My heart started to pound.

The phone in my hand creaked slightly when I squeezed to try to control the reaction to him that would show on my face.

I refrained from saying ‘look what the cat dragged in’ was usually used for the person that had just walked in, not the person that was in the room that you just entered. Honestly, it’d fit him more than it’d fit me, seeing as he was the one that’d previously walked in.

I looked down at my phone and opened up my text app, and immediately sent an SOS to my mother. My mother replied almost instantly with ‘I’m in a meeting with the CEO.’

I winced.

On my own.

I wondered if Kelley knew that my mother was meeting with his father.

Probably not, or he would’ve tried to worm his way in. That’d been what he’d done the last two times that he’d found out about the meetings.

That’d likely been why my mother had planned this one quietly. Why, I didn’t even know.

Hopefully, they would accomplish something this time.

Although a temporary plan was set into action that appeased all parties enough for the nurses to return to work, that temporary plan had expired at six weeks. Which was the point of the meeting with the CEO—to discuss the new protocols and see what needed to be fixed, and what didn’t.

Kelley had, of course, said everything worked out perfectly fine.

My mother, who’d discussed it with her entire ER staff at different times over the six weeks, disagreed.

There were some places we could improve and some places that we needed to back off a little.

Kelley had agreed that we needed to back off a little and had gone about fucking things up instead of making things better—which we all knew he was determined to do at this point.

He resented the hell out of my mother and me and took it out on me because I was less untouchable than my mom was.

“Shit,” I muttered under my breath.

I opened my Messenger app and started to type, ignoring Kelley as he took the seat directly across from me and sat down.

My feet itched to stand up and run out of there, but I couldn’t let him know that he was winning. I couldn’t let him know that he scared the crap out of me, and each time he was in my vicinity I wanted to vomit.

Like right now.

I could literally throw up all over him, spew it all over his thousand-dollar suit, and feel great about doing it.

In desperation, I opened the message feed I talked to Hoax on and started spamming him with the fifty memes I’d saved for him to see over the last week. I was sending him number thirty-two—literally—when Kelley spoke again.

“I haven’t seen your sister lately,” Kelley teased.

I shrugged. “She graduated and got a new job.”

I knew he’d ask where. I couldn’t wait to tell him.

His face would turn into a mask of disgust, and then he’d think that job was inferior.

Even though it wasn’t.

Anything that wasn’t his job was inferior, truthfully. Even what I did was considered somehow less.

Though I always wanted to point out that at least I went to school, graduated, and found my job on my own and wasn’t handed it by my daddy.

I’d heard that he’d worked at a bank previously and that he’d been fired for sexual misconduct. Which I could see. Kelley was a creepy fucker.

Slowly I stood up and walked to the trash, tossing my reusable Tupperware straight in.

I wouldn’t be washing it today. The sink was directly behind him, and I would not put myself in that close of contact with him—practically giving him an opening to do something.

Tupperware in the trash, I dropped my phone in the front pocket of my scrubs, ready to send another meme, and turned to grab the handle of the door—only Kelley stood in front of me, blocking my path.

I felt my heart launch straight into my throat.

***

Hoax

“Jesus fucking Christ. Why is your phone on loud?” Treat grumbled.

I yawned loudly, not bothering to hide it from him or the rest of my team.

“I broke the button off yesterday,” I told him. “When I dropped it, it hit the corner of a rock and completely ripped it off. Then cracked the screen, remember?”

That had sucked. I could no longer watch the screen without having a large spiderweb-like crack bisecting it.

Pru had offered to send me another one, but it was my hope that we wouldn’t be here much longer. Two weeks tops, which was about how long it’d take if she sent it now.

I was getting packages from her that she’d mailed ten to fourteen days ago. Not that I was complaining.

The first package she’d sent—getting here within a week of my arrival—had come via one-day mail. I was honestly afraid to ask her how much it’d cost her.

Tags: Lani Lynn Vale Bear Bottom Guardians MC Romance
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