by Joey W. Hill
“No, it’s not that.” Thomas’s brow creased. “He’s just really familiar to me.”
“Maybe you saw him in one of the clubs you and Marcus visited while you were traveling. He does several rigger conferences each year.”
“Yeah. Maybe. Hey, on that note, let me get a shot of the two of you on my phone before we part ways. You know Daralyn and Les are going to want to see the guy you’re dating.”
When Des returned, he was amenable to a picture, standing beside her in his easy, friendly way as she laid a familiar hand on his chest and smiled for the camera.
As she drifted off into sleep now, she dreamed of Thomas’s picture. There was a fading on the edges of Des’s side. She tried to get Thomas to sharpen it, to take it again, but he said it was too late. It was fading, and she had to figure out a way to keep Des in the picture…
She woke from the disturbing dream. It was daylight and, since she didn’t have to be at the theater until later in the morning, it was okay for her to sleep in. It still felt strange and overindulgent after the round-the-clock schedule she’d been keeping these past few weeks between the theater’s demands and Des.
She was alone. She cleaned up in the bathroom, using the contents of the toiletry bag she’d brought to wash her face, brush her hair and teeth. Donning a knee length purple knit skirt and a pale green cotton baby-tee, she accented them with silver hoops and a silver and jade stone choker before she went in search of her Dom. She left her hair down, brushed out thick and shining, because he liked it that way, though she pocketed the barrette she’d need when the humidity kicked in.
Through the window, she saw him outside, bagging up leaves in Betty’s yard. She was glad to see him awake and looking restored, but as she started to open the door, she saw Betty was with him. From their body language, it was clear she was about to interrupt a heated conversation. She hesitated, torn between defusing it with an untimely interruption, and letting them work it out. When she decided on the latter, she couldn’t shame herself into closing the door and not eavesdropping. That dream was still too close to the surface of her consciousness.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Des said stubbornly.
“So you’ve said. You’ve been a broken record for the past two weeks. Des, you can’t ignore this.”
“I’m not ignoring it.”
“Yes, you are. Your numbers are not good. You’ve held out on intense insulin management longer than most with the type of insulin resistance you have, but your kidneys are starting to show the strain. You’re going to be facing dialysis soon and you know it. Not years from now; in a matter of months.”
His jaw set as Julie’s breath caught. Betty stepped closer, and her expression softened, but not enough to dilute the steel in her eyes, her determination to get through to him.
“I know you’ve started taking fewer jobs and working less days of the week, which is good for your body, but you can’t ignore the signs. You don’t want to wait until you’re in full renal failure. You can do dialysis at home, you know that. A few times a week, at night. You just hook yourself up at bedtime.”
“You think you’re telling me something I don’t already know? That I haven’t studied this shit a million times? Once I start dialysis, that’s it. Dr. Greeley said it might work for me a few years. And then it won’t.”
“Which is why you should do what I’ve suggested a million times. Sign up to get a kidney.”
“I’m not a good candidate. They’ve told you that before.”
“Your earlier health problems made you a bad candidate, but you’ve beaten those problems and manage your diabetes better than any patient I’ve ever had. If we were determined, we could get the donor list people to consider giving you one. You are extremely disciplined. You would take very good care of a donor organ. A kidney is one of the easier organs to obtain, relatively speaking.”
“For most people. They’ve never stopped saying what they said at the beginning. My body isn’t typical. It’s likely to reject anything less than a close genetic match, and I have no family. Even if I had, it would give me what? Maybe another decade before it fails.”
“Ten years is a lot better than six months if you do nothing,” she snapped. “Why are you so fucking stubborn about this?”
“Because my whole life has been about this.”
“Don’t give me that adolescent self-wallowing crap,” she retorted. “You went out and made yourself an incredible life.”
“By calling my own shots.”
“Des, I’m not your prison warden. You’re still calling your own shots. This is all your own choice. Get on a list, start dialysis. Some people do dialysis for fifteen years or more. A kidney can give you a decade. So a potential of twenty-five years, and who knows what other developments will happen during that time. Fight for yourself. Fight for your life.”
“I do that. I’ve done that.” He threw down the rake and rounded on her. “And it’s not enough. It’s never fucking enough. There’s always going to be something else.”
“Yeah, there is.” Betty crossed her arms over her chest. “So why don’t you tell those Type I kids you mentor to just give up now? Before they ever experience a senior prom, or a first love, or a trip to Disneyworld? Just fuck it, go ahead and die because life might be harder for you than other kids. What is the problem? Why are you acting this way?”
“Because I’m sick of it,” he exploded. “You don’t get it. You can’t get it unless you’re having to deal with it every fucking day. I’m tired of having to always be on guard. Check this, watch that, eat this, don’t eat that. Hyperglycemia, hypoglycemia. Carry a damn suitcase with me everywhere to manage it all. Weigh every fucking decision I make against how it will affect my diabetes, my pancreas, my kidneys…”
“You’ve always done that.” Betty studied him. “Nothing has changed. Except her. That’s it, isn’t it? Julie.”
Julie told herself to go away before she heard where this was going, but she couldn’t make herself move, could barely breathe, in the face of Des’s anger.
Des kicked the bag of leaves he’d just packed. The plastic exploded from the force of the impact and leaves scattered around his work shoes. He marched away from Betty, muttering, snarling to himself, and he rubbed both hands over his face. Julie had seen that densely packed energy around him before when he was fully in Dom mode with her, an exciting, sexual energy. Right now it was painful and volatile. Betty held fast, but even she looked a little pale in the face of his rage.
As he gathered his thoughts, Betty glanced over and saw her at the crack of the door. Julie didn’t draw back. Betty could out her there, or Julie could do the right thing and close the door, but they both made their choice. Julie didn’t close the door and Betty shifted her attention back to him as if she hadn’t seen her.
As Des turned to face the nurse, there was a defeated look to his expression Julie had never seen before. “We’ve just started, Betty,” he said, a note of despair in his voice that wrenched her heart. “I didn’t intend…I told myself I’d never drag someone I care about into this. And I did it anyway. She deserves better than someone who started life broken.”
“You listen to me.” Betty set her jaw and stepped closer, gripping his forearm. “We’re all broken in some way, Desmond Arthurius Hayes. It’s how life shapes us for one another. If Julie Ramirez sees what I see, she knows what a treasure she’s found. And if she’s a good person with a loving heart, you deserve her.”
Des shook his head, pulled away. “No one deserves this. God is a heartless bastard.”
“You’re being a selfish idiot who can’t handle being out of control,” Betty said with gentle ruthlessness.
“Being out of control is the one thing I’ve always had to accept. But I don’t have to accept it for her.”
“That’s her decision, not yours.”
The portent in Betty’s voice was as clear as a whispered cue through a mic. Summoning her courage, Julie stepped out the door
. It was a little chilly and she shivered, crossing her arms over her body, but she met Des’s eyes without flinching. “I shouldn’t have been listening, but I’m not sorry I did. I feel like I do deserve you, Des. Meeting you has been one of the luckiest moments of my life.”
He looked torn between anger at them both, and then a desperate, helpless fury captured his expression. “You should have respected my privacy,” he told Betty. “And shut the hell up when you knew she was there.”
“Des,” Julie said sharply, but he shot her a withering look.
“I shouldn’t have gone down this road with you. Just…fuck. Please get the hell out of here. I need you…I just need you to be gone right now.”
He pivoted and strode away, headed down the path toward the barn. Julie stood frozen, certain this was how it felt to have a spear shoved through her gut, pinning her to the wall behind her. Betty stared after him, her mouth tight. When she noticed Julie’s reaction, she climbed the porch steps to put a hand on her arm. “Here, honey. Come sit here.”
She directed Julie into a rocking chair. “Breathe. You’ve gone pale as a sheet. Put your head down if you need to. That bastard. That stubborn, wonderful, pigheaded asshole.”
Betty rubbed her back, a soothing touch. “He didn’t mean it. You know he didn’t. He’s been over the moon about you since he met you. I’ve never seen him react to a woman the way he has you.”
Julie pressed her forehead into her arms and straightened. “You warned me, right?” she said with a shaky laugh. “You said it would get ugly when we got into this territory. I guess I just thought we’d gotten through it.”
Betty shook her head. “He’s always been able to keep relationships at an arm’s distance. I guess that’s why he’s into all that rope stuff. He can get sex and intimacy without commitment. You’ve kind of messed that up. In a good way.”
“Doesn’t feel that good at the moment.”
“That’s because he has his head up his ass,” Betty said tenderly, glancing toward the barn. “For truly understandable reasons, though I take issue with him striking out at you. But he’ll give himself hell for that himself when he settles down.” Betty sighed and touched her hand, a simple, practical stroke. “He’s angry and he’s scared, that’s all.”
“I know. I mean, I don’t know that, but I can tell he’s upset.” It still hurt that he’d struck out at her, especially after everything they’d shared up to now.
Some relationships weren’t given a lot of time before they had to face the “for better or worse” clause. Maybe someone else in a relationship less than a few weeks old would cut and run in the face of that demand, but she’d waited a long time, not only to feel this way about someone, but to have him feel the same way about her.
“Where’s he going?” she asked Betty. “He’s getting company, whether he wants it or not.”
He was clearing out a shed behind the barn that appeared to be filled with old construction materials. She supposed it was his way of dealing with his emotions, the same way she’d reorganized cords in the sound cabinet the day she’d been frustrated with him.
She took a seat on a nearby stump, watching him. He noticed her, but didn’t say anything for a few minutes, pulling boards out and tossing them with a resounding clap on the ground outside the shed door. He was wearing work gloves, which she was glad to see since a lot of the boards had nails sticking out of them. Bugs skittered off the boards and she lifted her feet, letting a spider of an unsettling size scuttle away.
"So what’s the real reason you’re not on a donor list? Even if it’s not a genetic match, why let that stop you? You told me you don't let a doctor or anyone else tell you how long you have to live. And as Betty said, you’re pretty darn healthy. Except for the whole kidney failure thing.”
She wasn’t sure if the mild tease would be useful or not, but anything that would get him talking was worth a shot.
Desmond stopped, yanking off the gloves and tossing them to the side. "You know what being on a list means? It means there's someone below you, someone who will be waiting for a kidney longer. Maybe a kid, maybe a middle-aged woman who wants to live long enough to retire and have that house at the beach she's always wanted. Maybe a loser who's never done much with his life but, when he gets the gift of a kidney, it opens his eyes and he realizes how much more he could be and do, and he becomes the center of someone's world as a result.”
He swiped a lock of hair out of his eyes that had come loose from the band holding it back. She wanted to stroke it away from his face herself, but she curled her hands on her lap, waiting him out. “I have no family,” he said. “I'm a roofer and I'll always be a roofer, because that's what I like. I'm a guy who gets his freak on with rope and topping beautiful women. I know who I am, I like my life, I like the people in my life. I've figured out my shit. I don't need more time on that. Someone else might. I'm not going to be the one who takes it away from them, just because I'm scared of dying.”
Every word pummeled her. It was unbearable to hear him write himself off, as if her feelings for him didn't matter, as if she didn't matter. Then he pinned her with a blazing gaze.
“Or because the very thought of not having more time with you makes me want to shove every damn person on that list out of my way. Just to get a single moment more together."
Before she could fully wrap her mind around the words, the fierce, frustrated way he said them, he had her on her feet and pushed her against the outside shed wall, kissing her in that hot, take-over way he had. His body pressed between her legs, his other callused hand gripping her thigh and pulling it up against his hip so she had to let him against her core.
They were surrounded by barn, forest and pasture, so they had their privacy, sort of. She hazily wondered if he was going to take her right here. The remarkable thing was she'd let him, her whole being hurting for and craving him. It made his anger contagious, so that she was shoving at him, pinching, scratching, slapping.
He seized her hair, yanking her head back and biting her lip. He was rough with her, pushing her to her knees, holding her against the wall with his work shoe against her abdomen, the heel firm between her legs, eyes glittering as he unbuckled his belt and stripped it with a hard yank. He opened his jeans and reached down to scoop her up and hold her against the wall.
He had his hand under her skirt, the underwear ripped away, and then he sheathed himself in her. When she snapped at him, caught between a snarl and a moan, he pulled out, turned and pushed her down over a dilapidated table, clearing a brace of old paint cans sitting on it with a sweep of his arm, sending them tumbling into the grass.
"If that's the way you want it," he muttered. She hissed a creative curse at him that insulted his manhood.
"Baby, you know that's not the truth," he said, slamming back into her, violently enough she cried out. "Yeah, there’s no fucking problem in that department. Keep fighting me. You'll lose."
She did fight him, and he held her down, and they climaxed at almost the same moment, her strangling on her cries and him grunting with visceral satisfaction. Then things got quiet, and he settled over her, arm over her chest. Where she would have bitten him a moment ago, now her tear-stained mouth was pressed against his forearm, sticky with sweat and grit. His forehead rested between her shoulder blades, and his other arm was banded around her waist. As clarity returned, she registered that he was holding her so tightly she almost couldn't breathe. He was shaking as if he was going to come apart.
He wouldn't let her hold him, but he held onto her. She wondered if he was using her as an anchor, one that wouldn't tear loose, something that he could depend upon in the midst of the storm, not something that would surround and hold him. He was a rigger, after all. That was his job.
When she realized the heated slickness on her back were his tears, she went still as her heart cracked inside her. How could she bear to stay if she was going to lose him?
"I love you," he said against her flesh, and she closed her ey
es.
That was why.
“Des, I could give you a kidney. We could check and see…”
“Oh, Christ. No.” He pulled away from her so abruptly he left her cold and aching, though he courteously eased her skirt back down, smoothing his hands over her buttocks. She heard him adjust his own clothes, then he turned and sat her on the table with one easy hoist, though his arms were tense and he averted his face, wiping at it self-consciously with the back of his arm. “Shut up and don’t bring that up again.”
“Why not?”
“Because that’s not happening. You’re not going to have an organ cut out of your body for a guy you’ve just met. We’re not going to have that between us.”
“So it’s better for me to stand over your grave?”
“For me, yes.” At her stricken look, he stepped closer, his abdomen brushing her knees. “This is why I’ve avoided relationships. Julie, I want to share my life with you, I want to love you, be in love with you, but my body, my choices, are mine. If I choose to die because I won’t take someone else’s damn kidney, especially yours, that’s my choice. If you can’t be with me because of that choice, I get it.” He swallowed, his expression taut, drained. “It sounds fucked up, but it is what it is.”
“Is it a control thing?” She didn’t want to fight any more. Her stomach hurt, and her body vibrated from his violent possession that said so much about the emotions churning between them, but she needed to know. “You’re my Dom, so you refuse to rely on me to keep you alive?”
“You make me feel alive, in a way I’ve never experienced. I’m ready to ride that ride as long as my body can handle it.” He dropped to one knee before her and grasped both her hands. “But I won’t let you give me a kidney. All I want from you is your love.”
She swallowed over jagged glass. Taking the hem of her shirt, she lifted it, touched it to the tracks of tears he hadn’t been able to brush away with his arm. His expression flickered, revealing raw pain, and a weariness that made her think he wanted to put his head down on her lap and let her hold him. She would have done it, but his expression shut down and hid that need away. He closed his hand around her wrist to stop her cosseting and the moment was lost.
