“Edward?” Mom wrinkled her nose. “Your grad advisor? What the hell was he doing here?”
“I know, right?” I smiled and leaned in conspiratorially. “He propositioned me for sex, and Zane practically tossed him out the door.”
My mother looked up at Zane with approving eyes. One of his hands shifted and leaned toward her for a handshake. “I’m Zane, by the way. Lovely to meet you. I wish we could have met in better circumstances.”
She shook his hand with the one I wasn’t holding, her eyes bright the whole time. I could tell exactly what she was thinking. “You must call me Maria. I’ve heard so much about you.”
“Doctor Raymond said there’s some sort of experimental treatment we can try?” I asked.
She sighed. “Straight to business, huh? I guess that’s how I raised you.” Her eyes grew impossibly sad, and she gripped my hand in both of hers. “It’s too expensive, honey. There’s no way we can get the kind of money they’re asking for. And for it to possibly not work?”
Zane’s hands left my shoulders. I turned just as he swooped down to kiss me.
“I’ve got to go,” he said. “I’m going to get you that money.”
“Ooh,” Mom said, a mischievous glint in her eyes. “Does your new boyfriend know how to rob banks?”
“Mom!”
“No,” Zane said. “But I do know how to shoot pool. I’ve got a competition to win.” He looked over at me with a deep affection in his gaze. It was the first time I’d seen it there. It wasn’t that he wasn’t affectionate, just that I’d still only ever seen his two normal emotions—amusement and lust. “Are you okay if I leave?”
“Of course,” I said, too stunned by all the information I was receiving to properly form a thought.
He was out the door before I’d had time to process it. Zane had a deep affection for me. He somehow thought he could get enough money for my mom’s treatment. My mom might not have to die!
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Zane
I would not and could not let them down. Christ, Sasha looked a lot like her mom. And if Sasha looked like Maria in twenty years, I’d be a happy man. Hell, I’d be a happy man if she looked like the Crypt Keeper. As long as she was by my side.
Back at the venue, I had only five minutes to prepare before my next match. At least I wasn’t late. Niles and Grant were immediately on me, asking if Sasha was okay. It warmed my heart that they’d taken such a liking to her. Though what could I expect? She was a goddamn ray of sunshine.
“She’s fine,” I said. “She’s with her mom.”
I began sizing up my competition, a real douchey looking guy wearing rose tinted shades. He was way too tanned. Guys who looked like that did so because they knew they weren’t the best players. I was.
“She looked so…” Grant trailed off. “Is there anything I can do?”
I nodded. “Keep the distractions to a minimum for me, okay? If there’s any drama, don’t let it reach me.”
Even if a brawl started right next to me, I was going to win this game. And the two afterward. Then I’d go to the national championships and win the twenty grand cash prize, and Sasha’s mom would live. It was all I could think about. I was obsessed with it. I had to help. If I didn’t do everything I could, I didn’t deserve Sasha.
The first match, as expected, wasn’t even a contest. I beat the guy in less time than it would have taken for him to have a session in a tanning booth. The next two weren’t much harder.
By the end of my third match, I’d almost forgotten the reason it was so important for me to win. I was so high on my success that adrenaline thrummed through my body, sending every nerve into overdrive.
“Good job,” said Niles, coming up and patting me on the back.
Grant repeated the gesture, just much harder.
As my friends gathered around me to wish me congrats, all I could think of was getting back to Sasha. I tried to press through them and toward the door, but just as I’d escaped their clutches, I was accosted by Asa.
“Nice moves, stud.”
I suppressed a scowl. “Thanks. I can’t talk right now, though, Asa.”
I went to brush past her, but her clawed hand darted out and grabbed my bicep. I halted, though I knew I could drag her along behind me if I needed to. “What is it?”
She leaned up toward my ear. “I got a paternity test on the baby,” she whispered. “It’s definitely yours.”
I leaned back a little and looked down at her, eyebrow raised. I wouldn’t get anywhere by starting a fight with her now. That was what Sasha would have told me, anyway. What would Sasha have done, for the sake of progress? Would she have said nothing? Would she have congratulated Asa?
I decided that pretending to be happy was the best way of not setting off another Asa bomb and clearing the room with the least amount of difficulty.
“Asa, that’s great!” I exclaimed. I pulled her over to the side of the room where we wouldn’t be overheard. “I can’t believe I’m going to be a father.”
She positively beamed. It was sad, actually. She was so delusional that she actually thought we were going to have some sort of fairy tale ending together—that this would ever work. Didn’t she realize that we were oil and water? Worse than that, we were baking soda and vinegar. A fucking volcano. And not in a good way, either. Sasha and I had dynamite sex. Her body worked with mine like we were sharing the same head. But Asa? Asa and I had good sex but horrible everything else. Why did she want to be with me in the first place?
“We’re going to have to talk to about this with Sasha, though,” I warned. “You and I still have so much to work out.”
“Sasha?”
“Doctor Walker.”
“Right.” Surprisingly, the cheer did not drop from her face. “I think she’s been a real help for us. I got a lot out that I’ve never been able to say to you before.”
I blinked. Asa and I were agreeing on something. Sasha really was helping us. That realization made me want to laugh out loud. It was brilliant. This crazy plan might actually work!
“I have somewhere to be, Asa, but I’ll see you at our next appointment.” I smiled, and she reciprocated it. She didn’t try to stop me. She didn’t yell insults at me.
I had to admit that Sasha had helped me too. Who knew that being nice to Asa would, in turn, make her nicer to me? I went in for the kill, pulling her into a hug. She didn’t even notice as I slipped her phone out of her back pocket, checked something real quick, and slipped it back in.
The smile on my face when I left after winning the regional billiards championship was unequivocally real.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Sasha
Sleeping beside a hospital bed was no new thing for me. I had done it nearly a dozen times. The first time, it had taken some getting used to. They’d offered to bring me in a cot, but I wanted to be right at her side in case anything happened. That hadn’t gone away at all over the years. I still slept with my head on the side of her bed, listening to the gentle beeping of the machines and her breathing as I drifted away.
It wasn’t a peaceful or restful sleep. I woke up every time someone talked in the hallway outside. Every time mom stirred. Every time she died in my dreams. She died twice that night. I’d had nights the last time she was sick in which she’d died several times. I’d go back to sleep, only to have her die again. Always the same way too. She would be slipping away from me, fingers outstretched but just beyond my grip. The doctors would be at my side, telling me they had done everything they could—but I knew they were lying because she was drowning in front of me. A great, column of water built just big enough for her. I tried to lunge for it but couldn’t move. I tried to tell them she was just there—drowning silently—but they just told me they’d done everything they could.
The details would shift a little with each occurrence. Sometimes we were in the hospital. Sometimes it was at home. Sometimes she fell in the bayou. Those were the worst times—then I had to worry abo
ut gators too.
Tonight had been the classic—column of water, hospital room, and no less than three doctors. All faceless. All telling me it was over. She always looked so serene as she drowned that part of me wanted to accept it; to accept that I’d lost her and that it was just me now. But even in those moments, I knew I couldn’t live without her. Not yet. And so I struggled, and I screamed, and I woke up covered in my own saliva with my heart beating eighty miles a minute.
Today I woke up to something new.
A knock on the door rose me from my slumber. Mom was already up, watching me. She didn’t sleep much in hospitals. Without further prompting, the door opened, and people began filing in. I assumed they were people, at least, but their faces were completely blocked by the large bouquets of red roses they carried into the room.
Mom gasped, her hands covering her mouth, as she watched bouquet after bouquet being dropped down by the window. There had to be over three hundred flowers here. And all for my mom?
“Hey!” I said to the first guy to pass me. “Who are these from?”
Please don’t say Edward. Please don’t say Edward.
“Some Zane guy. There’s a note. I think Sharon has it.”
Oh, thank God.
He left without further ado, and I waited for whoever had the note to present it. The last person in the room was a middle aged blonde lady, who presented me with a smile and a note before she left. I thanked her and waved, but didn’t watch her leave. I was already ripping open the envelope.
Maria: Thank you for raising such a wonderful daughter. These roses are the least I can do to show my gratitude. I hope I can do more.
Sasha: We need to schedule another appointment with Asa. I also have something important to talk to you about.
That was all it said. I read out the part to my mom, and she nearly cried. “He’s a good boy,” she said.
I scoffed. “He can hardly be considered a boy, Mom.”
She sighed dreamily. “You’re right. That boy is all man.”
“Mom!” I smacked her lightly on the arm, and she giggled. God, how I loved that smile.
“Did he say anything to you in the note?” she asked.
I shrugged. “Just that he has something to talk to me about.” I wanted to ask her what she thought it meant, but it seemed such a petty thing to bring up when she was in a hospital bed. My dying mother did not need to hear about my boy drama.
But that was my main concern. Was it going to be boy drama? Was Zane going to break up with me? I’m not sure why that’s the first place my brain went, but it did. Maybe this was all too much for him. Maybe everything with Edward yesterday and all this with my mom had pulled him too deep into emotional territory, and he was ready to back out?
I felt like crying, but I cuddled up to my mom and rested my eyes a little longer. At least I had tasted the good life before losing it. Tasted the manliest of men. I just wished I’d gotten a little more of it.
I was being stupid! Of course, he wasn’t going to break up with me. Surely he wouldn’t have said such nice things about me in the section of the note to my mom, right? Unless he was trying to soften the blow? Oh Christ, how was I supposed to be anybody’s therapist when I couldn’t even figure out my own shit?
“Have I ever told you how much weight you carry?” Mom asked.
I frowned up at her. “That’s rude.”
She smiled lightly. “On your shoulders. Emotional weight.” She shifted slightly on her bed, drawing herself closer to me. “You’ve always been so good at figuring out what everyone else is thinking. I really admire that about you. But you don’t always realization the ramifications of such an obsession.”
An obsession? “You always used to call it a gift.”
She chuckled. “A gift is just an obsession we haven’t accepted yet.” Her kind eyes fluttered closed, and she leaned back. “I don’t think of it as a bad thing, necessarily.”
“Calling it an obsession makes it seem negative,” I grumbled.
She patted my hand, looking serene and still as she talked. “If it’s the first thing you think to consult when you meet a person, it’s an obsession. Much in the same way that the first thing I see is a person’s shoes.”
“So what you’re saying is I have a harmless obsession with reading people’s expressions?”
She opened her eyes and grimaced comically. “I never said harmless. But certainly not overly harmful when approached in a certain way.”
I screwed my mouth to the side in thought. What the hell was that supposed to mean? “So you’re saying that…?”
She chuckled and stroked my hand again. “I’m saying, Sasha, that you spend half of your life mired in other people’s emotions, and the other half trying to decode what you cannot possibly know. You’ve gotten so used to having the upper hand that you now stress way too much anytime you feel you’re in the dark. But you know what most people call what you call “in the dark”?”
I shook my head. “What do they call it?”
She settled back and fixed me with a knowing smile. “Normal.”
I narrowed my eyes at her in mock indignation. “Where do you get off, being so wise?”
She shrugged and closed her eyes again. “When you’re a mother, you’ll understand.”
I hoped I would. For now, it was one thing Mom telling me I needed to relax and another thing entirely to actually relax. I wondered if I’d ever relax about Zane, or if I’d always be feeling like I was more in this than him. I hated how much I cared! When he was showing me affection, it was the best feeling I’d ever felt. When I bullied myself like this into thinking something was wrong, it was like my world had stopped turning on its axis.
As if on cue, my phone vibrated. I would have ignored it if I hadn’t been so stressed about the whole Zane thing. I wanted desperately for it to be him.
It wasn’t.
I had a few missed emails, but nothing important. And one text from Edward.
I don’t think I can write you a letter of recommendation anymore. Tell your meathead boyfriend I’ll be pressing charges.
Sweet and simple. At least he didn’t bother with flowery language to hide his intent. God, what a prick! I ignored the text and slipped my phone back into my pocket, looking over at the roses by the wall in an attempt to muster up some iota of happiness. Why was everything going to shit?
Was I upset at Zane for tossing Edward out yesterday? No. If he hadn’t have done it, I likely would have. Things had gone too far with my advisor. Way too far. I doubted there was any way him dropping my recommendation could have been avoided, bar me actually sleeping with him.
Screw. That.
Maybe in my first year of university, when I’d had stars in my eyes and been eager to please everyone, that shit might have worked on me. Maybe he was used to getting his jollies with the undergrads. That thought made me sick. Whatever it was, I didn’t regret yesterday at all. And I’d be filing a formal complaint with the university too. That wouldn’t help get my letter of recommendation. I doubt I’d ever fix that. But at least then I’d get a little justice.
It would be my word against his, but I highly doubted this was the first time a situation like this had happened with the aging douchebag.
“Everything okay?” Mom asked.
I nodded. “Everything’s fine, Mom. Everything’s going to be just fine.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Zane
I’d given Sasha some space, much as it burned me to do so. As much as she might have thought she needed me right now, I knew I’d only distract her. If it all went to shit, and I couldn’t get the money to help her mom, or I did get the money, but the treatment didn’t work, she’d be grateful that she’d spent so much time by her side—undistracted.
It had been a constant itch on my skin, though. Not having her around was like being constantly hungry. It ached and gnawed. Sometimes it would go away, and then it would be back with a vengeance. I’d never felt this way about anyone. Ho
w had she done this to me? I hoped it never stopped.
I hadn’t been idle during our time apart. After arranging to send her flowers, I’d also planned a little something special to help get her mind somewhere more peaceful. To that end, I called her two days after her mom went into hospital. I’d never heard my name said so excitedly.
“Zane?”
“Hey, sweetheart. How’s your mom?”
“She’s feeling a bit better. We’re just taking it day by day.”
The sound of her voice stirred up feelings in me that seemed to come from somewhere otherworldly. My skin tingled as if she’d touched me.
Wrecked by the Bad Boy: The Sick MC Page 14
