Lord Have Mercy (Southern Gentleman 2)

I wiped at the tears streaking down my cheeks. “These are all so mean.”

“That’s the thing about keyboard warriors,” Flint grumbled. “The things they’ll say on Facebook or Twitter are completely different to something they’d say in real life. You think that half of those people would’ve opened their mouths had they been face to face with you?”

No. No, I didn’t.

That didn’t make the words hurt any less, though.

“There’s nothing wrong with expecting your students to actually do the work,” Flint said. “And you damn well know that Mrs. Sherpa has no problem with how you grade your tests.”

That had been figured out about an hour before when Mrs. Sherpa had stopped by.

She’d seen the look on my face—my tear-streaked cheeks—and had automatically asked what was wrong.

When Flint had explained my inability to have a coherent talk with her without breaking out in tears, the topic had come up of the tests and the Facebook post.

She’d been justifiably pissed, but not at me. At Nivea.

“That woman,” Mrs. Sherpa had said. “She’s going to bark up the wrong tree one of these days, and she’s going to have a shit storm on her.”

“I know,” I admitted. “I just don’t understand.”

“Nivea knew that you were going to see that post, otherwise she wouldn’t have tagged you,” he continued. “And right now, you’re playing into her hand. She wanted this response from you.”

I swallowed hard and placed the phone aside.

“I’m going to stop reading them,” I said. “It’ll die down.”

Flint nodded once. “It will. Now come here and tell me about the rest of your day.”

So I did, not sparing another second to Nivea’s attempt at hurting me.

“What did Mrs. Sherpa say?” he asked. “Nivea should’ve been fired.”

“She can’t be.” I shook my head. “Apparently it wasn’t a ‘termination worthy offense’ according to the school board.”

He sensed that the subject needed to be changed, so he didn’t hesitate.

“Who do they have up there as my replacement?” he asked.

He tried to sound nonchalant, but came off sounding sad and hurt that they’d already replaced him.

“Schultz,” I answered. “And he hates it.”

Flint’s lips tipped up.

“He does,” Flint admitted. “He covered for me a couple of months ago for a week. Do you remember?”

I did.

“The time that you went fishing in Arkansas and came back with an upper respiratory infection that kept you out another week?” I asked.

His arm around my waist tightened. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you used to like me.”

It was hard not to listen and be immersed in the love that school had for him.

“You were the talk of the school then, as you are now,” I told him honestly. “I remember this girl getting all teary-eyed that you were sick and ‘on death’s door.’”

He snorted. “I wasn’t at death’s door, though it might’ve felt like it. I did have a hospital stay for two days, though, due to my inability to keep anything down and dehydration.”

I rubbed my hand lightly down Flint’s chest, being careful to not press down too hard on his bad side where he’d sustained breaks.

Flint caught my hand and pressed it down hard to the middle of his chest.

I buried my face into the crook of his neck, inhaling his scent.

“Seeing you there scared the absolute crap out of me,” I told him.

I didn’t have to go into detail on when I was talking about. He knew just as well as I did.

“That SUV rolled over on me, and all I could think about was you. What hearing about me dying would do to you,” he rumbled quietly. “I never, not once, wanted to see you hurt.”

My breath hitched in my chest.

“I did realize one huge thing with that massive vehicle laying on top of you.” I took in a deep breath. “I want to marry you, Flint Stone.”

There was a long, silent pause.

“Did you just ask me to marry you?” he asked after a few long seconds.

My lips twitched.

“What if I did?” I asked carefully, still not pulling my face from his neck.

“Then I’d say yes…when I can officially walk.”Chapter 18Triscuits are what I would imagine a scarecrow tastes like.

-Text from Flint to Camryn

Flint

Four weeks later

I was alive.

How did I know I was alive?

Every piece of my body hurt.

Bad.

I hadn’t been out of the hospital for more than six hours, and I was already hating myself for wanting to leave.

Everything was harder here.

Nothing was set up for a man that couldn’t use either one of his legs, and only had partial use of one of his hands.

Hell, there were no bars to help me get on and off the toilet. In or out of bed. Up or down the stairs.

Fuck, it was torture.

And I was forcing Camryn to do a whole lot more than she ever signed up for.

She was looking at me with such love shining in those bright eyes that it took everything I had not to yell.