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  NIGHT BEFORE NEW YEAR'S

  ANNABELLE WINTERS

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  Copyright © 2019 by Annabelle Winters

  All Rights Reserved by Author

  www.annabellewinters.com

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  Cover Design by S. Lee

  NIGHT BEFORE NEW YEAR'S

  ANNABELLE WINTERS

  1

  CORRINA

  “Yes, I’ll come in to work. Of course I’ll come in. No, I didn’t have plans. Not really. No. No plans at all.”

  I hang up and stare at my phone. Five years at the hospital and I’ve never missed a shift, never called in sick, never even been late. Not that I’ve never wanted to miss a shift. Not that I’ve never been sick. Not that I’ve never compromised on sleep habits, eating habits, dating habits, and pretty much life habits just to drag my big butt into the ER to stitch up someone who’s bleeding out all over the damned tiles. They’re asking more and more from us nurses, and you know what: We’re damned well delivering.

  So I sigh and look over at the black dress I’d put out for this New Year’s Eve. Not quite a “little” black dress—that doesn’t work so well when you’re not that “little.” But I was looking forward to wearing it. For some reason it hugged my hips just right, propped up my boobs perfectly, pulled in my waist, was nice and tight around my ass, like a dark, mysterious stranger’s big rough hands gripping my rump firmly as he kissed me hard on the mouth and growled, “Happy New Year, baby,” in a voice that sounded like a mix between Elvis and a Marvel Supervillain.

  I force myself to laugh as I reach for the dress and shake my head. “Duty calls,” I say with a shrug. “Duty over booty,” I add with a giggle, shaking my head again as I think about the New Year’s Eve party I was supposed to go to with some of my girlfriends. I wonder if my future husband is gonna be at that party, looking around for me even though he hasn’t met me yet. I wonder if I’m making the wrong decision here, if maybe this once I need to choose myself over my job. I could still call the hospital back and say no. It’s double overtime, with a holiday premium, of course. But though I can always use the money, it’s not about the money. Truth is, they wouldn’t have called me in if they weren’t desperate. New Year’s Eve is a drunken, wild night in this city. People do stupid, reckless things, and half the time those stupid, reckless things land them in my ER, gasping and groaning, screaming and howling, bleeding and sometimes dying.

  “Not if I can help it,” I say softly to that silent black dress that’s shining in the yellow light of my bedroom. “Nobody dies on Nurse Coco’s shift. They need me at the hospital tonight. Future husband can wait. He’ll wait, right?”

  I stand there like an idiot, wondering if I’m seriously talking to an inanimate object. I force out a laugh and reach for the dress again, but as I turn to the closet, it feels like the dress is talking back.

  “Wear me anyway,” the dress whispers. “Go on. Wear me anyway.”

  I raise an eyebrow and wonder if I put any whiskey in my coffee this morning. Eyebrow still raised, I look the dress up and down, thinking about how it hugged my curves so well, made me feel confident and sexy. The scrubs we wear are baggy, shapeless, and loose. I could hike the dress up over my butt and put my scrubs on over it, couldn’t I? It’s tight enough to stay in place. And it’ll be my secret. My dirty little secret.

  I lean my head back and laugh at how tame and innocent my “dirty little secret” actually is. It would be different if I wore super-hot black lingerie under my scrubs. Whatever. I am who I am.

  “All right, talking dress,” I say. “You’re on. It’s kind of a party in the ER on New Year’s Eve, isn’t it? And maybe future husband will roll in with a hamster up his butt or something, saying he has no idea how it got there.”

  And now I’m laughing, and I’m dressing, and before I know it I’m on my way, little black dress hiked up over my bum in secret, a strange feeling of anticipation rolling through me as I drive towards the setting sun.

  “Happy New Year, baby,” I growl in my Supervillain Elvis voice, cracking myself up but also sending a ripple of excitement through me as I wonder if maybe I just made the right choice, if future husband is gonna show up at this party and not the other one. “Happy New Year.”

  2

  CAIN

  “There’s nothing happy about it,” I growl to the grinning intern in scrubs who’s clearly delirious because he probably hasn’t slept in three fucking days. I remember being a med-school intern, full of hope and ambition, ready to save the world. And then you grow up and see that people don’t want to be saved, that the world is beyond saving, that hope is a fucking illusion, like unicorns and fairies.

  “What’s with the asshole new doctor?” I hear the intern say way too loudly, the caffeine and uppers clearly messing with his judgment.

  Though maybe the little shit’s judgment isn’t that far off, I think grimly as I stop in my tracks and clench my massive fists that want to make contact with the intern’s jaw, maybe knock out a couple of his caffeine-stained teeth. See how happy he his when he whistles every time he talks.

  Yeah, maybe he’s not so far off, I think again as I force my temper back to its hiding place in my dark, tormented soul. I am a fucking asshole.

  And so I grin and shrug, shake my head and continue my rounds of the scene in the ER. The sun has just set, and it’s relatively calm in here. The calm before the storm that’s New Year’s Eve.

  The wail of an ambulance makes me wince, and I rub my temples as I remind myself of the doctor’s oath I took years ago, the oath I’m supposed to renew every year:

  Do no harm.

  That’s the first responsibility of a medical professional. It’s beautifully simple in a way, isn’t it? Forget trying to cure every disease, heal every wound, fix everything that’s broken. Start with the fucking basics: Do no harm. Don’t make things worse than they are. That’s the starting point. The goddamn beginning.

  Except this isn’t the beginning, I think as I let that old anger ooze through my hard, chiseled frame like a drug. Anger that’s been festering in me for ten long years, ever since I lost my little girl in a room just like this, on a night just like this.

  “Nah, this isn’t the beginning,” I whisper to myself as I glance at the ticking clock and remind myself of what I came here to do, why I’m here in this city, in this hospital. “It’s the end. It ends here. It ends tonight. I’m gonna finish it, and then I’m gonna find peace at last. Peace forever.”

  “Peace out, kid,” comes a woman’s voice from my left, and I whip my head around like I’ve been punched in the face. Yeah, the ER isn’t chaos yet, but it’s never a quiet place, even at the slowest times. There’s beeping and buzzing of a hundred machines, screeching of wheelchairs and gurneys, the voices of doctors and nurses, interns and receptionists, patients insisting that their stubbed toe is more important than the groaning dude with a kitchen-knife sticking out of his arm.

  But for some reason this woman’s voice cuts through the background noise like that kitchen-knife slicing through butter, and when I turn to look at her I almost fall to my knees, almost reach out for fucking life support, a shot to revive my heart that I swear stopped for a moment that lasted eternity.

  “Holy Mother of God,” I groan as I feel my
loose scrubs tighten as my cock fills out so fast I get dizzy from the blood leaving my buzzing head. “What the fuck just happened?”

  It’s been years since I even gave a woman a second look, let alone reacted like this. And no doubt I’m fucking reacting. I’m full hard, nothing but my tight underwear holding my cock back from tenting my scrubs in a way that would make the entire ER go into cardiac arrest. She’s one of the ER nurses, and I’m staring like a wretched barbarian at her magnificent ass as she leans in to touch the forehead of a teenage girl with heavy black eyeshadow and an expression that clearly says, “I took some pills and now I’m scared I’m gonna die!”

  “Peace out, kid,” the nurse says to the teen again, her pretty face lit up in a smile that I swear lights a candle in my dark heart even as it lights a fire in my thick cock. “You’re going to be just fine. The effects will wear out in a few hours, and you’ll be able to bring in the new year with your friends, OK? Just stay out of your parents’ medicine cabinet from now on, yeah?”

  The drugged-up kid turns bright red and nods sheepishly, relief washing over her as this nurse’s compassion and confidence flows through the air in a way I swear I can almost smell. I take a deep breath and nod. Fuck, I can smell her, can’t I? Natural body spray, I can tell.

  And a natural body, I think as I shamelessly admire her strong hourglass shape, take in the sight of her wide, womanly hips, imagine myself holding on to that big bottom as I plunge my throbbing cock into her. I lick my lips as I wonder what her nipples look like beneath those scrubs. Big like dinner-plates, I decide. And that’s what I want for dinner.

  I almost laugh out loud at how quickly my thoughts are going to places they haven’t been in years. Maybe going to places they’ve never been at all. This is all new, isn’t it? All new. Like a new beginning. A new—

  “You must be the new doctor!” comes her voice through my churning mind. “Hi! I’m Corrina.” She looks down at her nametag, which is perched right where I want my mouth to be—on the apex of her glorious left breast. “But everyone calls me Coco. Come to think of it, I need to get a new nametag.” She glances at my white coat and raises an eyebrow. “And you need a new nametag too. How will everyone get to know you if they don’t know your name?”

  “What difference does it make? I’m not going to be here long,” I say, my head still buzzing as I lock eyes with Coco and feel something shift inside me—and not just my goddamn cock. It’s a cosmic shift, earth-shattering and groundbreaking, like suddenly everything’s changed, like the entire reason I got myself transferred to this hospital maybe isn’t what I thought it was, like maybe unicorns really do exist, that maybe there is such a thing as hope, as fate, as destiny.

  Maybe there is such a thing as love.

  “Why aren’t you going to be here long?” Coco says with a quizzical frown. “They told me you just transferred here. You going somewhere, Doctor . . . ?”

  “Cain,” I say like I’m in a stupor. “My name’s Cain.”

  She blinks as the name registers, and I wonder if she’s read the Old Testament. Cain, son of Adam, the bad kid who murdered his own brother. Of course, I never had a brother, and my own parents weren’t religious or anything. Hell, they could barely even read. Don’t know why they named me that. Don’t know why I kept the name. Clearly this woman didn’t seem locked into the name she’d been given.

  “What’s wrong with Corrina?” I say. “I like Corrina. I’m going to call you Corrina.”

  “Then I’m going to call you what the rest of the staff is calling you,” she mutters, her jaw tightening as she stares up at me defiantly.

  “You mean asshole?” I say with a grin. Fuck, this woman has fire in her, doesn’t she. Doesn’t like someone trying to exercise control over her. And that makes me want to exercise control over her. Own her. Possess her. Fucking take her.

  “Doctor Asshole, actually,” she says, immediately covering her mouth and gasping. “Ohmygod, I so didn’t mean to say that! Nobody calls you that! I swear it!”

  “Oh, really?” I say in a slow drawl as my head buzzes with an excitement I haven’t felt since I was a teenager chasing everything in a skirt and heels. I step close to her, my body shuddering as I have to fight my need to touch her, to pull her into me, to kiss those red lips, smell her lustrous hair, taste her sweetness. “So if nobody calls me that, doesn’t it mean you just came up with the name Doctor Asshole?”

  “Oh, fuck, I’m gonna get fired today, aren’t I?” she groans, rubbing her eyes and shaking her head. “I mean, oh shucks. Oops. OK, I’m gonna stop talking now. Hi! I’m Coco! What’s your name? Ohmygod, am I still talking?!”

  I love you, I think as I stare in amused disbelief at this curvy, vivacious nurse who’s somehow both flustered and confident at the same time, like she doesn’t have any filters, is just . . . just herself.

  “You can’t help it, can you?” I say, her sweetness and exuberance getting to me finally as I break into a smile—a smile that feels real, a smile that feels honest, a smile that feels like there’s still hope, like maybe tonight isn’t going to be the end after all, like maybe . . . just maybe . . .

  “Help what?” she says, pulling my mind away from that dark hole where it’s lived for a decade, consumed by grief and hatred, the need for revenge, for justice.

  “Help being yourself,” I say softly, stepping close enough that we’re almost touching.

  “Who else would I be?” she says, blinking and looking away like she’s embarrassed at the compliment.

  Mine, comes the thought as I look into her big brown eyes, feel the world melt away like I’m being drawn into her world. That’s who you’re going to be before the end of the night.

  She blinks again and lets out a soft gasp, and I wonder if I just said that out loud. No, I didn’t. But I swear it feels like somehow she got the message, that she feels what I’m feeling too, that she understands that before the night is done, she’s going to be mine.

  Mine for just one night, though, I think as I remember why I’m here, what I came here to do, what I’ve waited patiently for ten years to do.

  Just one night.

  3

  COCO

  “Just one night,” I say to the younger nurses, smiling as I wipe my brow with a square of sterile gauze and then change my gloves for like the hundredth time tonight. It’s only eight, but shit’s already getting crazy, and I wonder if it’s also a full moon or something. My coworkers are stressed and harried, shaking their heads and muttering under their breath every time the front doors slide open and another New Year’s Eve casualty stumbles in bleeding because they got drunk too early, choking because they popped too many pills, limping because they didn’t see the curb or the stairs. There’s even some dude with a dogbite on his arm. Maybe even the animals are going crazy.

  But although the chaos is building around me, inside I feel calm and steady. My body is humming with energy, buzzing with excitement, thrumming with what feels like music. I’ve never felt like this before, and I try to push away the thought that the feeling took over after that brief moment of closeness with that new doctor: That tall, brooding, darkly handsome doctor whose green eyes did something to me.

  “What was Doctor Asshole saying to you earlier?” says the receptionist as I stop by her desk to steal a piece of candy from the dish she hides behind the counter.

  “Just that he knows we’re already calling him Doctor Asshole,” I say with a wink, barely chewing the bite-sized Snickers before grabbing another.

  “Ohmygod, no!” she says, covering her mouth. “He didn’t hear me say that, did he?”

  “Nope,” I say, slipping one more treat into my pocket and turning back to the battlefield that’s my job. “He heard me say it.”

  I’m back in the fray before I hear her reply, and I glance across the room and see Doctor Cain working on a meth-head who’s got a piece of stained glass st
icking out of his thigh. What the hell did he do? Jump through a church window?

  I snicker at the thought, and then I steal a moment to take in the sight of Doctor Cain at work. Soon a shudder goes through my body when I realize that shit, this guy is good. Surly and brooding, yeah. Not a great bedside manner, no. But he’s still damned good in the ER, where speed is everything, where taking an extra minute to ask someone how their evening is going might mean someone else bleeds out behind the next curtain.

  “OK, stop it,” I mutter when I realize I’m staring at the tall, muscular Doctor Cain. But I can’t look away, and I absentmindedly pop the last piece of candy into my mouth and keep staring like an idiot.

  He's older, ruggedly handsome, with streaks of gray in his hair and stubble, lines creasing his forehead and face. He's been through chaos and madness before, I can tell. He's been through more than that, maybe. It's hardened him.

  His body is hard too, I notice. Broad and muscled like a beast, with massive shoulders and a heavy chest. And those forearms! They’re thick like trees, veins popping out in high relief as he deftly slides the glass shard out from the patient’s thigh and cleans the wound vigorously as the meth addict howls like a beaten dog.

  “The pain means you haven’t got nerve damage,” I hear Cain saying to the thrashing man, and I watch in fascination as the massive doctor holds the addict down with one arm and then . . . then . . . then looks over at me.

  “Come here,” he commands, beckoning with his head in a supremely arrogant way that should piss me off but instead makes my buttocks tighten and my nipples firm up. He’s looking right into my eyes, his gaze unwavering, his hard body unmoving even as his patient moans and writhes under his grasp.

  I blink and look to my left like I’m wondering if he’s talking to someone else. But I know he’s talking to me, and I briskly walk over, trying to look as professional as I can even though I think I have bits of chocolate all over my mouth.