“I can call my sister.”
He grunted, a look of displeasure crossing his face. “I’ll have Trey bring me some clothes.”
“Yeah, because I’m not going to have anything that fits you.”
“Are you calling me fat?” he teased, and a genuine smile flitted across Tam’s face.
“You have been eating a lot of peanut butter sandwiches lately.”
“It’s not the sandwiches that are the problem,” Blaine said. “It’s all the ice cream I can’t stay away from in the evening.”
“I have ice cream,” Tam said.
“That’s why I’m staying with you and not Stacy,” he said, grinning at her. He stepped closer again and straightened the chair that he’d knocked sideways when he’d moved away from her. “Do you really hate me, Tam?”
“Did I say that?”
“In the ambulance,” he said. “You said you hated me for letting them put you in there.”
She looked up at him, and he wore such a vulnerable look on his face. She shook her head. “I could never hate you.”
“Never?” His eyebrows went up. “Maybe a real relationship won’t ruin our friendship then.”
Tam didn’t know what to say to that. She knew he’d been worrying about that for a couple of weeks now. Truth be told, so had she. She couldn’t lose Blaine. She’d rather not have him as a boyfriend than lose him completely.
As neither of them had ever had a relationship work out, the likelihood of them remaining friends after all of this was very low. Yet Tam wanted to take the risk. She reached up and cradled his face in the palm of her hand. How could she say everything she felt in her heart and all she thought in her mind?
Turned out, she didn’t need to. Blaine leaned down and pressed his lips to hers, and they both said enough with one amazing kiss.
3
Blaine could not believe that he had kissed Tam again. He was honestly just doing whatever came naturally to him, and seeing her in that bed and watching as she woke up had tugged on his heartstrings in a way they had never been pulled before.
He cared about her, and he wanted her to know it.
He wasn’t sure if deepening the kiss showed he cared or that he just had hormones, but that happened too. Her fingers ran through his hair—at least until she groaned and jerked her hand away.
Blaine pulled back and straightened, the air in the tiny hospital cubicle suddenly so dang hot. Terrance had said the air conditioner was out, but Blaine knew the heat coursing through his body had more attributing to it than that.
“Sorry,” he said, wondering if he’d ever be able to kiss her without apologizing afterward.
“It’s just this stupid IV,” Tam said, and to his horror, she plucked it right out of her wrist.
“Tam,” he said, turning away quickly to search for something to press against the bead of blood that had bloomed up quickly. “You can’t just do that.” He grabbed a couple of paper towels from the dispenser by the sink and returned to her side.
She simply stared at her blood as it continued to weep from the wound the IV had left behind. He pressed the paper towels to her wrist, and she flinched. It also broke the spell she’d fallen into, and she raised her eyes to his. “I want to go home.”
“I know that, baby,” he said. “But you can’t go ripping out IVs.” He glanced at the machines monitoring her vital signs, but he had no idea which one was connected to the IV. A moment later, three nurses entered the room.
Terrance led them, and he said, “We’ve got an alarm going off in here.” He scanned the situation quickly and took Blaine’s place at Tam’s side.
“It was bothering me,” Tam said, not an ounce of apology in her voice. “When is the doctor going to be here? I’m fine, and I want to go home.”
Blaine actually liked her spunk, though sometimes her sass could be a little much. She needed to learn that she sometimes could get more with honey than vinegar. He said nothing, though, because he really wanted to stay with her tonight. If he argued with her, she’d call her sister.
Cara lived in nearby Lexington, just on the other side of town. While Dreamsville ran along the rolling hills north of the city, Borderville hugged the southern side. It was still only a half an hour drive Cara could make easily.
He should probably offer to call her sister, and then he needed to call Spur and Cayden. They could get all the information to Duke about the breeding. He should call his mother too, because Blaine knew not many of her sons went out to visit her—Spur was really the only one who made any effort to do that. He went from time to time, but Blaine called her a lot. At least five times a week.