. She wound him up in a most inconvenient way. Always had to some extent. She’d always gotten to him—always—and while her effect on him was something completely different now, she was still so effectively pushing his buttons.

* * *

The next night he left the hospital exhausted after a busy fifteen-hour shift. It should have been twelve, but that was just the way it worked. He was also leaving in scrubs after his slacks and dress shirt were ruined by a gushing wound made by a rather large chunk of wood flying off a man’s table saw and into his gut. He spent more money on clothes than most teenage girls did.

He was fortunate to have a retired couple who lived a half mile down the winding gravel road that ended at his home who rescued Macy from monotony whenever he worked long shifts. They would walk over a few hours after his shift would start, let themselves in, and take Macy back to their place with them. They professed to be too old to have a pet of their own, and Darren was infinitely happy they enjoyed his so much. He’d swing by their house on his way home to collect his girl, and he’d offer them payment, which they’d politely refuse. It was their routine, and it worked.

He neared his SUV, stretching his neck as he walked, and that’s when he heard it. That voice he couldn’t seem to shake, couldn’t seem to let go of, couldn’t seem to just plain forget.

“How dare you!” He looked back to see her hopping off her shabby-looking fat tire bike and dumping it in a grassy area near his car. He took a steadying breath as his heart started racing. “I lost my fucking job because of you! Not to mention the visit from my parole officer.” He crossed his arms across his chest as she walked to him. She was wearing her own pair of scrub pants and a gray T-shirt. Her hair was pulled up in a messy bun, and there wasn’t a stitch of makeup on her face. She looked furious. Of course she was furious; she’d apparently lost her job.

“Perhaps you should have been a bit more honest about your criminal record, Bailey. Not really my problem you hid your past from your employer.” He forced himself to turn from her and back to his car. He didn’t really want to. He wanted to square off with her for some strange reason, but he wasn’t willing to get into it in the hospital parking lot. What he was willing to do was mutter over his shoulder. “Nice bike, by the way.”

“You fucked me! Do you understand what you’ve done? This was all I had!”

He ignored her until he reached his driver’s-side door, but then he lost his composure and wheeled on her. “I’ve not ever fucked you, as you well know, but I sure as hell screwed you over pretty good. Seems fitting.”

“I lost my job because of you!”

“You can’t possibly think I care.” He was seething as he spoke the words, and her eyes had filled with tears.

“Yeah? Well, you used to,” she yelled at him. She stayed staring at him with her lips trembling as her tears started to fall, and with a final resigned shake of her head, she turned back to her bike and walked away.

He watched her small figure walk away from him, and he didn’t look away from her until she’d hopped on her bike and was pedaling away from him. He didn’t want her to catch him staring after her, so he forced himself to get in his car and drive away before she noticed.

That odd combination of hatred and hurt racked his brain on the way home, and once he was safely inside his own home, he flopped down on the couch and stared at his great room ceiling high above him. It was nearly thirty minutes before he realized he’d forgotten Macy, and he trudged back outside to jog the half-mile to the Anderson’s house. They were outside on their porch, and Macy was lying at their feet. She started barking the instant she saw Darren, and when Darren made it up to them, he apologized.

“I can’t believe I forgot her. My brain was just taking a break, I guess. Sorry about that.”

“Oh, it’s no problem. If we were worried, we’d have called. You know we enjoy Macy’s company.” Katherine Anderson was a plump, older woman with the sweetest face he’d ever seen. She always smiled, and Darren no longer thought she owned a frown. He certainly did, and his stress was more often than not etched on his face—at least Katherine often told him so. She also didn’t know how to hold her tongue. “You look upset, Darren. You okay?”

“I’m fine.” He sank to their porch steps as Macy wriggled up to him and tried to French kiss him before Darren could close his mouth. “Just a long day is all.” He could hear the drawl in his voice. It only ever really popped up when he was stressed. Another of Katherine’s very astute observations.

“How your folks doin’?”

She was studying him closely, looking for his deception. “They’re all right. Only see ’em once a week or so. Been so busy at the hospital.”

“Well, you make sure you get to see them soon, you hear?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Darren didn’t call anyone ma’am, but she seemed to bring it out in him with her strong southern accent. They’d retired up to the Ozarks from Louisiana. They liked seasons more than they liked hot, humid, year-round warmth. He stood and stepped down from the porch steps. “Y’all take care. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

They watched as he retreated with Macy, and with a final wave, he rounded the bend at the end of their driveway. He jogged most of the way home, still wearing his scrubs but at least with a good pair of tennis shoes on at this point. He was sweating when he finally reached his house, and he stripped out of his clothes as he stepped into his walk-in master shower. He stood with the water only barely warm, showering down over him, and he closed his eyes, seeing her. When he opened his eyes, it was no better. He couldn’t shake the image of her standing furious in front of him, her tears streaming down her cheeks and her cutting words, hell, his own cruel rebuttal. He wasn’t ready to have her near him again. He just wasn’t ready for this.

Six Years Before

“Hey, Jess, you seen Bailey?”

“Shut up! My head is throbbin’, and your voice is the most obnoxious thang in the world.” His sister was sitting slumped over the kitchen island, and even though she was being rude, he couldn’t stop the smile that pulled up his lips. She did look like hell after a night of losing literally every game of quarters they played, and frankly, she deserved her pain. “She left a note. She was takin’ a walk this mornin’, and I haven’t seen her yet today.” She looked to the wall clock. “Helluva long walk.”

Darren knew exactly what Bailey was doing. She was avoiding him. He’d been trying to find her since he’d woken up. She wasn’t in her bedroom, she wasn’t anywhere in the house, and after breakfast and waiting for Trinity to leave to go shopping for a while, he was done waiting for her to show back up on her own. He knew she was embarrassed. Hell, he knew it was completely his fault, but it didn’t mean he was interested in letting her ignore him. He’d been up for two hours now, and he was anxious. He was also nervous.

He made his way down to the cabana that belonged to their rental house. It was a platformed deck with a pergola-style roof structure, woven with heavy waterproof fabric. There was a wide lounger the size of a king-sized bed with an adjustable head. The mattress was white linen, and it was soft. The head of the bed was raised at the moment, and it obscured his view. He didn’t know if she was on the lounger or not, but he’d been waiting for two hours for her to return, and he was out of places to search.

He was wearing only a pair of jeans and flip-flops, and it wasn’t until he rounded the side of the lounger and saw her curled up looking out to the water that he realized perhaps he should have at least put a shirt on. Her eyes glancing to his stomach quickly before she could stop herself confirmed that fact. It wasn’t as if she’d never seen him without a shirt. Hell, they’d been on the beach in Galveston for nearly a week, of course she had. But she’d never seen him naked before, and he was guessing shirtless was just a reminder of what she’d witnessed last night.

“How long are you going to avoid me?”

Her forehead wrinkled as she looked to his eyes before glancing back down to his stomach. “Forever?”

He chuckled quietly. He wasn’t at all amused; he was more terrified of what had happened than that, and he was trying to loosen himself up as much as her. “Bailey, you have to talk to me.” He sank down on the oversized lounger facing her, forcing her to look at him. But she couldn’t. Her eyes moved off to the side of them and down the beach. “Please.” Her eyes teared, and she brushed away a tear from the corner of her eye. It was painful to see what he was responsible for doing to her.

She was wearing a black bikini top and a pair of short white shorts. He was having a hard enough time keeping his own eyes where they belonged, and as she glanced quickly to him and caught his eyes studying her small breasts, her stomach muscles clenched and her shoulders wriggled under his invasive stare. He forced his eyes back up to hers, and he caught the furious blush on her cheeks.

“It can’t be like this with us, Bailey.” He leaned forward, rolling over to lounge next to her, shoulder to shoulder. “Game.”

“Darren.” She was warning him, but he wasn’t about to listen.

“How do you feel? Tell me. Close your eyes if you have to, but don’t hide from me.”

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She did close her eyes. “Humiliated, embarrassed, mortified.”

“Come on, English major, you can do better than giving me three words that mean the same thing.” He turned to look at her, and she managed to open her eyes and give him a small smile.

Another deep breath later, and her eyes closed again before she took another stab at it. “Awkward, pathetic, stupid, immature, ashamed . . . and really, really embarrassed.” He reached for her hand, squeezing gently.

He opened his mouth, not bothering to close his eyes, and he watched her, waiting for her to look at him. “Guilty, frustrated.” She met his eyes as he spoke, and he forced himself to hold her eyes. “Cruel, inappropriate, indecent, so fucking sorry.” They stared at one another for a moment.

“I win. Eight to six. Thanks for playing.” Her voice was quiet as she spoke, but he saw the first glimpse of a smile—small, but a smile.

“Bullshit. Tie.”

“How do you figure?” Now she was perking up. She was competitive if nothing else.

“You only get credit once for embarrassed, humiliated, and mortified because they mean the same thing. Rules, dear Bailey, are not something I’m willing to set aside even for you.”

“Did you know I was watching?” Her eyes were suddenly off studying the water again, and Darren suddenly couldn’t breathe. He sat up, letting his own gaze move to the water. He was hoping something, anything, would save him from having to answer this question, and as Jess hollered out to him from farther up the beach, he let out a deep, steadying breath he hoped Bailey wouldn’t notice.