by C. R. Jane
“Thought you said you didn’t care about this stuff,” I replied.
“I don’t care about any of it. But I do care about making her pay for how much of my life she stole from me. I’m not the kind of man to let things go,” he said sternly.
I was silent as I thought about it. “I’m sure there’s a long list of guys you could go to,” I responded. “Why exactly do you want me involved?”
He swallowed, and his pulse started to throb in his neck.
“I’m pretty sure you were who she went to after she was done with me,” he said roughly.
My eyebrows rose up with that little tidbit. So I was the competition. Not that he should’ve thought that about me. She had done the same thing to both of us.
My pager vibrated on my hip, and I pulled it out of its case to see who it was. “I’ve got a patient to get to,” I told him, beginning to walk away.
“Are you in?” he called after me.
I stared at him, anger abruptly building inside of me. “I’m a heart surgeon. I fix hearts. She warned me she was broken. And I didn’t listen to her. I don’t think I ever really listened to her. But I do know Holly’s heart… I can’t fix it. And I don’t want to try. Because I haven’t been able to fix my own since she left, and I don’t think it can survive anymore damage.”
I went back to work. Maybe someday I would be able to distract myself enough not to think about her.
***
My surgery was harder than normal. I shook my head, trying to clear it of the scene with Graham. Why was he collecting the men that Holly had wronged? I understood wanting answers, but I wasn’t a masochist. Had I been hopeful for a while that she would come marching back through the door with my family’s treasures, telling me that it had all been a huge mistake? Of course I had. But when days stretched into weeks, and weeks stretched into months, I knew that wasn’t going to happen. I was just lucky that no one in my family had asked to show someone the items she had taken. My mother in particular would be devastated if she found out, as Nana had passed away ten years ago.
I set my tool down when I couldn’t get my head to clear. I wasn’t an idiot, I knew that going into a surgery distracted wasn’t something I could do when it meant another person’s life or death. I looked over at my partner, Samuel, who had come to observe the surgery as I was performing a new method we had learned at a conference a few weeks ago.
“I need you to finish,” I told him.
To his credit, he didn’t ask any questions, knowing that such behavior was out of the norm for me. He was already prepped for surgery, and after taking my tools, he got to work. I walked out of the surgery, sick to my stomach but content that my partner would get the job done. He wasn’t as good as me, very few people were, but that man wasn’t going to die today.
I decided to actually go home. I couldn’t remember when I had last been home. I had basically been living in the hospital over the past year. Taking every extra shift that I could, and sleeping in the bunk rooms that were set aside for the doctors and nurses to get rest.
Suddenly, resolve hit me, so strong it about knocked me over. Holly had left a few belongings at my house. And for some asinine reason, I had never gotten rid of them. What I needed was a fresh start. They had to go.
I was a man on a mission as I raced out to my car, suddenly desperate to get home and rid myself of the baggage that had been weighing me down for a year. My heart was beating so rapidly that I was almost afraid I was going to have a heart attack.
It’s just a symptom of stress, I told myself, trying to calm down.
I screeched into my driveway, my tires making a loud noise as I threw on the brake. I barely had the reserves to pull the keys out of my car as I flung myself toward the door, Desperation coursed through me.
My hands were shaking as I unlocked the door and threw it open. I had become someone else. I didn’t recognize this shaking, pathetic person, but I didn’t know how to get rid of him either. I ran to the drawer where I had carefully put one of Holly’s dresses, along with a scarf and a pair of shoes that she had left. She had probably forgotten where she put them; the whole rest of my place had been cleared out without me noticing before she left. It was just another thing I had been blind to in my love-drunk state.
I stuffed the items into a trash bag and hauled them to my trash bin outside, throwing them in roughly as I slammed the top down. My heart still felt like it was seizing up. I recognized it for what it was—a panic attack. I’d never had one in my life, and it took me a moment before I recalled my training and what I was supposed to do in this situation. Sitting down on the floor, I put my head between my knees and tried to control my breathing, even as my heart continued to try and race out of my chest.
Great wracking sobs burst out of me, and for the first time in more years than I could remember, I cried.
It wasn’t like this had happened yesterday. Holly had been gone for quite some time. But it was like Graham’s visit had ripped open a scab inside of me. This gap that I wasn’t sure was ever going to heal. This was what it felt like. This was your heart breaking. This was the kind of injury that they didn’t teach us to fix in medical school. My hands were trembling in front of my face, and I wondered if I would ever be able to hold a scalpel again. It was a stupid thought, but in that moment, a thousand bad scenarios were filling up my head. If the wound inside of me wasn’t going to heal on its own, and time was just a temporary stopgap, then I would need something stronger to hold together the bleeding mass that my heart had become. I would need closure.
A knock sounded on the door, and somehow, I just knew that it was Graham, trying to convince me to go along with his foolish plan. But this time, I knew that I needed to accept it. This time, I knew that the only way for me to fix this gaping hole in my chest was to surrender to the inevitability that Holly was the only one who could fix it.
Taking one last deep breath to try and quell the panic attack, I stood up on shaky legs and trudged to the door, hopefully taking my first steps toward the healing I so desperately needed.
Chapter 9
Holly
Now
Jamie led me to one of the rooms on the first floor. His TV was on, but no one was in there, and he flipped it off when we entered the room. The place was a mess, with a half empty gin bottle sitting next to the bed where most people would have had water glasses. The sheets were on the floor.
I gazed around at the scene, and he shrugged. “I don’t want the maids coming in.”
I took a seat on the empty chair. “Listen, Jamie, here’s the deal.”
He held up his hand. “Hold on. You’re not okay. Let me get some ice.”
I sighed. Ice was probably smart. My eye had swollen a lot more than I’d thought it was going to, and sitting sucked, thanks to my caning. I wasn’t sure how I was going to sit on an ice pack, and the idea of that much cold, even on my burning ass, didn’t sound appealing in the least.
Granted, this was a hotel, and Jamie hadn’t been prepared to stay here, but I searched for anything that would scream Jamie to me. I’d never seen him without a sketch pad somewhere nearby. Jamie would have painted on a blank wall, if he had nowhere else to do so. But there was nothing that said an artist was here at all. Maybe I was overthinking this.
A few minutes passed. Had he left me here? Moved on to something else? Called the police? I chewed on my lip, which hurt, and I stopped. It wouldn’t be more than I deserved if he had, and I died in police custody. I’d killed two men yesterday. Maybe there would be some sort of poetic justice to the whole thing if I just did.
Had my uncle found him?
The door open and closed. I glanced up, expecting Jamie. He was there, but not alone.
“Shit.” Charlie rushed over to me. “Holly? What happened?”
“She’s injured on her backside, too.”
Jamie walked past us into the bathroom and returned with ice wrapped in a towel. He placed it on my eye. I winced and tried to shove it awa
y, but he held it there, despite my objections. Charlie pressed on the area around the skin. “Talk to me, Holly. What happened?”
“I got beat up.” What did he think happened? “Punished. Look, my eye is bad, but it’s not the first time. They caned my backside. It hurts like hell, too. All things I’m going to survive. I heal fast.”
“It’s been a million years since I did anything but cardiac surgery. But I think she’s right. Ice. Ibuprofen. Are you concussed?”
I shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
He took the bag from my hand and held it on my eye. “I’d like to examine your rear.”
I laughed, which made him smile. His eyes crinkled in that way Charlie’s did when he was happy. I’d forgotten that they did that.
“Yeah… that sounded…” He shook his head. “I mean, I wasn’t really saying I wanted to see your ass.”
Jamie sat down on the bed, crossing his legs in front of him. “I imagine you’ve seen it before. One of my favorite parts of her body.”
Charlie turned red, which I think had to have been what Jamie intended, because he winked at me. Charlie held up his free hand and gave Jamie the finger. “Seriously, Holly, let me see.”
“You don’t need to look. I got caned. It hurts like hell.”
He blinked. “It could be infected.”
This was ridiculous. How much more exposed could I become at this moment? I stumbled to my feet and managed to pull all the clothing I’d had on my bottom half off, letting the pants and undies pool at my feet. These guys had seen me naked. A lot. Yet they both stared at me for a long second like I was the first woman they’d ever seen without her clothes.
I spun around, catching myself first on the chair and then on Charlie when I would have stumbled. “Here, take a look.”
Charlie took a long, audible breath. “Holly… I’m sorry this happened to you.”
The thing about Charlie was that he absolutely would be sorry this happened. Even after what happened, he would truly feel absolute horror that I was hurt like this.
I ignored the pang in my chest that came from that. At his core, Charlie was sweet. He had a bit of a god complex, as so many surgeons did, but he was kind-hearted. Like his eye crinkles, I’d forgotten how much so.
“Infected?” I asked, hoping the horror of this didn’t come across in my voice.
He placed his hand on my shoulder. “No, just red and raw. You can get dressed, I have a thought. Give me a minute. I’m going to go get more ice. Jamie, once she’s clothed, hold the ice on her cheek.”
“On it.” He got off the bed. I could hear his movements as I pulled my underwear and pants back up.
Steeling my spine, I turned around. Jamie took the ice and placed it on my cheek. “Come sit down. We can talk on the bed. Easier for me to hold it there.”
He shook his head. “Charles told me to hold it. And I’m not fucking with his instructions. Between him and Graham, Steve and I are on our best behavior.”
I could see that. Charlie stopped by the door and turned around. “I wouldn’t tell Graham she was here if I were you. Steve, yes. Graham, not tonight.”
“Yep.” Jamie nodded. “That’s what I was thinking.”
I made a quick mental note of that fact. They didn’t want Graham to know I was here. “Is he ready to turn me into the authorities?”
Charlie shut the door behind him quietly. I missed him immediately. That was a funny sensation. How easily I had fallen back into that habit.
Jamie pressed the ice back on my eye. “We’re all pissed. It just turns out that Graham does pissed a lot worse than the rest of us, Holland. Start talking. How did you come to be in my life? Why me?”
I sighed. “Well, I came into your life because your father pissed off my uncle.”
Jamie’s mouth fell open. “What?”
“That’s right. It’s always that easy. I get handed an assignment, and I work out how I’m going to take down that person. You were picked because your father manipulated some stock that screwed my uncle out of a million dollars. So he—we—took money from you.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. Any second, Jamie was going to start yelling. Only he didn’t. He stayed very quiet. Long moments passed between us. Finally, he nodded as though he’d digested what I said.
“Why not go after my father then? I mean… you know there’s no love lost between him and me. Why not send you after him?”
An excellent question, and one I had asked myself on more than one occasion. “He doesn’t share all of his thoughts with me. Never does. But, as far as I can guess, it’s frequently more painful for a parent to see a child suffer than themselves. Or sometimes, as in the case of your father, it can make the parent feel vulnerable. I think that was what he was going for in this case.”
Jamie scrunched up his face. “Well, he got that one wrong. I didn’t even tell my father what happened.”
I kind of loved that. Talk about actually winning over my uncle. He didn’t get his pinch of pain. Nope. Jamie had managed to subvert that without even meaning to.
“That’s fantastic.”
He nodded. The door opened and closed. Charlie strolled back in, carrying more towels and the top of a toilet seat.
Jamie and I both stared at him but it was Jamie who spoke. “Did you pull that off the toilet?”
“Yep.” He shrugged. “Just feel lucky I didn’t pull it off yours.”
“Whose did you take?” The man who had one time been my artist certainly liked to poke at the man who had one time been my surgeon. What was stranger was that Charlie seemed to rile Jamie up just as much. They’d clearly developed a relationship together I hadn’t been around to see. It was odd, but also like it was the most normal thing in the world. Hell, I must have been concussed. Or just finally crossing over the line where I was too crazy to function anymore.
“I took Steve’s.” He walked over to the bathroom and started running water.
Jamie handed me the ice. “Are you cleaning that thing in my shower? Don’t clean that in my shower. Why do you have that thing?”
He rounded the corner, and I could only make out muffled voices as they seemed to snipe back and forth before one of them—Jamie—laughed. Then Charlie did.
I almost ran away. Jamie and Charlie should not be laughing together. Out of the four guys who had each gotten a piece of my soul, who I had loved, they couldn’t be more different from each other. If they met at a dinner party, they’d hate each other instantly.
What in the fuck was going on?
They came out, Charlie still holding the toilet seat, but now he’d wrapped it in towels and something underneath I couldn’t see.
As if understanding my unasked question, he answered, “Ice. Come on, you’re going to sit right on it. This is my makeshift attempt to recreate what they do for injuries like this in the hospital.”
I gingerly moved and managed to sit down on Charlie’s pseudo-invention after he placed it on the bed. The ice he’d wrapped around it did cool my rear end. I smiled at him. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” He sat down in the chair across from us. “So what are we talking about?”
Jamie plopped back down next to me, making the bed dip slightly. “She was just about to tell me what portion of our relationship was real and which portion wasn’t.”
Charlie crossed his arms over his chest. “I’d like to hear that about mine, too. Was any of it?”
My stomach clenched. I deserved this pain. I needed to feel it. Truth was, I could shut it off anytime I wanted to. I could simply decide not to feel it at all.
But I didn’t want to. My ass hurt, my face burned, why shouldn’t I suffer emotionally, too? Just get the whole fucking thing over with all at once?
“The relationships never start out real. It’s a job, an act. At first. So when I walked in and critiqued your artwork, I wasn’t there for the reasons you thought. I had a sense of how to approach you. I’d done my research. It’s hard to get yo
ur attention, Jamie. Hard to hold it. I had to be… the biggest version of myself. The one that would walk in and say something nasty about your painting. So that was what I did. And you noticed.”
He snorted. “Sure, I noticed that. But what really caught my attention were your violet eyes. Currently, eye. Hard to miss those.”
Charlie nodded. “Yep.”
“My eyes?” I pointed to the good one. “Or eye, as you so gently put it, are weaponry. Make no mistake. That’s all it is. I know that everywhere I go, everyone notices the color, and I use them to my advantage. Easy ways, like lots of eyeliner that accentuates them but doesn’t overdo them. And I spend a lot of time peering out from under my lashes.”
The guys were quiet. If hearing that I used my violet depths to get attention bothered them, the rest of it was going to make them nuts.
Jamie chewed on his lip. “They’re haunting. But not because of the color.”
“I noticed your breasts first.” Charlie nodded toward me, and I choked. He continued, “Since we’re doing honest. Your eyes were next but, seriously, Holly, you might be surprised how many men are not staring at your eyes. Maybe your ass, too. Sorry, go on.”
I supposed he was right. “Listen, whatever you noticed first, you were absolutely taken with my violet eyes. I know it.”
He leaned on his hand. “True, but that was because they belonged to you.”
“No, they have nothing to do with me. Men make assumptions about me because of them, and I fill those expectations.”
Jamie shook his head. “Let’s not go round and round with this. We’re not going to get a consensus on what you think versus what we think. You played us. We get that. So which parts were real and which weren’t?
I blinked. “Are you being the reasonable one?”
His smile was huge. “For maybe the next two minutes. Let’s not squander my reasonableness.”
“What was real? In your case, pretty much everything from the point that I got naked and let you sketch me. I felt real things then. Nutty, over the top, sometimes horrible things. And so then, my uncle threatened to kill you and that was that.”
