Wilde Fire (Forever Wilde 3)

Once a nurse came in and explained nothing was broken, it was just a couple of horrible hematoma, she told me to be patient a little longer to be discharged. I was still in the hospital gown waiting for a set of scrubs a nurse had promised me so I wouldn’t have to put my smoky uniform back on. My turnout gear sat in a pathetic heap in the little room where I waited and the familiar smell of smoke permeated the entire area.

I was fighting the sedative effects of the pain medicine they’d given me when I made out a familiar voice raised in frustration out in the corridor. “Wilde! W-I-L-D-E.”

“Doc?” I croaked, craning my neck to see if I could spot him. “I’m back here.”

The man who shoved the curtain back wasn’t my grandfather, though. It was Walker.

His eyes were wild and frantic, and his pale hair looked like he’d been scraping fingers through it all night.

“Jesus Christ, Otto,” he blurted, lunging forward and wrapping his arms around me. He smelled like coffee and the slightest hint of Irish Spring soap. The scent brought back a flood of memories of sneaking into the shower together at his house as teens and washing each other with the familiar green bar of soap until both of our cocks were hard.

“What are you guys doing here?” I asked, spotting Grandpa and Doc over his shoulder and trying my hardest not to wince at the pain in my own.

Walker pulled back and stared at me with his hands on my face, drawing his eyes all over my body as if looking for evidence of injury. “Where are you hurt?”

I leaned to one side and pulled the gown away so they could see the large mottled bruises all over my hip. “Big-ass tree branch nailed me in the shoulder and hip.”

Walker’s hand came down to caress my skin near the ugly bruises, and it took my dick about half a second to realize he was incidentally touching my bare ass cheek.

We both seemed to realize it at the same time because our eyes locked before he quickly removed his hand.

“You okay otherwise? Smoke inhalation or anything?” he asked as if trying to cover the awkward, intimate moment.

I shook my head. “Not too bad. You guys didn’t need to come. I’m fine.”

Doc approached me and ran his cool, dry hand across my forehead as if testing me for fever. His face was a combination of concern and relief.

“Glad you’re okay, son. We were worried. On the news they said it was bad and that there were casualties.”

I felt Walker’s hand sneak into mine and thread our fingers together. My head spun with mixed feelings. Embarrassment that they’d come all this way for just a few bruises, relief they hadn’t come for something more serious, confusion about how things stood between Walker and me, and an overall sense of wrongness that the four of us were in Amarillo instead of Hobie.

“The casualties were from some of the houses involved,” I explained. “When the fire started, it was the middle of the night. Rescuers found the bodies, but they think the victims had been dead already since the night before.”

Grandpa shook his head and frowned. “Those poor families.” He stood at the foot of the bed and reached out to squeeze my leg through the blankets. “Thank goodness you’re okay. When do you get out of here? Can we take you home to Hobie?”

After getting my prescription for pain meds filled and waiting while Grandpa, Doc, and Walker grabbed some lunch in the cafeteria, we got on the road back home. I lay in the backseat of the big SUV with my head on Grandpa’s lap. There wasn’t even a moment’s hesitation before I used him as a pillow. Grandpa had taken care of me more times than I could count in my lifetime. Even though Doc was usually the one to nurse us through our injuries and illnesses, Grandpa was steadfast and present whenever we needed him, always.

I slept to the sounds of their murmured conversations and tried tuning in whenever Walker spoke. But the medicine they’d given me for the pain kept me dull and dozy, so I wasn’t able to comprehend anything I heard. When we finally made it back to Hobie around dinnertime, Walker dropped us off at the ranch.

“I have to get some sleep and get back to the office first thing in the morning. Can I come check on you tomorrow after work?” he asked as he held the car door open for me.

“Yeah. I’m going to be doing a whole lot of holding down the sofa in the family room, I think,” I said with a smirk. “I need to call my chief at the station and find out when they need me back in Dallas.”