by L.J. Shen
“Fucking fucker came to you first, how come?” Trent grabbed the blunt and inhaled, his eyebrows bunched together. Vicious tipped his head back and blew rings of smoke to the ceiling, his eyes hooded and evil.
“I’m in California. He’s in California. I handle the legal shit here. Who cares? You’ll get what you want, Trent. Time to wipe that miserable expression off of your goddamn face.”
We all looked between each other. I was smiling, and I didn’t even know why. No one promised me that Rosie wanted to move back to Todos Santos. In fact, she loved New York, which was why she lived so far away from her parents. But the ability to give her that option made me unreasonably happy.
“I’m in,” I said.
“For the right contract—and money—me, too,” Jaime added.
Trent blew out air, laughing. “Luna’s gonna be a Cali girl.”
Vicious grinned. “Let’s fucking do this.”
What makes you feel alive?
Being loved. Wildly. Under the open sky. Under the pouring rain. Under a spell that never, ever ends.
“No offense, Rosie, but I don’t want anyone to leave me,” Dean said when I confronted him about asking Emilia to never leave. At the time, I thought it was because he was a cocky douchebag. Now, it was crystal clear.
He had abandonment issues.
He had abandonment issues, and Millie abandoned him.
It made me irrationally mad at my sister, but also grateful that she did.
Flopping on the bed after Thanksgiving dinner, I thought about the afternoon, about that kiss in the rain—like we were in The Notebook and he was Ryan Gosling and I was obviously delusional—and started giggling. The giggling turned into coughing, which wasn’t that surprising.
But then, the coughing turned into blood.
Spitting a lump of bloody phlegm, I stared at it in the tissue in front of me for long seconds, unblinking.
The decision to keep this to myself was immediate. There wasn’t much point, anyway. Dean and I were heading back home in a few hours. He was in Los Angeles with his friends, and the last thing I wanted was to throw my whole family into high gear and make them drag me to a nearby hospital. Dr. Hasting used to see me at crazy hours, days and weekends. I could always get to her in New York if it happened again.
I rolled in my bed, side-to-side, unable to get some much-needed sleep. I coughed some more. Then sniffed some. Changed positions to try to figure out the best way to breathe without the mucus blocking my airway. And it was ironic, that my need for Dean was suffocating not him, but me.
No matter how much I enjoyed our love declaration, my body didn’t appreciate that it was in the rain.
He told me he loved me.
It brought to me the kind of glee money could never buy. But this happiness was also dunked with dread. Because I knew that someday—someday soon—I was going to die. Die in the middle of this beautiful life he had planned for us.
Would I leave him, a widower in his thirties, with kids to take care of? Would I let him take the fall? How many hearts was I going to break, and why did I stop fighting the need to prevent myself from breaking them?
He told me about Nina.
That was the other reason I couldn’t sleep. He tore my heart right out of my chest, and I had no idea how to put it back. Only Dean had this spell over me. The ability to make me feel like I was completely crushed, yet elated in the best possible way. I heard the door to my room creak and coughed into a worn tissue. Squinting my eyes at the material, I detected more dark spots of blood, my shoulder sagging on a sigh.
Thanks, reality. I had a fun ride today, but you just had to ruin it.
“Mill? Shut the door after you. It’s chilly.” I croaked again.
The door was pushed all the way open this time. Dean walked in, his body bigger than my fears and doubts. He slipped into bed while his clothes, shoes, and coat were still on and pulled the cover up to tuck us both in, then turned around and spooned me from behind. I glanced at the clock on my nightstand. The red numbers said six o’clock in the morning.
“What are you doing?” I clutched the toilet paper in my fist and buried it under the duvet before he could see it. He couldn’t know. He would want to take me to the ER, and I hated ERs. Emergency rooms were where your soul went to die so that your body would keep functioning.
“No point in getting undressed when we leave in an hour,” he murmured into my ear, pressing his hard-on to my ass. He sounded too sleepy for sex. Surprisingly, I wasn’t disappointed. I felt like hell, and sex with Dean wasn’t something you could wing or half-do.
“How was the meeting?” I rasped.
There was a pause before he answered. “Good.”
“Is Trent moving to Todos Santos?”
“Eventually. And in time, so will we.”
“Excuse me?”
“Priorities, Rosie. They change. We’re changing, too.”
“You sound like them,” I accused, though I wasn’t as mad at Dean as I was at my parents.
“No.” He clasped my chin between his fingers and turned my head for a soft, slow kiss. The kind of kiss you give your wife on your wedding day, not to the girl next door you occasionally screw. “I sound like me. And I don’t give a fuck about what they want. But I know that you’re in New York for the wrong reasons. You can have your independence here, too. The only power people have over you is the amount you give them.”
I swallowed, changing the subject. “Did you stop at your dad’s?”
“Didn’t have time. Dropped Trent off ten minutes ago at his parents’ house. He’ll have to wait. Why are you awake?”
“I had a lot to process today.” Not a lie. That seemed to appease him. I stifled the rest of my coughs to avoid producing more blood. When we finally got to the airport, I locked myself in a restroom.
And coughed. And coughed. And coughed.
When I landed back in New York and called Dr. Hasting, her receptionist said she had a family emergency and was out of town. She urged me to go to the hospital for a checkup.
I should have done that, but I wanted to push reality’s boundaries just a tad more, thinking what could possibly go wrong?
The answer was everything.
Everything could go wrong.
SETTING UP A PHONE CALL with Nina felt like willingly taking the steps to death row and urging the guards to keep up with my pace.
She was so surprised to see my name on her screen, she spent the first two minutes of the conversation stumbling on her words. I wanted to get shit done and meet him. Get it over and move on with my life. My dad was begging for me to talk to him about the Nina stuff, but I was screening his calls in an attempt to keep the drama level in my life relatively low. If it weren’t for Rosie making me promise her I’d do it, I’d have probably never made the call. Opening this Pandora box was not the kind of shit I’d looked forward to. But hey, I made a promise.
The first thing I did after our trip to Todos Santos was rent a place in the Hamptons for Rosie and me for the whole next week. Proposing wasn’t in the cards—too much too soon—but I sure as fuck was going to tell her it was time for her to save those one hundred bucks and move her stuff up to the penthouse. It made sense. For the past two months we’d been pretty much living together. But she still had to go down every night to bring a hair straightener, or a clean shirt, or a goddamn hairband. It got to the point where I couldn’t even look at her floor number in the elevator without feeling my eyelid tick with barely-contained frustration. Speeding shit up was high on my list of priorities.
To be honest, I was more or less done with New York at this point. The only thing I really wanted from here—Rosie—was beginning to look a lot like mine, and moving her back to SoCal was going to earn me some serious brownie points in the eyes of Paul and Charlene LeBlanc.
Besides, Vicious was right. The weather here was shit, the air too polluted, and as much as I enjoyed playing a hotshot New York businessman, I enjoyed having a fucking tan
, a cold beer, and a yacht on standby even more.
Trying to kill the newly found bounce to my step, I pinned the idea of moving back to Cali as I waltzed into The Black Hole to surprise my girlfriend with lunch. I had a business thing with three investors, but decided to cancel at the last minute to tell her about the Hamptons. It was pissing rain that day, so the café was mostly empty. There was no one behind the counter and only a few people scattered at some tables, staring at their digital screens. I rapped my knuckles over the wooden bar a few times and smoothed my tie.
“Baby LeBlanc. Get your sweet ass here,” I barked, ignoring the curious glances. They were going to turn into fascinated glares once I grabbed her by the collar, pulled her over the counter, and shoved my tongue down her throat.
A few seconds of nothingness passed before Elle appeared from the kitchen, a tight smile on her face. She tied her blonde hair into a bun and wiped her wet hands over her apron.
“Hey, Dean, we weren’t expecting you.”
We? Did I not get the memo that Elle became the fucking queen?
“Yeah, thought I’d drop by to bring Rosie some lunch.” I dumped a greasy brown bag on the counter, with Rosie’s favorite grilled cheese from a bakery across the street. I peeked behind her shoulder.
“Speaking of my girlfriend—where is she? Thought she had a shift today.”
“She did.” Elle’s tight smile didn’t falter, which made me irritated, because that meant that she had something to hide, and I didn’t like secrets. “She had to get off early because she…” That was when Elle’s voice died and she clamped her lips together.
“Go on.” I narrowed my eyes, taking a step in her direction. “Finish your sentence, Elle.”
She bit her lower lip and looked down. This was not Elle at all. I’d gotten to know her in recent months, and she was a troublemaker like my Rosie.
“I can’t.”
“You can, and you will. Right now. Where is Rosie, Elle?”
One thing I would give women as a sexual category; they were more complex. I proved to be a simpler creature than Rosie and Elle, because the first thought that crossed my mind was that my girl was cheating on me. And the second thought was that I was going to kill him and beg her to visit me in prison so we could work on our relationship. Pathetic? Stupid? Insane? Guilty. Of all three.
“She went to the hospital,” Elle whispered, but hurried to look up and explain. “She’s fine, I swear. It’s just a little scare. I think she should be on her way to your apartment right about now. She specifically asked me not to say anything, so you cannot tell her that I told you, Dean. I’m serious about this. The only reason I did tell you is because I want you to keep an eye on her. Promise you won’t rat me out?” She gave me a pointed look, her lips pouting. My mind was already elsewhere and my heart pulverized at a thousand miles an hour.
“Yeah, sure,” I said, already on my way to the door with the stupid bell above it. “Thanks, Elle. Bye.”
What makes you feel alive?
The feeling that I won’t be…soon.
“You sure of that?” Dean asked for the one hundredth time, twirling a piece of lettuce around his fork as we sat at the dinner table. My eyes darkened. If he was going to ask me this question one more time, I was liable to stab an eyeball out of his face with the butter knife I was holding.
“Never been so sure in my entire life,” I bit out.
“Because you sure as fuck look ill to me.” He ignored my reassurances, his jaw granite-hard.
I shrugged, picking up my half-eaten sandwich.
“Do I? You can fuck me from behind tonight so you don’t have to see my face.”
Lord, I was bitter. Couldn’t help it, though. Today, I finally dragged myself to the hospital to check why I had coughed up so much blood over the last couple of days. My CF team at the hospital said some blood vessels had burst. I told them there were chunks of blood—big, gooey chunks coming out every time I had a fit—but they said it was okay. So, I guess I was okay. I wanted to be okay. I wanted more time with Dean, but as much as it did my head in, I wanted a lot more time with my parents and Millie, too.
Dean didn’t answer my snarky comment. I scrubbed my eyes, sighing.
“I apologize for acting like a brat. It’s been a long day.”
“I got us a place in the Hamptons for next week. Talked to Elle. You have the time off. And your manager at the children’s hospital. I’ll get there before you,” he informed me in a cold tone that cut through my nerves.
“That’s great,” I said, my mind elsewhere. There was a pause, and then.
“I’m meeting my sperm donor Friday at noon.”
My pulse was hot against my throat all of a sudden.
“Do you want me to come with you?” I asked. He shook his head.
“Thanks.” His voice melted, but not by much. “I’d rather make it as quick and painless as possible. Sue’ll send a taxi to pick you up at the end of your shift this Friday.”
My head bowed a little at his gesture. The conversation was downright painful. We sounded like two ninety-year-olds trying to make plans for someone else’s funeral. We had more fun dishing jabs at each other when we weren’t together. Why? Because of me. Because I didn’t let him know what was really going on. Because I was scared that I was going to lose him, and more importantly, that he was going to lose me.
“I love you,” I said. He looked up from his dinner. Our eyes tangled and met.
“It’s mutual, and that’s why I need you to be well, Rosie. If there’s something I should know about your health…”
“Nothing out of the ordinary. Focus on your family stuff.” I smiled, patting his hand from across the table.
That night, he didn’t touch me, and I didn’t ask him to.
And when Friday came…so did our grand finale.
Eleven Years Ago
“DON’T LET OWL KILL ME, baby.”
Nina’s tears bled out of her eyes as she clutched the collar of my damp wife-beater, clinging onto me for dear life. I only wore wife-beaters when I came to visit her. It wasn’t like anyone there was going to appreciate my collection of flamboyant YSL men’s T-shirts or suede shoes. “You gotta do something about him. He’s hitting me real hard. See these marks? See ’em? He’s going to end me. Are you gonna just sit around and let it happen?”
“You should leave him.” I took off the sleeveless undershirt and tossed it over her bed. I was done weeding her huge-ass garden and was getting ready to make the three of us some dinner. “Come with me to California. Mom wouldn’t mind.”
“Helen is not your mother, Dean. I am.”
There was no point arguing, but that didn’t mean I agreed with that statement.
She always dragged me into her marital shit, every single summer without failure. I swear she thought of me as a hybrid between a bodyguard and personal assistant. Couldn’t blame her, though. I constantly tried to save her. To protect the person who compromised me.
That night, Owl came home drunk. Nothing out of the ordinary. He may not have been a junkie like Nina, but he sure as hell liked his bourbon on a hot summer night. He crawled into their bed, slurring and swearing. I heard everything from my room across the hall as I lay in bed with their neighbors’ daughter, Tiffany. She snuck into my room every night through the window. It was a one-story, barn-like house. I had bite marks all over my fists from stifling her moans to prove it, but no one asked what they were or where they came from, because no one gave a shit.
Come to think of it, no one gave a shit about anything under that roof.
Muffled shrieks and sobbing filled my ears, and I couldn’t concentrate on our make-out session, failing to elevate things from dry-hump territory.
“This crap is going to drive me nuts all night,” I groaned, brushing away some of the hair that fell on Tiff’s face so I could see her lust for me better. This time, the rusty springs on their mattress didn’t scream. Something was different. It was the first time my intuit
ion was so strong, it burned me from the inside.
“Your aunt is a mess,” Tiffany retorted, climbing atop of me, straddling my hips with her thighs and grinding against my dick.
She didn’t know Nina was my mother. My parents made sure Nina kept her mouth shut.
I heard the smack of skin hitting skin. I heard Nina yelp in horror, and then her trying to get away, bumping into furniture, shit falling to the floor. Placing both hands on Tiffany’s waist, I moved her aside and got up.
“I’m going to check and see that everything is okay.”
“Nothing is ever okay in this place,” Tiff said, slumped on my bed. She wasn’t wrong. Everybody knew the Whittakers in this minuscule village. Knew that Nina was a drug addict with pupils like saucers and that Owl drank his own body weight every night and that they were both losing money trying to pay for the mortgage on this land every year. Guess most people prayed they’d finally have to call it quits on this little adventure, sell the property, and move the fuck away.
“Let me rephrase.” I clasped the door handle, half my body already in the hallway. “I don’t want Owl to kill Nina on my watch. Better?”
“He won’t kill her.” Tiff scooted up the bed until her back hit the wall and lit a cigarette, making herself comfortable.
“That’s right, because I’m about to make sure of it myself.” Thwack! Another hit and another yelp pierced the air from the far end of the hallway. I stalked toward their room.
“You don’t want to do that,” Tiffany called behind me, blowing clouds of smoke like she didn’t have a care in the world. “They’re insane. You’ll get yourself into trouble.”
She was right, of course, but I didn’t want to listen. Protect the strays, a voice inside my head recited. Even the person who made you one.
As soon as I walked in the room, Owl threw a vase at me. And missed. That was enough to turn my rage switch on and pull me into the situation without thinking of the consequences. I lunged at him with balled fists, punching his gut mercilessly as I crouched down, immobilizing him completely, not giving a fuck if an inner organ exploded.
