All Chapters of Collide: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Dani felt icy fingers of foreboding skittering up her spine as she reached for the cold metal handle of the break room door. She shivered. Shake it off girl! Everyone’s stable, that’s the only reason you’re able to grab a few minutes! She whipped the mask off her face as she dropped into a chair. She was eight hours into her twelve-hour shift in the CCU and had been running non-stop. Her feet were throbbing, and she had an ache building behind her eyes. She smiled thankfully at her friend, Kim, who pushed a 44 oz Diet Dr. Pepper in her direction across the table. “You’re a lifesaver!” Dani said, taking a large gulp of the icy drink. Since she didn’t drink coffee, Diet Dr. Pepper was her main vice. To her ongoing dismay, the break room soda machine didn’t carry them, so she went without unless she was able to sneak downstairs to the cafeteria. “This is the first time I’ve been able to take a break all day. How did you know I’d be here dying for one right now?” Kim chuckled. “Brandon s

After conferring with the doctors and therapy team, Dani stayed at her aunt’s bedside the rest of the day talking to her constantly and doing range of motion exercises on her arms and legs. Her uncle sat through it all in the uncomfortable hospital chair, silently holding and stroking his wife’s hand. After trying unsuccessfully to lovingly convince her uncle to go home and get some rest, she finally resorted to using her best Nurse Ratchet voice to convince her uncle to unglue his backside from the horrible chair next to his wife’s hospital bed. “You’re not going to do her any good if you fall over too,” She put both hands on her hips and tried to glare at him. “I’m not going anywhere, and you know I know what I’m doing. Nurse’s orders! Go home, eat, take a shower and close your eyes for a few hours. I will call you if there is any change at all.” As he looked up, her voice and demeanor softened. “Please, Uncle E. She’s going to need you to be strong. Take a break now while you can.”

Levi sat sweating in his Tundra in the middle of the gravel road about a mile from his childhood home. The sweat wasn’t from the sweltering Texas sun, however. It was a cold sweat at being so close to the place he had escaped from when he went to college. The day he had left, his teenage self had vowed to never set foot on the place again, but here he was, a grown man come home. C’mon Levi, you can do this. Mom’s waiting. It’s just a set of buildings.He took a deep breath and put the truck back in gear, driving slowly until he arrived at the driveway. His mother must have been watching for him from the front windows because she burst out of the front door, screen door slamming behind her as he pulled up. She grabbed him in a hug before he could get completely out of the truck.“Come here, you!” She kept his neck in a vice grip and kissed him repeatedly on the cheek.Levi laughed and picked his mother up off the ground in a bear hug. “I’d have come home sooner if I knew I was going to

An hour later, Dani and Maggie were in Pearl trying to navigate the old gravel road out to the homestead. She had remembered the route but had forgotten the giant potholes in the road. Out that way there was just the old Cooper spread and theirs and apparently no one had even been trying to maintain the road. Poor Pearl was not a happy camper with the constant scraping of her undercarriage. “Gee, Dani,” Maggie said as they bounced through yet another pothole, hitting their heads on the soft top of the convertible, “if you had told me we were going out here we could have taken my Explorer. Your expensive car is going to be ruined.”Note to self, if I did move out here, Pearl and I were going to have to have a difficult chat about replacing her with a 4-wheel drive.“Yeah, well, it’s been a minute and I kinda forgot how bad this road can get,” Dani said, gritting her teeth as gravel flew up to hit the windshield despite creeping along like a turtle. “It’ll be ok. We’re almost there.”A

“Good Lord. Jesus take the wheel!” Dani said, her eyes widening. “What did I miss?” asked Maggie, her lively brown eyes darted around, looking for the action, as she set their lunches down on the table at Common Grounds. She was well-aware of her friend’s new favorite sport of people watching and was always ready to add to her ever-growing pot of fertilizer for the Gladewater grapevine. “That.” Dani pointed with her chin, trying to be discreet but failing miserably. Her eyes ogled the man who just climbed out of an old, faded red Chevy pickup, a truck that somehow looked familiar.The man himself looked like he was hot off some cowboy romance novel cover. He was at least six foot four, his dusty, faded Wranglers were tight in all the right places and sported holes that she bet were put there from hard work and not by a designer. His white t-shirt was so tight it left little to the imagination. No wondering if there was a six pack under there, you could count every ab muscle. His bice