WAYLON (Ruthless MC 1)

“I was jealous. Very fucking jealous,” I tell him through clenched teeth. “I don’t want you to just tell that maid Cindy to put on some clothes. I don’t want her cleaning your trailer or any other place you occupy.”

Several beats of silence. Then the man who supposedly never smiles fills up the darkness with laughter.

“Okay, angel, okay. If that’s what you want.”

CHAPTER 37

Over the next three months, I discover that Waylon was right about his way being easy.

Easy like him teaching me long and hard on Sundays and driving me over to the medical trailer on the back of his bike the other six days of the week.

Easy like him pushing all the patients who come to see me for their physical to the top of the move-in list so that we can get the backyard clinic up and running that much faster. Not because he’s as passionate about preventative care as I am, but because he wants the extra teaching time in the morning.

Easy like him bringing home furniture catalogs and telling me to circle whatever I want—he only says no to my picks if they don’t appear sturdy enough to hold up to his lessons. We discovered that furniture requirement the hard way with the small kitchen table, which is now sitting out in the backyard in pieces, waiting to get chopped up into firewood.

Easy like pop-quizzes that begin with “hit me,” “tell me no,” and “run!” and all end with him pinning me down and teaching me another lesson in domination. The “run” pop-quizzes are especially interesting because they can happen at any time. When I’m naked and just getting out of the shower, when I’m fully clothed and making dinner—once even, while we were taking a walk in the woods. That’s how I learned what it feels like to get chased for several minutes through nature, get tackled to the ground, and taken in the most animalistic way in dirt and leaves.

Easy like taking me to the compound to dance any Saturday I ask, even though he doesn’t love it. Their clubhouse is just as noisy but not nearly as murderous as the one in Tennessee, I’m relieved to find out. The old ladies go out of their way to talk to me, but their men mostly avoid me unless they have a medical question. And on the rare occasion I do speak to them, they're comically polite. “They all heard about what happened to Dr. Johnny,” Lucinda tells me the one time she and Crazytown join us for a night out. “Nobody wants to piss you off and miss out on their house.”

Easy like never having to break that one-hundred-dollar bill Waylon gave me because everything in town is free. By the end of September, I stop carrying money.

Easy like more and more people moving into Angel Pond until suddenly we’re a town where everybody knows everybody. I call out hello to all the folks I’ve somehow become acquainted with when I walk down the main road underneath Waylon’s arm for Sunday dinners at Meemaw’s Inn.

Easy like realizing one day that everybody calls me Amira here because I never got around to introducing my Mimi nickname. I only started using it after high school because my guidance counselor told me it would be “easier to digest” for all the non-ethnic people I’d be working with as a hopeful nurse. But I don’t tell anyone in Angel Pond to call me that. I’ve decided not to be easier to digest anymore—I’m exactly who I am here whether people like me or not.

Easy like having a closer relationship with my patients because I can track their progress and hunt them down if necessary for follow-ups. I’m much more respectful of HIPAA laws than my predecessor. But I’m not above re-scheduling missed appointments, then asking Waylon to have a conversation with the no-show about making sure they don’t miss whatever time slot I’ve given them. So far, I’ve yet to have anyone skip appointments twice. And many of my patients are thriving, which makes me happy with my job on a level I had no idea even existed before becoming a small-town nurse practitioner.

Easy like shockingly similar political opinions that Waylon sums up as “ain’t got no problem with that,” “vote for the lesser evil,” and “don’t bother with the news, cuz it will just piss you off.”

Easy like picnics by the pond in September because it will get too cold to eat outside soon. Him dressing up as an archangel and me dressing up as a devil for all the Halloween parties in October because why not? Slow, passionate sex in front of the fire in November because not everything has to be a lesson, and it’s nice to feel cozy and warm while Waylon’s inside of me.