Chapter2
Ashlyn Shepherd
Holy shit.I walked into that recovery room to take care of my patient, never expecting it to behim. Owen. One of two people who without fail I’ve thought of every day for the last five years.
OwenBliss. I didn’t know his last name until now. Not that I couldn’t have found out if I wanted. But I wasn’t interested. I wanted to forget him. Forget that night. Forget those eyes.
Those pale blue eyes. I’ve seen them every day of my life since that night. Hard not to when you have a daily reminder.
You are beautiful.I knew it was him the minute I heard those three words leave his mouth. They’re the same ones he told me that night.And I believed him.
I’d just had the hardest nursing exam and skills check-off of my life. Passed by the skin of my teeth. I needed to blow off some steam and escape the stress so I could get my head in check for what was coming next. I swore I was going to do better. I had to. I couldn’t afford to flunk out of nursing school when my family was depending on me.
It was homecoming weekend at UT. My best friend, Brittany, invited me over for the game and all the festivities. Huge mistake. I shouldn’t have gone.
No. That isn’t the truth. Going to that party was the best decision of my life.
Brittany scored an invite to a shindig being thrown by her classmate, Brantley, and his friends, Owen, Bram, and Drake. Bram and Brantley were a pair of big-fucking-deal baseball players for Tennessee. Sounded like the perfect kind of fun before returning to nursing classes the next week. Cardiac. I wasn’t looking forward to starting that unit. The class ahead of us said it was hell and about half failed the exam.
I was surprised when I caught the attention of one of the hotshot baseball players. Not that I wasn’t a catch but I pegged him and his buddy as the kind of guys who’d go for the sorority-girl type. Not someone with a serious agenda like me. But Owen overlooked every one of those sorority girls to seeme. Talk tome. The girl from a community college nursing program, praying she graduated so she could take on some of her family’s financial burden.
Owen wanted to know everything about me: Where I was from. What I was doing in school. What kind of nurse I wanted to be. We drank and talked and talked and drank. I wasn’t just a little tipsy. I was totally trashed.
The party got crazy. Like really crazy. We could hardly hear each other over the thumping bass, and I wanted to hear every word he had to say, so it seemed like a great idea when he asked me to go upstairs with him to his bedroom where it was quiet and calm.
We stretched out side by side on the bed, facing one another, and talked for hours. That’s all we did. He didn’t even try to kiss me. I admit that was disappointing but I simultaneously liked it because it meant he hadn’t brought me to his room with the intention of using me to get laid.
Lying next to one another, fully clothed. That’s how we drifted off. But not how we awakened.
I don’t know who made the first move. I only remember waking in the middle of the night, the room dimly lit by the bedside lamp, and Owen lying on top of me.
His long, lean baseball-player-esque body was nestled between my parted legs, his hard-on pressed against me. Rocking. Thrusting. And I didn’t tell him to stop. In fact, I’m pretty sure I was the one who made the first move toward getting naked.
I’m not sure if it was the alcohol or our intense physical chemistry, but I wanted him. Bad. And I was going all the way despite the fact that it was my first time.
A panty dropper at a drunken college party. That’s how I came to lose my virginity at nineteen to a guy whose last name I didn’t even know.
“I discharged both my patients. Want me to watch yours so you can grab lunch?” Martha asks. She’s always the first nurse on my shift to offer help.
“Yes! That would be great.” And what would be even more awesome is if Dr. Hall came around and discharged Owen Bliss while I’m away so I don’t have to see him again. “Vitals are due on the half-hour.”
You’re… her.I push the lettuce around on my plate as I consider what those two words mean.
Her, the girl he screwed while he had a girlfriend?
Her, the girl who was dumb enough to go upstairs and hand over her virginity?
Her, the girl who was so easy he didn’t even have to tell her his last name to get laid?
Owen was pretty drunk. He probably doesn’t even realize he took my virginity. Probably assumes I was a whore who wanted to hook up with a baseball star like all the other girls at that party.
“Needed a break from my brother, eh?”
I look up at the sound of the woman’s voice. Owen’s sister. Great. He hasn’t been discharged yet. “When you’re a nurse and someone offers to watch your patients so you can grab lunch, you don’t say no, since the chance will likely not present itself again.”
She sits on the bench across from me. “He’s not happy another nurse took your place. He wants you.” A grin spreads across her face. “In a long string of choice words, he told her to get out and send you back to be his nurse again.”
“Martha’s an excellent nurse. She’ll take great care of your brother.”