by Chloe Cox
Walked out. Saw Lena’s house. Thea’s house. An ambulance, driving away, sirens blaring, lights flashing.
By the time he had his clothes on, there was a text waiting for him. Thea had had a heart attack. Lena was going to the hospital. No one was ok.
He found Lena in a waiting room looking like hell. Nobody looked good in hospital waiting rooms, and, as if to emphasize that point, every hospital he’d ever been in went for fluorescent lighting. So a woman who was already distraught and crying her eyes out had that to look forward to, too. He’d seen people get upset about the stupidest things in hospitals—you can’t do anything about what’s actually upsetting you, so you go mad over stupid shit.
Whatever. He was just glad to find her. She was beautiful to him, even when she was sobbing.
Neither of them said anything. She stood there, under buzzing, flickering lights, eyes red, cheeks wet, looking scared as hell, and he thought: Ok, no talking. He just walked up to her and wrapped her in his arms.
They stayed like that for a long, long time. Long enough for her shoulders to stop shaking, long enough for her to relax and then tense up all over again, clearly long enough for her to start thinking herself into a hole again.
He knew what she was going to say before she opened her mouth.
“I’m sorry, Chance,” she said, hoarse from grief. “I can’t handle this.”
Normally Chance wasn’t one to argue with people about what they did and didn’t need, what they could and couldn’t do. Wasn’t his business. Only this time, it was. This time it was Lena. And she was wrong.
“Which thing, Lena?”
“Any of this. I can’t handle losing…” She looked back in the direction of the emergency room and choked on her words.
“They haven’t told you anything yet?”
Lena shook her head, mute. Chance held her face close to his.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said. He meant it.
But Lena just kept shaking her head, and he could see already the storm building inside her, that there were too many things going on at once, that a woman who was already scared had just been overloaded.
“No,” she said. “Chance, I can’t handle…oh God, I can’t handle any of this.”
“Doesn’t change how I feel.”
Tears welled up in her eyes again, and Chance could have kicked himself.
“No, that’s just it. I can’t afford to feel anything right now. I am too screwed up, Chance, I can’t…”
“Shh…” he said, holding her again.
“I can’t,” she said again, but her arms held him tight.
“Somebody screwed you up good, huh?”
“No worse than any others. I got kicked out a lot, ended up on my own. It doesn’t really matter,” she said, pushing off his chest, “whether my mother was terrible, or people took advantage of me, or whatever. Plenty of people get over stuff like that, I know, I just…I can’t. I’m not strong enough to get over it, and it’s messed me up completely, and I just can’t, can’t do that to you, too. I can’t lose Thea, and I can’t… It won’t work, Chance. It’ll break me.”
She broke away from him completely now, took a few steps back, as if to reinforce the space between them. The freaking gulf she was trying to put there. Chance wasn’t fazed. He hurt for her, he hurt to see her in so much pain, but one thing had crystallized for him perfectly: it was a problem of faith, so to speak. All of it. She really didn’t believe that the world would treat her right, she didn’t believe in herself, and she was cutting herself off before she got hurt even worse.
It made a grim kind of sense. And it made Chance suddenly understand exactly what it was that Lena did for him—she believed in him. Unquestioningly, in a way he’d never deserved. And it had made him better.
This woman who had no faith in herself at all, had put enough faith in him to make him a better man.
He knew what he had to do.
Chance waited while a man in scrubs carrying a clipboard came out to talk to her—he should have guessed Lena would be legally empowered for Thea. He bet it ran the other way, too, and the thought made him briefly happy, to know Lena had trusted someone. It made him even happier when he saw the relief on her face, when she smiled through tears.
“Good news?” he asked, gently.
She nodded, suddenly looking very tired. “She’s going to be ok. Well, as ok as you can be after a heart attack. It wasn’t a big one, but she’s going to be here for a little while, and I have to go get her things, and…”
She looked back at Chance and met his eyes. The sadness in her eyes killed him.
“I am so sorry,” she said.
He took her hand in his.
“Lena, sweetheart, I love you, but you’re wrong,” he said. “It will work, you do deserve it, you can afford it, and I’m going to prove it to you. You keep your phone. And you call me if you need anything.”
chapter 25
Lena woke with a start, her neck already cramping. Hospital chairs sucked. Why? Why, if you knew people were going to be sleeping in them, would you buy chairs that were so uncomfortable?
She rolled her neck and heard it crack sickeningly. She was going to be in terrible shape if this kept up.
“Morning, sleepyhead.”
Lena’s eyes shot open. “Thea?”
“The one and only.”
Thea was trying to joke, but her voice was scratched and sore, and she had no color at all. Lena was torn—she was unbearably happy to see Thea up and talking and just being Thea, but it was the first time she’d ever seen Thea look…frail.
It was terrifying.
“How are you feeling?” Lena asked, moving to Thea’s bed. It felt so good just to hold her friend’s hand and feel Thea squeeze back.
“Better than I look, probably,” Thea said. “They told me that’s normal, and that you shouldn’t be scared.”
“You’re lying, aren’t you?”
“No, though I would if I needed to. Stop looking at me like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Lena laughed, kissed Thea’s hand, her forehead, her cheek. Her family was back.
“Sorry. I told you I was screwed up, remember?”
“Excuses, excuses. Oh no,” Thea said, suddenly worried. “Have you told John?”
“Oh, shit,” Lena said. She’d only just heard of the guy, but that wasn’t an excuse, as Thea would say. She hadn’t even thought of him. “No, but I can. I’ll call him.”
“Please,” Thea said. “He’s probably been calling me or been by the house. His number’s on the fridge and in my phone. Do you have my phone?”
Lena checked her bag—she knew she had Thea’s phone. “Crap. Battery’s dead. It must have been searching for a signal, I didn’t even think. I’ll go back to the house and call him right away.”
“Hold on one second,” Thea said. She was too tired to sit up properly, and her voice sounded like she’d swallowed sand, but the woman could still deliver a Look like nobody’s business. “You came to talk to me about Chance. What did you do about that?”
“Thea…”
“You’re not using me as an excuse, are you?” Thea demanded.
Ouch. That…that hit close to home. What was Lena supposed to say?
“I wouldn’t call it an excuse,” Lena said carefully. “More like an illustration of a point I’d already made.”
“Lena,” Thea said sharply. “What did you do?”
Lena felt just as dumb as she had in the kitchen. Something about Thea’s no-bullshit style and penetrating stare could make the most gifted debater wilt, and Lena wasn’t entirely confident in the first place. In fact, she knew her decision, and her reasons for them, weren’t entirely rational. But that didn’t mean they were wrong. Emotions, people, hearts, and minds—they were rarely rational. That’s what made them fun.
And what made them dangerous.
“I told him it wouldn’t work,” she confessed. “I told him I was too screwed up. And it’s true, T
hea, you know it is.”
Thea gave an exasperated sigh and somehow managed to turn up the intensity on that stare.
“You are an idiot, you know that?”
“Yes?”
“Listen to me,” Thea said, pointing a finger. That got Lena’s attention. She couldn’t remember Thea ever, ever pointing a finger at her. “You’re afraid of getting your heart broken one day, so instead you’re going to break two hearts today? You’re afraid of losing happiness eventually, so you’re just going to make sure you’re never happy in the first place? Do you see how that makes no sense at all?”
Lena looked at the cold linoleum floors, the weight of Thea’s logic proving too much. She was too tired.
“It’s not supposed to make sense,” she said finally. “It just is.”
~ * ~ * ~
This had been easier than Chance thought it would be. Adra had gotten him an address, somewhere in the Hollywood Hills, and boom. Done. Now he was standing on the steps, waiting patiently for Roddy Nichols to get up and get over his hangover.
When the door opened, Chance didn’t wait. He walked in, pressing a binder to Roddy’s chest.
“Dalton? What the hell are you doing?” Roddy said. He looked like he needed sleep. Sleep and possibly some detox.
“I’m going to make you some coffee,” Chance said, calmly walking through the open house to a gorgeous glass-walled kitchen. “And you’re going to read that for me, right now, and then you’re going to tell me what you think of it. That’s what we’re doing.”
Roddy followed him, waddling as fast as he could. “What? You can’t just show up unannounced—”
“Obviously I can,” Chance said, opening cupboards until he found a coffee grinder. This guy had a nice set up. “C’mon, Roddy, I’m a good guy to have in your debt. Besides, I’m not leaving until you do it, so it’s not like you have a choice. You don’t even have to like it. You just have to read it. You like it ground fine or coarse?”
Roddy slumped onto his breakfast bar in defeat, binder in hand. “Fine. But make me a Bloody Mary, too, will ya? Otherwise this is going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better, believe me.”
~ * ~ * ~
Thea was just not going to let it go. And now that John was here—John, who was this ridiculous silver-haired dreamboat, all doting gestures and dirty jokes and a deep tan—he had ganged up on her, too.
“It’s not just me,” Lena tried to explain for the millionth time. “It’s him. That’s the point. I can’t do this to him. I can’t do it to myself. If you saw a disaster coming, wouldn’t you try to avoid it?”
Thea harrumphed. “John, do me a favor? Get us some coffee?”
John smiled, his eyes crinkling in that distinguished way some men have. “I will give you some private time, yes. But you don’t get coffee. Caffeine, remember?”
“Pseudoscience,” Thea mumbled, but Lena saw her eyes as she followed John out. Yeah, she loved him. And he clearly loved her.
It was the major bright spot in Lena’s life, at the moment.
“You are actually more of an idiot now than you were yesterday,” Thea said.
“I can’t, Thea,” she said, quietly. “I can’t do that to him.”
“What? Give him what he wants? You dummy, I want to see you happy before I die, and apparently that could be sooner than I planned for. Listen, this is something you don’t understand,” Thea said, propping herself up on her pillows. “Me? I’m meant to be on my own most of the time. It’s just how I’m built. And John gets that. He’s the same way. We work together, we fit. But that is not how you’re built, honey. That’s why you keep trying with all kinds of guys who aren’t right for you, even though you don’t think you’ll ever find love. Have you ever stopped to think about that? How strange that behavior is?”
Lena sat down, her butt protesting against the horrid hospital chair one last time. “Actually, no.”
“Yeah, well, this time you’ve found him, and you’re screwing it up. Look at me, Lena. You’re just scared, but you need that boy. He gets that. Why don’t you?”
~ * ~ * ~
Lola kept giggling. Giggling. To the point where Chance was starting to worry.
“What is wrong with you?” he asked her.
Immediately his cousin put on her game face. “Nothing. Honestly. I swear.”
Chance stared at her. So that was a lie. But he didn’t have time to figure out what the hell was going on with Lola at the moment. They had an appointment of sorts, and his plan had to work.
“Did Ford set you up?” he asked.
“I set me up,” Lola said, looking down into her cleavage. “Roman would kill me if I let another man tape a microphone there, good cause or no. But Ford tested it. It works.”
“Good. You remember the deal?”
“Yes, and it’s delightfully ridiculous. I’ve never gotten to do spy versus spy stuff, Chance, this is pretty awesome.”
“This ain’t a fun outing for your amusement,” he said, glowering. “It’s to help Lena.”
Suddenly Lola fixed him with that lightning glare, and he knew he had nothing to worry about. “Chance, I am not going to allow this scumbag to get away with blackmailing you or extorting Volare, and I’m certainly not going to let him get away with hurting Lena. Let’s go get this bastard on tape.”
Chance smiled and pulled his car into the lot below Paul Cigna’s apartment complex.
“We’re already here,” he said.
~ * ~ * ~
Lena rode the elevator up to Thea’s floor feeling…well, she should have been feeling better. The first night of sleep in her own bed, a shower, fresh clothes. She should have been miles ahead of where she’d been yesterday.
Instead, though, there was the growing sense that things were profoundly wrong.
She tried to shake it off until she arrived at Thea’s room to find it empty. She would have flipped out—she did flip out for about a second—but one of the nurses caught her.
“She’s upstairs,” the nurse said. “Moved to a private room.”
A private room?
Upstairs?
Lena hadn’t been aware that hospitals had different levels of comfort, but apparently this one did. She walked into Thea’s new room to find her friend reclining on a pile of pillows, resplendent in her luxury, doing her best Gloria Swanson impression.
Lena laughed. “Seriously?”
“I only have one more night,” Thea said regally. “It might as well be a good one.”
“Ok, but how can you afford this?”
“My treat,” a voice said from behind her.
The voice.
Chance.
Lena would have thought that, at such a profound moment, she’d have equally profound thoughts, something that fit the occasion. But no. What she thought was, Thank God I washed my hair. The next thing she thought was, My God, look at him. As always, he was effortlessly gorgeous, the sun from the big windows on the top floor shining on those eyes, that chin, that chest. He looked comfortable, thumbs in his front pockets, his jeans worn and relaxed, his shirt hanging flawlessly off his shoulders. But more than that he looked comfortable to her—he looked like home.
“Oh Jesus,” she said.
Lena felt all the familiar signs: her stomach lurched, her chest tightened. She had no idea what she was going to do. What he was going to do.
“Don’t mind me,” Thea called from her bed of luxury. “Just pretend I’m not here.”
“If you pretend to be asleep, I’ll get you one of those little drinks with an umbrella in it,” Chance said to Thea. His eyes held Lena’s steadily. She couldn’t have moved if she’d tried.
“Done,” Thea called.
“Chance…” Lena tried.
“Quiet,” he said. “I need you to listen.”
Lena blinked. She obeyed, instinctively, and she was glad to, it made sense to her, and she was just so happy to have anything at all make sense—and at the same time, there was a softer e
dge to what he’d said. To the look he was giving her. To the way he came over and held her hands.
“There’s some things I have to show you first,” he said, getting his phone out of his back pocket. “It’s pretty clear to me, Lena, that you still don’t trust the world to treat you right. You don’t think good things can happen for you. You don’t believe in anyone, least of all yourself. Well, that is some bullshit. Watch.”
His phone started to play a shaky video, something he’d evidently shot himself. An auteur Chance was not, but Lena recognized the man on camera immediately: Roddy Nichols. Roddy Nichols, looking miserable and hungover in his bathrobe. Reading from a binder—her binder. Her script.
“What—” she murmured.
“Wait for it,” Chance said.
On screen, Roddy Nichols flipped to the last page in the binder, then flipped back to the beginning, then looked up at the camera in alarm.
“Where the hell’s the end?” he demanded.
“Oh God,” Lena said.
“How the hell does it end?” Roddy said, standing up.
Chance’s voice could be heard off camera, saying, “So it’s good, then?”
“What are you, slow? Of course it’s good—it’s amazing. I need to know how it fucking ends!”
Lena could actually hear Chance smile with what he said next. “I can get you in touch with the writer.”
“You see that?” Chance said to her, happy as a puppy. “You see what he said? I told you!”
“Chance, what did you do?”
“I showed up at his house, made him coffee, and told him I wouldn’t leave until he read it. And I told him I wanted an honest opinion.”
Do not cry.
Do not cry.
Do not…
“What?” he asked her. “What’s wrong?”
Lena shook her head, unable to deal with the unbearable sweetness of this man who she already knew was too good for her. “That’s one of the nicest things anyone’s ever done for me,” she said.
“This?” Chance said, eyebrow up. “No way, that was nothing. Not a big deal. But I also got you something else,” he said. “I’m not one hundred percent sure of the legalities, but Ford’s fixing it. Upshot is, Lola and I got Paul Cigna on tape trying to extort me and you and whoever else he could get at. Dude is going to jail. The pictures are going into a shredder.”
