Tank (Moonshine Task Force Book 2)(4)

“Fuck that,” he shakes his head, his dark eyes flashing with sympathy. “You’re in no shape to be driving. I’ll take you. We’ll find out what’s going on with him together.”

I nod my okay, because it’s all I can do. Either I go with him or I don’t, and if I don’t, I’m not positive I won’t jump out of my own skin trying to make it there.

I have no idea how that trip to Birmingham will end up changing my life.





CHAPTER TWO




Tank


Everything fucking hurts. I’ve never felt this kind of pain before in my life, not even when I was in the military. What’s worse is I don’t remember what I’ve done to cause myself to be in this agony.

The last thing I can recall is driving to the bottoms with my windows cracked, hard rock playing as loud as I could handle it, and my thoughts on the redhead spitfire who’s been ignoring me for months. I was formulating a plan to get back in her good graces, to let her know her job didn’t mean jack shit, if it meant my ultimatum kept her away from me. She called my bluff and when I got to my fishing spot, I was going to text her, let her know I’d deal with her job because fuck – I missed her.

After that all I remember is pain.

“Trevor, can you hear me?”

I’m trying to tell this woman who keeps screaming at me that I can indeed, fucking hear her. She’s shoving something into my side near my lung and it’s killing me.

I go to grab for it, feeling plastic. Maybe it’s a tube. What the fuck is going on?

“No, don’t be pulling on that!”

More noise, more bustling.

“Can someone get his hands? He’s going to yank the tube out before we can get the collapsed lung taken care of. He might be out of it, but he’s strong.”

Collapsed lung? Now I’m starting to freak out and jerk my head from side to side until someone steadies it with their hands.

“Stop, Trevor, you’re going to hurt yourself.”

I want to scream at the person speaking to me like I’m a child that I’m already fuckin’ hurt. If I’m in the back of an ambulance or at a hospital there’s only one person I want, one person who I feel comfortable enough to hand my care over to.

“Blaze,” I whisper, wetting what feels like cracked lips with the edge of my tongue.

There’s the metallic taste of blood and the indention where my lip has been split. Has someone beat the shit out of me? If they did, I’d hate to see the other guy because I know I wouldn’t have gone down without a fight. If I’m fucked up this bad, they probably aren’t living right now.

“Blaze,” I try again, this time my voice is a little stronger, because I can hear it in my ears.

“What are you saying, Trevor?”

I can feel someone lean down so they’re next to my lips. “Blaze,” I try again. “I want Blaze.”

“Can someone go out there and find out who Blaze is?”

With the knowledge they’re going to go get the one person I want to see, I slip back into the blessed darkness where I don’t feel anything.

*

The next time I come to, instinctively I know it’s been a while and I know it’s late at night. Fighting to open my eyes, I take in my surroundings, waiting for my vision to adjust. The room I’m in is one of the darkest I’ve ever been in, including some of the hellholes I was in while I was in the service.

Everything hurts again, more than it did last time. I attempt to move my leg, but it’s fucking heavy. My arm is heavier than normal, too. I force my eyes to open wider and see an IV in my hand, limiting my range of motion. What the fuck is going on?

A noise, I can’t tell if it’s a sigh or a moan, comes from my left. The shadows and the sliver of light given off by the machines I’m hooked up to allow me to figure out someone sits in a chair not far from me. Because of the darkness, I can’t quite make out who it is. With my teeth gritted, I lift my hand to show them I’m alive, and promptly let out a barely audible fuck me as I let it drop back down beside me. The one little movement took a lot out of me, but I’m glad I was able to manage. It feels like a major accomplishment.

The person in the chair jerks awake at my noise, or my words, puts their feet on the floor, and moves quickly toward me. Once they’re in the dim light, I see it’s Blaze.

“Damn I love you, I’ve wanted to see you all day, after I came to when they were putting a tube in my chest,” I close my eyes as I feel her hands on me. The words are hard to force through my throat. My voice is scratchy, everything feels swollen, bearing the evidence of the hard day I’ve had. I’m so fucking tired.

“I love you, too,” tears slip down her face. “God Trevor, you have no idea how scared I’ve been.”

My mind is going a hundred miles an hour. There’s only one thought repeating back and forth in my head. I croak out the question I’ve been dying to know the answer to. “What the fuck happened to me? What day is it?”

“You were in an accident. Brooks Strather hit your truck head on going almost ninety miles an hour at the bottoms. You’ve been in and out of consciousness for two days. You had surgery and a collapsed lung. You’re lucky as hell you’re still alive Trevor.”

Two days, I’ve lost two days of my life. I hear something in her voice, a monotone that sometimes we use when we’re delivering bad news to families. It’s a way to keep our emotions out of it and do the job we’ve been hired to do. I dread asking her the question, because I think I know the answer.