Free Rescue Me: A Bad Boy Military Romance by Vesper Vaughn

rings and I jump about a foot. “Hello?”
    “Hey, girl! How is it in Middle-of-Nowhere, Texas?” Sam asks with a laugh.
    “Hey, Sam. It’s…interesting,” I reply. “And how is the big city life treating you?”
    “It’s harder than I thought,” she replies. “This plastic surgery fellowship might be harder than residency.”
    “And here you thought you’d be getting off easy with a big-income job,” I reply, feeling a little smug.
    “Yeah, well. We all gotta pay our dues. You see any patients yet?”
    “I’ve mostly been channeling my inner HGTV worker bee,” I reply, putting a final polish on my two-burner stainless steel stove. “Doing a bunch of renovations to the clinic here. It’s in pretty bad shape.”
    Sam tuts sympathetically. “Have you been working alone?”
    “Um, no,” I say, feeling my cheeks heat up.
    “Ella. You better tell me who the man is.”
    “What man?” I ask, totally unconvincingly.
    “The man that’s laced in your ‘um no’ reply to me,” she says.
    “He’s nobody. No one. Well, he’s. He’s my high school boyfriend, actually.” I feel myself getting girlish again. If this were a nineteen-sixties teen movie, I’d be on my stomach with my feet in the air twirling the spiral cord of a landline around my finger. I clear my throat. “But it’s not like that.”
    “Oooh, rekindling an old flame? Sounds sexy. I like it. You better keep me updated on that little soap opera of yours, then.”
    “There’s nothing to keep up with, honestly,” I say, but a smile has crept to my face and I can’t push it away.
    “Right, okay,” Sam replies with heavy skepticism. “Listen. Jason’s been calling people asking about you.”
    I roll my eyes. “He cannot take no for an answer, can he?” I ask with dread in my stomach.
    “Yeah, well. Just watch out, okay? I told you he was bad news when you started dating him last year. He’s super fuckable, but there’s something off about him that bothers me. I just want you to be careful, that’s all.”
    I laugh and try to make it sound light-hearted. But in honesty, her words have chilled me to the bone. “I might as well be a million miles away from Santa Barbara, Sam,” I say. “I really don’t think that Jason even knows what leaving California is. I’m not sure he knows that’s possible.” But the chills that appeared a moment ago won’t leave me alone. “Hey, I gotta go,” I say. “The town is having a party for me tonight.”
    Sam laughs. “I can’t imagine living in a place small enough or being famous enough for an entire town to be throwing me a party. It sounds kind of nice to be cared about that much. I don’t even know my mailman’s name.”
    “Yeah, well. Imagine everyone from your high school showing up to say hello to you.”
    I can practically hear Sam shuddering through the phone. “No thanks! You’ve cured me of that fantasy.”
    I ring off and pack up my purse, wheeling my shiny, red bicycle outside. I don’t bother to lock the door behind me. This is Buxwell, Texas. Nobody locks their doors here.
    I use the bottom step of my porch to push the bicycle into motion. It rides as smoothly as I imagine it did the day that it was purchased decades ago. The wind whips over my face and I let out a scream of happiness and satisfaction entirely against my will. I feel giddy, like a little kid again.
    And a not-so-little part of me knows it’s because I’m about to see Luke.
    I pedal faster down the dirt road towards town. If Sam could only see me now, I’m not sure she would recognize me.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
    LUKE
    I wake up from my mid-afternoon nap with pain shooting through my leg. I pound at the painfully contracting muscle with my fist, hoping the pain of my knuckles against the muscle will kill my original pain. It doesn’t. I reach over to take more pain pills.
    My house doesn’t have air conditioning, so I’m sleeping naked as usual. It’s on my list; the never-ending list of renovation