Tastes Like Candy

Twenty

Twenty

Candy

"Where's my Scotch?"

Silence.

So, louder, calling over his shoulder: "Michelle, where's my Scotch?"

He turned around, searching for her. She was moving through the sanctuary's living room, laundry basket on her hip, heading for the private washer they used back here in the back. She didn't look his way. "It's gone."

"Gone?"

"Yes, gone."

"What does gone mean?" Irritation prickled into something akin to panic in his chest. The pain killers the hospital had discharged him with only took the edge off the terrible throbbing in his face, and temple, and chest. He wanted to finish it off the old fashioned way.

She set the basket down, opened the washer one-handed, and started feeding clothes into, still not looking at him. "I got rid of it."

He gasped in one-hundred-percent, authentic horror, which made her look at him like he was stupid. "You didn't pour it out, did you?"

"No. I did not. But it's gone all the same."

Okay, now he was starting to get angry. "I want my damn Scotch."

"I'm so sorry," she said, like she wasn't sorry at all, adding detergent.

"You're really gonna do this?"

"You drink too much already, and you definitely shouldn't drink while you're on those pills, and while you're recovering. Yes, I'm 'really gonna do this,'" she said in a horrible mockery of his accent.

"Fine." He slammed the glass he'd been holding down onto the sideboard. "I'll just go get a bottle at the bar."

He was striding for the door when she said, "I took the ones at the bar, too."

This was un-fucking-believable. And he told her so.

Finally done with her goddamn laundry, she propped a hip against the machine, and sent him a look like his mother used to. "You take very poor care of yourself. So someone has to make the hard decisions for you."

"And you're just nominating yourself for that position?"

"Yes." She was starting to look amused, and that didn't help his temper.

"You know what? Whatever. I can drink Jack instead."

"Derek," she said, when he turned for the door, and he pulled up short, her voice as effective as a leash around his throat.

He turned to her, scowling, and tried not to look at her wrist brace and start feeling guilty and terrible. This right here was about his Scotch.

"You don't need Scotch," she said, quietly, but firmly. "You need to rest, and recover. Take your medicine, drink lots of water, and no alcohol." She sighed. "I know you don't like being taken care of, but I'm determined to do just that. So you need to get over it."

The thing, though? He did like being taken of. He liked it a lot. He liked it too much, in fact.

This was his third day home from the hospital. The first day, Jenny had driven him and Michelle home in one of the club trucks, and his teeth had been clenched together by the time they reached the clubhouse, each rattle of the chassis and dip of a pothole sending fresh agony through his throbbing bullet wound, and his pounding head. His girls had taken one look at him, and known he was hurting, the two of them sharing a silent, swift communication through glances.