Chute Yeah (The Valentine Boys 3)

Banks grinned, then pushed the spoon at me again.

“It’ll go a lot faster if you use the spoon, baby,” Banks suggested.

I licked my fingers free of cheese.

I’d managed to eat nine noodles.

The bastards were really slippery and hard to pick up.

I switched over to the spoon after that, and eventually Banks took pity on me and started to feed me my bites.

I still managed to miss the spoon half the time, even with him holding it steady—at least he said he wasn’t moving it.

I wasn’t quite so sure.

“He’s not moving it,” Dad said. “Eat your food.”

“I’m trying,” I grumbled, managing to take another bite.

My eyes started to get heavy, though, and halfway between one bite and the next, I started to nod off.

“She does this, too,” I heard my father say. “She’s truly awful with drugs. I’m not kidding.” He sighed. “I’ll stay here with her tonight.”

I wanted to say that I didn’t want him to stay with me tonight, that I wanted Banks to stay with me tonight, but before I could voice that concern, I was dead to the world.

It was lights out, Candy.Chapter 19Me meeting the devil: I love your eggs.

-Text from Candy to Banks

Banks

“I have to get to a job site,” Mr. Sunshine said over the phone. “Candy’s asleep. She’ll probably be that way for a couple of hours.”

“I thought that you weren’t supposed to be going to job sites,” I said, sounding amused.

“I’m not,” he admitted. “But with Candy out, I had to go. One of our guys fell off some scaffolding and might’ve broken his back.”

I winced.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll go over there once I’m done mucking out stalls.”

I shouldn’t have waited, though.

Because by the time breakfast rolled around, I’d grabbed my food and left, wanting to see Candy.

When I arrived, the entire house was still locked up tight.

Using the key that had been left under the welcome mat for me, I entered into the house and waited.

“Candy?” I called out, voice apprehensive.

There was no reply to my call, despite the fact that I knew she was there.

“Candy?” I called out again.

This time, there was a response.

A moan.

“Hey,” I said as I walked deeper into the house, coming to a stop when I reached her door.

I found her on her side, curled into a fetal position, moaning and crying.

“Candy,” I said, rushing to the bed. “Baby, what is it?”

She sniffled. “My tooth. It hurts so bad.”

I looked at the clock on the wall to see it was a little past eight in the morning.

“Who is your dentist?” I asked.

When she told me, I spent the next twenty minutes on the phone.

When I explained what was going on, the dentist gave me the number of an oral surgeon and told me to take her there.

So that was where we ended up thirty minutes later.

Candy hadn’t even managed to put on shoes.

Luckily, I’d had her flip-flops in my back seat from the other night, meaning she didn’t have to walk into the surgeon’s office barefoot.

Because I didn’t care what had to be done or if there was a dress code. Candy was getting herself fixed.

I despised seeing her in pain.

I helped her walk inside, and each step caused a moan to fall free of her lips.

“Almost there,” I assured her.

She made a pitiful sound that was somewhere between a cry and a laugh.

The next ten minutes were spent talking to the lady up front, then the surgeon, who still had his car keys and suit jacket in his hands from where he’d walked in the door.

Lucky for me and for Candy, Dr. Sheffield was a huge fan, meaning that not only did Candy get right in, but she was seen before another patient that had a procedure set for nine that morning.

Also, I didn’t feel too bad. Dr. Sheffield explained that the other patient wasn’t an emergency patient, and they liked to always put a little leeway in their schedules from day to day to atone for those kinds of emergencies.

“I can get her started by giving her a shot,” the doc said, then looked at Candy. “This will be in the gum. That okay?”

She nodded her head. “Anything to make this pain go away.”

He patted her on the cheek. “Oh, it’ll make it go away. I promise.”

With that he disappeared. When he came back, the nurse had the pain meds drawn up, and he administered them.

When he looked at me, he said, “Those’ll take about ten minutes to start working. In the meantime, how about you get started on her patient history.”

I took it. Got started on it.

And realized that I knew absolutely nothing.

Not her birthday.

Not her address.

Not her last period.

Hell, I didn’t even know her mother’s name.

That really made me a big shit of a boyfriend.

“Baby,” I said after filling in all the information that I could do on my own. “What’s your address?”