Bending the Rules
Authors: Ali Parker
Bending the Rules
The Rules
Book 2
by
ALI PARKER
Contents
With the need for affection… perhaps not all rules are made equal.
After losing his little sister, Kendal is more in need of a warm body in his bed at night to remind him that life isn’t one loss after the next, but his damn rules… How can he bend the very thing that keeps him safe and forces the past to remain just that… the past?
Dana’s lost as to how to get through to Kendal, and even though changing her schedule for the fall seems like the best course of action, it would add another semester onto her graduation. Surely her and Kendal can move past the misunderstanding over his sister and sneak around right? It’s only eight months.
No one is that big of a stickler for the rules, especially when love is involved. No one but Kendal Tarrington…
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Bending the Rules
The Rules, Book 2
Copyright © 2016 by Ali Parker
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
The novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and plot are all either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons – living or dead – is purely coincidental.
First Edition.
Editor:
Nicole Bailey,
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Dana
Watching Kendal drive away with anger all over his handsome face left me broken in two. The schedule clutched in my hand was the reason behind his pissy attitude or was it more than that? Most people in the middle of grief will turn to anything and everything else in hopes of hiding the soul-wrenching reality they're forced to face.
Amanda was dead. Kendal's little sister hadn't made it through the night. Her MS finally won the battle and now he was forced to face death with no one by his side. Both of his parents were gone from what I'd read in Amanda's file at the hospital.
Tears burned my eyes as he tore out of the parking lot at UT and never looked back. Maybe it was for the best... Sadly enough, it didn't feel that way.
I glanced down at the schedule and folded it up slowly as students moved all around me. I'm sure the spectacle of Kendal screaming in my face would be the talk of the campus for a few days, but it was irrelevant. I didn't know many of them, and they didn't know me.
The one person I wanted to know wasn't going to allow any closeness between us from what I could tell.
"Hey. You okay?" A thin guy in a wheelchair moved up beside me and glanced up. His blond hair was cut in a way that left his bangs dripping into his line of sight.
"Hm?" I glanced toward the parking lot and nodded. "Oh yeah. Just having a fight with a friend."
"I'm Jake, Dr. Tarrington's TA." He extended his hand, and I turned to shake it while wiping tears from my eyes with my free hand.
"Nice to meet you. I really should get up to the hospital. I'm one of the nurses that was taking care of his sister."
"Oh." The guy’s face fell. "That sucks. He just told me about her passing. Tell him we're all thinking about him if you get a chance."
I nodded and walked toward my car, not willing to point out to the guy that I was the last person that Kendal seemed to want to see. After buckling up, I pulled out and glanced back toward the school one more time. Maybe I was making a mistake by getting involved with one of the professors on campus. Maybe that's why he was pissy with me.
"Or maybe his sister just died, idiot." I let out a long sigh and drove back toward my apartment. Kendal needed a few minutes to himself with Amanda and Dr. Lewis, and it wasn't like anyone would let me into the room until Kendal was done with his final visit. I'd left poor Jackie in an emotional breakdown on my couch and Cameron at my door after bitching him out.
Everything was a fucking mess.
I grabbed my phone and held on to it tightly as I made my way back toward my place. Some part of me wanted Kendal to call so we could work through whatever he needed to work through. Was he pissed about me not saying anything about Amanda's death date? Surely not. How would he know that I'd read her folder? And why would it be my job to say anything to him in the first place? It wasn't. It was Dr. Lewis'.
A mixture of anger and sadness swirled in the pit of my stomach as I parked just outside my apartment and hoofed it up the stairs. I wanted a relationship filled with heat and passion, and something told me that's exactly what I would have gotten with Kendal.
How the fuck was it over before it began?
Because of Amanda or something else?
I was grateful to find the door to my apartment shut and locked. The hope was that Jackie was more put together and Cameron had figured out what was best for him and left before I got back. I opened the door tentatively and walked in.
"Jackie?" The smell of sugar and chocolate wafted my way.
"I'm in the kitchen." She stuck her head around the corner. "What the fuck happened? One minute you and I were walking in, and the next, you were gone."
"Kendal's sister, Mandy, died." I dropped my purse and ran my fingers through my hair. "I wanted to get to him just in case he needed me."
"Oh shit. I'm so sorry to hear that." She walked toward me as she wiped her hands on a blue apron she had around her waist.
"Are you cooking something?" I accepted the quick hug before dropping down into a chair at the kitchen table.
"Yeah. I figured we could use something sweet. You had everything to make chocolate chip cookies from scratch, so I thought, 'why the hell not'." She squeezed my shoulder and walked back toward the kitchen.
"Did Cameron bother you?" I pulled my legs into the chair and ignored the screaming voice inside of me that said to run to the hospital as fast as I could. It wasn't my place, and being the brunt of Kendal's pain didn't sound like much fun. I'd eventually go because I needed to know that he was okay, but now wasn't the time.
"No. He came in, walked around and left. Weird."
"Sounds like him." I wrapped my arms around my legs and pressed my face to my knees. "Is there a policy at the college that a professor can't date a student?"
"I'm sure there is. We have that at the hospital too. It's part of our professional code of conduct."
I snorted as my emotions started to soften a little. "You've read the professional code of conduct for the hospital?"
She walked out and chuckled. "Yeah, of course. I need to know where the line in the sand is."
"Why, so you can apologize when you cross it?"
"Hardy, har." She brushed her long blond hair over her shoulder. "Guess what?"
"What?" I watched her closely.
"I finally found Parks' number."
"And? Did you call him?" Parks was a hot doctor from New York that had come down for a few days to show our surgeons a few tricks of the trade, and somewhere along the way, stolen Jackie's heart and her favorite pair of panties. The man was a player and a half.
"I left a message." She got up as the timer on the oven went off. "He'll call back. I just know he will."
I rolled my eyes, got up and followed her into the kitchen. "You think I should go up to the hospital and see how Kendal is?"
"Do you?" She glanced over her shoulder.
"We were almost dating as of yesterday, but he was crazed when I went to the campus to check on him a few minutes ago." I crossed my arms over my chest, wishing I could protect myself from what felt like the brinks of depression.
"He just lost his baby sister." She turned back around and plated the cookies. "Go up there and just play it cool. If he needs you, be there for him, and if he doesn't, then give him his space."
"I guess." I brushed my fingers by my lips and paced the floor. "He shoved his class schedule in my face when we were arguing a few minutes ago, as if me being in his mini-mester class was the worst fucking thing that could happen."
"That's because there's a code of conduct, remember?" She put her hand on her hip and lifted her eyebrow. "Is he a rule follower?"
"No clue. I think so, but he's got two different sides to his personality." I grabbed a cookie and walked toward the bedroom. "I'm going to change and go up there. Maybe they need my help and I can just pick up a shift. Then it won't be too awkward if he's still upset with me."
"You're going to have to talk to him and see what's up."
"Yep," I mumbled as I walked down the hall. "That's what I'm afraid of."
*
Every nerve in my body was buzzing by the time I got to the fourth floor of the hospital. Now wasn't the time to try and talk with Kendal about what was going on with us. It was time to support him and hold him if he would let me anywhere near him. Just the thought of seeing him in pain left me panting for air and wanting to bend over in hopes of catching my breath.
How someone could cause me to feel so much when we'd just met was a mystery.
"Dana?" Dr. Lewis' voice brought me from my thoughts.
I walked off the elevator and stiffened as the older doctor paused in the hallway.
"Hi Dr. Lewis." I glanced both ways down the hall, noting that Kendal wasn't in sight.
"You heard that we lost Amanda Tarrington, right?" He reached out and squeezed my shoulder as a fatherly look moved across his features.
"Yes. I'm heartbroken over it." I glanced down and took a sharp breath before looking back up. "Is her brother still here?"
"Yes. Kendal's in her room, though we've moved the body out. Just let him stay in there as long as he needs to. The poor boy has no other family to lean on." He shook his head. "I've been friends with his parents since we were kids. I've never known a family to have so much tragedy in one lifetime."
As if I didn't feel like shit already, Dr. Lewis' words were dragging me farther and farther into a hole of despair.
"I'll go check on him." I nodded toward the doctor and walked languidly toward the room. It felt as if my feet were pushing through mud. Tensely, the head nurse on our floor and chief-bitch most days of the week, said something from the nurses’ station across from Amanda's room, but I ignored her. She was a pain in the ass that I could deal with after I made sure Kendal was holding it together.
I knocked softly on the door and pushed it open as I held my breath.
Kendal stood by the window, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders rolled in, head slightly bent toward the ground.
"Kendal?" I closed the door and stood there until he looked up and glanced over his shoulder.
"I'm sorry I attacked you." He turned back toward the window. The reflection of lifelessness showing from his reflection in the glass left my heart aching. "I just really wanted whatever was happening between us to work out. To turn into something."
Pushing the conversation felt like the natural thing to do, but I had to force myself to hold my tongue. He was lost in grief over his sister. I could respect that and discuss us later.
I moved up behind him and wrapped my arms around his waist. Some part of me expected him to pull from me, to reject my touch, but he didn't.
"I'm so sorry about Amanda." I pressed my cheek to his strong back and closed my eyes. "I wish there was something I could do."
He turned in my arms and put his hands on my shoulders, his beautiful face completely expressionless. "Thank you. There was nothing anyone could have done, I don't suppose. Life is a bitch and then you die."
I moved back and slipped my hands into my pockets, ignoring his morbid comment. "Can I take you home? Get you something to eat? Tell me how to help."
He shook his head and turned back toward the window. "I don't need anything but time. Just let me hang out for a while and then I'll get out of your hair."
Out of my hair?
"Do you have someone I could call to come up here and sit with you? I'll stay if you want me to, but if there is someone else-"
"No. I've already called my friends. Just leave me be." He wrapped his arms around himself and tucked his head toward his chest as I stood in an awkward silence.
A part of me was grateful that his anger had dissipated, but maybe anger was better than no emotion at all. He didn't seem at all like himself, not that I expected him to be. I stood there for another minute before slipping out into the hallway and wiping away the tears that had gathered in my eyes. Hopefully someone would show up and give him a shoulder to lean on, a chest to cry against, something...
I would have offered him all of the above, but after our fight at UT an hour before, I was more than assured that he wouldn't take it.