My mouth’s a desert and my brain’s a tumbleweed blowing through it. Because standing at the foot of my hospital bed, in a pair of fitted light-blue scrubs and a smile that could disarm anyone, is HayesfreakingWalker.
Former North American professional bull rider.
A guy who I opened to about my biggest insecurities.
And the one-night-stand that I’ve never forgotten.
And now? Apparently, he’s my doctor treating me for a concussion.
Yeah, I’m way too high for this.
I blink. Then blink again. But he’s still there. Andoh. He was hot back then, all cowboy charm and dirty drawls. But this? This is anera.
He’s in hishot doctorera.
He’s towering and broad, tanned and scrubbed clean, both literally and metaphorically, like he scrubbed the entire reckless past we shared off his skin and traded it for something more... stable. Respectable. Dangerous in a whole new way.
I wonder if the nurses know the way he could ride a bull back in the day. I wonder if they ever pull up his old videos just to watch the strength in his muscles as he commanded the animal and worked the crowd.
My pulse skips. I try to sit up and think better of it when the room tilts again.
Dumb. Ass. Regan. You’re way too high still.
I attempt to wet my lips but there’s no moisture to be found on my tongue.Cottonmouth—yeah, that’s what it’s called, right? Weed turns your mouth to sandpaper and your brain to soup. Pretty sure mine’s melting and bubbling out my ears right now simply from shock.
And yet while I’m spiraling, he’s smiling? That slow, devastating curve of his mouth. The same one I saw right before he loweredhis face to my pussy and made me see stars in that random hotel room in Charlotte.
My throat makes a noise—some cross between a whimper and a squeak—and I somehow manage to croak out, “Water, please.”
Rae, bless her, is up in a flash, grabbing the cheap plastic hospital cup and pressing the straw to my lips like I’m a toddler who can’t handle holding her own liquids without making a mess. I suck greedily, but my eyes never leave Hayes and his never leave mine. I wonder if he knows what I’m thinking. I wonder if he remembers me.
Is mind-reading a skill doctors learn in school? Or has that always just been him. Because I sure as hell haven’t forgotten that night. Or the way he looked at me afterward, all dazed and reverent like I was something holy. I haven’t forgotten the way I’d felt either: wild, alive, and for once, completely outside myself. And I’ll never forget the way that I left: no drama, no promises, just one last kiss that lingered too long for it to be meaningless and then me skipping out the doorway, never looking back.
But this version of him? In scrubs, clean-cut with a stethoscope looped casually around his neck and muscles straining against his sleeves like he hasn’t stopped working out despite no longer being an athlete? Yeah,thisis a whole new problem for me, and I might just be too high to handle it.
“Thank you,” I whisper after a second, long pull from the straw, managing some coordination between my brain and vocal cords now that they’re properly lubricated.
Not that it helps the full-body static buzzing beneath my skin. My cheeks are burning. My limbs feel both too heavy and too light. And my nipples, of all things, betray me completely beneath this thin gown.
Because Hayes freaking Walker is touching me now.
His fingers wrap gently around my wrist. Not possessive. Not casual either. Just enough pressure to feel like maybe he’s holding a little tighter than he normally would for a patient.
His thumb presses into my pulse point and his eyes flick to mine as he says, “All right then, Regan Marshall. How are you feeling?”
His voice is exactly the same—low, rich, with that slight country rasp that tells me he grew up in a rural town and hasn’t lost his roots.
God help me.
My breath catches as the memory hits: his hands gripping my hips, his mouth at my neck, his fingers wrapped deliciously around my throat, his body solid and relentless between my thighs.
Get it together.
I should say something, perhaps something witty, casual, normal, not insane like the thoughts running through my head right now. But I can’t. Not with his fingers squeezing around my wrist and that knowing look in his eyes like he knows exactly what I’m thinking about.
Spoiler alert: it’s him. Fingers wrapped around my throat instead.
He’s saying something else now, asking about nausea or dizziness, but it’s all a muffled echo behind the roar of panic and sheerwantthat’s in my bloodstream. My eyes dip to his hands that are big, strong, veined and capable. No tattoos. Just clean skin and long fingers that could still ruin me if they were curled just right inside me.
