Shifting Gears: The Complete Series (Sports Bad Boy Romance) (47 page)

CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE

BROCK

The doctor had told us she would be back
there for about three hours. I didn’t know if I was going to be able to stand
it for three hours. I wondered just how mad they would be if I went back and
just peeked through the window, just to make sure she was okay and they were
treating her right.

Jake was playing a video game on his iPad
and Megan was reading a magazine. Molly’s grandmother was knitting. I stood up
and paced for a bit, but I noticed the looks of the others and, not wanting to
tell me that I was making them nervous and they wished I would stop, I stopped.
I started wishing I had brought my guitar. At least I could go play music for
the other patients and make myself useful for a bit.

I sat again for a while, and then I felt
my phone buzzing in my pocket. I almost ignored it, but I didn’t have anything
else to do so I slipped it out and looked at it. It was my dad. Somehow, some
way, he always knew when I needed him. I went out to the outer lobby and
answered it.

“Hi Dad,”

“Hey son. How are you?”

I looked towards the OR doors and almost
told him to call back in another two hours or so and I would let him know.
Instead, I said, “Dad, I met the most amazing girl.”

My dad laughed, “Don’t you meet them
pretty regularly son?”

“Not like this one, Dad. This one is a
keeper…like for forever.” My dad could hear in my voice that I was serious.

“That’s great son!” he said, with real
enthusiasm. “What’s her name?”

“Her name’s Molly and I am head over heels
in love with her,” I told him. I spent the next hour on the phone with him.
After I told him about her, and finally told him where I was and what I was
doing here, he wouldn’t hang up. He couldn’t be here for me in person, so he
was here for me via telephone. I have the greatest dad in the world, the best
and prettiest girlfriend, and two of the best friends anyone could ask for. I’m
a lucky guy. I felt so much better after talking to my dad. He was always so
positive, and it was contagious. Any lingering doubts I had that Molly wasn’t
coming out of there alive and well were purged by the sound of his voice and
the wisdom of his words.

After I finished on the phone finally, I
went back into the waiting room. “Does anyone want coffee or anything?” I asked
them. Molly’s grandma said she would love some, Megan wanted a soda, and Jake
said, “I’ll go with you and see what they have to eat. I got up early and
breakfast was a long time ago.”

We weren’t gone long, but when we got back
Molly’s grandmother wasn’t there. “Where’s Grandma?” I asked Megan.

“It’s okay, Brock,” she said. “Molly’s out
of surgery. She’s not awake yet, but they let her grandma go back and see her.

I felt an overwhelming desire to go barge
in there myself. I knew if I tried it though, I’d be carried out by security
and I wouldn’t be here when she woke up. So I sat and waited some more, and
finally her grandma came back and said, “She’s still sleeping, but you can go
back one at a time if you want.” I looked at Megan and she smiled. “Go ahead.
I’m sure she’d rather wake up to your pretty face than mine,” she said.

As I was headed out the door I heard Jake
say, “You think he’s pretty?”

The nurse let me into the recovery room
and I followed her to a glass room where Molly was. It wasn’t really a glass
room, I guess, but it had huge glass doors facing out to the nurses’ station.
She told me to go on in. None of the equipment was foreign to me; I had seen it
all before up close and personal. But seeing Molly’s tiny body in that bed,
hooked up to all of those tubes and monitors made me feel sick. I went over and
bent down to give her a kiss and then I sat down in the chair next to the bed.
She reminded me of when I was a kid and I watched Snow White. When she ate the
apple and went to sleep, the dwarves put her in a glass coffin and she slept
until the prince came.

I put one hand over hers and said, “I’m
not claiming to be Prince Charming, baby, but I want to be your prince and I’m
here, so wake up.”

That was when she opened her eyes.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX

MOLLY

After surgery, it doesn’t matter how well
it went, you always wake up feeling like hell. Your mouth is dry and your vision
is blurry. You’re disoriented and confused and sometimes you’re in pain. I
discovered today though that the cure for most, if not all of that, was to wake
up with Brock at your bedside. His face when I opened my eyes was the most
beautiful sight I had ever seen.

“Hi,” I croaked. My throat was still sore
from the breathing tube they’d put down during surgery.

“Hey, beautiful,” he said with a dazzling
smile. “How are you feeling?”

“Euphoric,” I told him.

“There you go with the big words again,”
he said. “Are you sure you’re not an English major?”

“I don’t know why I’m not,” I said.
“Speaking of words, before I came into surgery you said a few to me…”

He leaned in close to the bed then and
kissed me on my lips that had to be hard and dry and then he said, “I love you
Molly.”

“Those were the words I was looking for.
Does it seem a little desperate that I’m wearing a gown split up the back and
lying in bed when I ask you to say it?”

He laughed again. “I think you’re still
feeling the juice,” he said.

“Maybe a little,” I admitted. “But mostly,
I’m feeling the love. I love you, Brock,” I said.

Then I closed my eyes and drifted off
again. I don’t know how much time passed, but I felt Brock’s warm lips on mine
again. I smiled and said, “My prince.”

The
End

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PULSE
BOX SET

The
Complete Series

By
Alycia Taylor

Copyright
2016. All rights reserved.

PULSE
#1

CHAPTER
ONE

The only good thing about this week was
that it was finally coming to an end. Absolutely every work-out outfit I owned
was dirty because the washer had been broken since the previous Friday and I
couldn’t afford to get it fixed until the beginning of the following week. I
worked late every day this week so my brilliant plan was to get up early this
morning and go to the laundromat and wash at least one load of clothes so I had
something clean to wear to work. Go figure it would be the one stinking night that
I’d forget to charge my phone, so while I was sleeping, it died and the alarm
never went off.

I woke up in a complete panic. I could
tell by the amount of light sneaking in through the blinds that it was a lot
later than I’d planned on getting up. I’d thrown back the covers, cussed a lot
and ran out to the living room in my underwear—the last clean pair I had. Thank
God I lived alone and I’d at least showered before I put them on last night. It
was already seven thirty a.m. and my first session was scheduled for eight
o’clock. The gym was a ten-minute drive if I obeyed the speed laws, five if I
didn’t and I got lucky and all the cops were at Starbucks. I realized that as I
stood there in my underwear thinking all of that, I was wasting precious
minutes. I ran to the bathroom, stripped out of the underwear I was going to
put back on while the water in the shower heated up and then took a two-minute
shower. After I dried off, I pulled on a pair of compression pants and a
wrinkled tank that I fished out of the hamper. I did sniff them first to make
sure they weren’t completely disgusting. I grabbed my gym bag that had my
deodorant and body spray in it which I could slap on when I got there and then
I pulled on yesterday’s socks and my Nikes and ran out the door.

I didn’t even bother warming up my poor
little car before pulling out of the driveway but she got a quick warm up as I
sat and cursed the garbage man who was blocking the exit. I made good time for
a few minutes after that, but it seemed like all the city workers were against
me. A city bus came to a dead stop at a green light right in front of me. I had
to slam on my brakes to keep from rear-ending it and then wait until it decided
to move again before I could go because I couldn’t get over into the other
lane. There was a lot more cussing. I finally made it in one piece and left
everyone on the road with me that way as well. I parked my car in the lot in
front of the Madison Gym where I worked and finally allowed myself to check the
time. Damn! It was eight- oh-five! I got out of the car and felt the chill from
where my wet hair had lain on my back as I ran into work. I wish I could get a
do-over on this day…just this once.

When I got inside I pulled my time card
out of my bag and stopped in front of the clock to punch in. The time on the
work clock said eight ten, lying bastard. I bent in half and flipped my long
wet hair over my head. Using my hands and the elastic band I had around my
wrist, I twisted the curly mess up into a bun in the middle of my head. When I
stood back up I realized I had attracted attention. Some of the men in the gym
had actually stopped working out and were staring at me. Geez, how bad did I
look? My face felt as red as my hair as I forced myself across the room through
the maze of exercise machines and the curious stares and found my first client
of the day waiting for me. Mark Fox was an MMA fighter. He was one of those
guys who were born with a six pack and a propensity for sports. He’d never had
to try hard to do anything, it always just came naturally. He was quickly
finding out that mixed martial arts was a whole different ballgame so to speak.
He was taking it good-naturedly for the most part though. I had yet to see him
get genuinely upset about anything.

“There she is,” he said with a grin.

“I’m so sorry I’m late,” I told him. “You
wouldn’t believe the week I’m having.”

“No worries,” he said. “I’m not in a hurry
today.”

“Good,” I said. “Please just ignore how I
look today. My washer is broken and I overslept…” I realized I was talking too
much. I talked too much when I was nervous and I had a tendency to say stupid
things when I was anxious. I told myself to shut up before I said way too much
and embarrassed myself in front of one of my best clients. I was new at this, and
since I was only an assistant trainer, he was one of my few personal clients. I
liked training Mark. He was a nice guy and he didn’t hit on me throughout the
entire session like some of the men I trained did. I took a deep breath and
said, “Anyways, let’s get started over here on the steps.”

“I hate this one,” Mark said like an
insolent child. I laughed and said,

“Most guys do, but trust me, your feet are
the foundation for your entire body. If they’re not functioning top-notch it
can throw off your entire kinetic chain.”

“And what is a kinetic chain again?” He
knew what a kinetic chain was, he was just stalling. I explained it anyways as
if he really didn’t know.

“The fifty-cent definition is that every
part of your body, your muscles, your joints, and your nerves have to work
together in order to make you move. If just one of those things is off, it will
throw everything else off…and that includes your feet. So let’s go, four-way
holds.”

He made a face at me but he moved over to
the step. He just stood there, though, acting like he didn’t know what to do.
It killed me sometimes how these grown-ass men acted like gigantic babies
sometimes.

“One leg heel raises at twelve, three,
six, and nine o’clock and hold for thirty seconds.” I looked at my stopwatch
and said, “Okay, now.” Mark started the exercises and while he worked I told
him, “Good, you’re doing good. You’ll see, this will make your foundation solid
and keep you on your feet more.”

Mark grunted out a laugh and said, “Are
you suggesting I spend more time on my ass in the cage than I do my feet?”

“I’d have to reserve judgment on that one
until I saw one of your bouts,” I told him. I didn’t like fighting. It made me
sick to my stomach to watch two men pummel away at each other. I was about to
say something else, but when I looked up all thought other than what I saw
directly in front of me was completely gone from my brain.

For a second I was sure that I was
imagining him. He was looking right at me, watching me, I think. I’d never seen
anything or anyone quite like him. He was literally beautiful. He was tall,
probably at least six three or four with closely shaved dark hair and the
sexiest pale blue eyes I’d ever seen. He didn’t have a shirt on, which was
probably the cause of my cotton mouth. I tried to tell myself that it wasn’t as
if I’d never seen a half-naked man before. I see them every day, all day long
at work. I work with them, next to them, I train them, and I even touch them…a
lot. But this guy was different. He looked like he’d been sculpted out of clay
and then painted by an artist. He was lightly covered with sweat from working
out and it glistened across the colors of the tattoos that ran across his
muscular chest and disappeared over one shoulder. I suddenly realized that the
entire time I was thinking about how hot he was, he hadn’t taken his eyes off
me. Of course that also meant that I’d been staring at him. Slightly
unprofessional I was sure. He had to be wondering why someone who was obviously
gainfully employed looked like a homeless person with her wrinkly clothes and
uncombed hair. I had to force myself to return my attention to my client. He
finished his four way holds and I said,