Lose Me: (New Adult Billionaire Romance) (Broken Idols)

by M. C. Frank

  “I’m sorry, Wes,” I tell him. “I’m so sorry for not telling you, I. . . ”

  “There’s one thing you need to know,” he begins, ignoring my attempts to apologize. His eyes are burning into mine, intense, focused. “Day one of the shoot, that day when I kissed you on the water. I meant it. It wasn’t for the cameras. That was an excuse to do something that. . . I felt I would die if I didn’t kiss you again. After that night in Drops, Ari, I—” he swallows and tugs at his wet hair. “I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep. I was already thinking of you way too much, but after that you were all I could think about.”

  “Me too,” I whisper. “I wish I had left you alone, though. I wish you didn’t have to live through all this.”

  “I wish I was the one who was sick.” It bursts out of him with vehemence.

  “No, don’t say that. Don’t even think. . . Don’t wish it. . . ”

  “I’m sorry, it’s okay, it’s okay,” he says. “Don’t cry, love, I shouldn’t have said that.” He inhales sharply. “I should have known something was wrong. That first day when you kept fainting on me, you were in so much pain, I could tell, oh baby. . . I should have insisted on calling an ambulance then.”

  He wipes his nose clumsily, with the back of his hand, like a three-year-old.

  “I should have forced you,” he continues in a broken voice. “Only I was so. . . so bleeding intimidated by you and your brave attitude and your independence. For the first time in my life, I was fighting all this sudden, intense emotion around a girl and—and it was freaking me out. I’d never felt that way before. I pretended to be cool, but inside I was shaking all over. For an entire day. I had saved a life. Someone almost died in my arms.”

  “I hated you for saving me,” I say slowly. He shakes his head, not looking at me. I’m only now realizing this. “The fact that you had to, you know? It made it all feel real. I couldn’t run away from it any more. Although I did my best.”

  He sits back, shuddering. Our shoulders touch.

  “All this time,” he says, “all this time, you’ve been fighting for your life. That’s why you were so sad, isn’t it? That’s why you didn’t want to go on a date with me? You knew. . . Oh God. . . ”

  “I didn’t do a very good job of fighting for my life, did I?” I say it calmly, feeling the needles prick my skin.

  Wes lowers his head between his knees, as though he wants to shut my words out. His breath is coming rapidly. “I got to you in time,” he says, repeating it, trying to calm himself. “I got to you in time. You’re safe, you’re here. That’s all that matters. For a moment there I didn’t think I—” His voice breaks.

  “You saved me again,” I whisper through dry lips and Wes grabs a cup of water from the nightstand and brings it over. He cups my neck and lifts me, helping me drink as though I’m a baby. His eyebrows meet in concentration and I wonder what he’s thinking.

  “My private jet lands in half an hour,” he says after a moment of silence, glancing at his watch.

  “Your what? In what?” I ask, trying to get up, and he slides his thumb over my collarbone, where a tube is logged onto my skin.

  “Shh,” he says, his voice the sound of naked pain, “It’s okay. It’s gonna be okay.”

  “What. . . what’s gonna be okay?”

  “Your dad and grandad and this, um, this ‘Spiri’ dude have been talking all day over your head. I finally had enough of them mulling over plane tickets and planning to contact the clinic in Athens on Monday.” He makes an impatient gesture. “I finally barged in there and yelled at them to get a grip and that I’m taking you to New York.”

  He says it quietly, as though it was the simplest solution and I want to protest but I can’t and he knows it, because I have run out of time. We have run out of time.

  “They finally made the calls they had to and they’ve arranged the details for tomorrow with the hospital over there. I had to call in a few favors, and your dad tried to be a bit stuck up about it, but finally he gave in.”

  “Wes, you. . . you called in favors? What did you do?” I ask him, dread clamping up my throat.

  He leans over me and places his hands on either side of my face. I feel my tears sliding onto his palms—it seems I haven’t stopped crying since this morning.

  “You know it had to be done,” he says, green eyes glowing into mine. “I’m just glad I was here to speed things up a bit.”

  “It’s just so soon,” I mutter, as the pain cramps up my legs.

  He looks at me. We both know it’s not so soon. In fact, it’s so late. It’s too late almost.

  “Everything is going to be fine, you’ll see,” Wes says, pressing his lips to my temple. “Meet me for souvlaki after the operation?” I try to smile.

  “Wes. . . ”

  “Yes, baby?”

  “They say. . . The statistics say I might be brain damaged afterwards, even if I. . . survive,” I whisper. “It might be cancer, there’s a big chance. I’ll need chemo, and—”

  He bends closer, taking me in his arms, tubes and all, and I feel him shudder at the word ‘survive’.

  “Don’t be scared,” he says into my hair. “I’ll be there right next to you, I won’t let you out of my sight. I’ll do anything you need, I’ll help you walk and feed you soup if that’s all you can eat, I’m not going anywhere.”

  I’m crying by the end. How original.

  “Don’t cry, baby, don’t, there’s nothing to cry about,” he says.

  “Are you for real?” I ask him and he nods, kissing the space between my eyes.

  The room is beginning to spin again, the throb of pain around my head tightening ominously. Not again. I’m exhausted beyond words.

  “You’re still on about—” he starts saying, but stops abruptly and starts calling my name instead. “Ari? Ari!” I hear his voice urgent and frightened. He’s shaking me, but I can’t respond. The darkness swallows me again.

  ◊◊◊

  I wake up in the plane. It’s only dad and three paramedics in here.

  “He didn’t want to leave you,” dad tells me, holding my hair after I wake up with an intense wave of nausea that almost chokes me until I throw up.

  “Thanks,” I gasp. “I don’t want him seeing me like this.”

  Dad sits tight-lipped next to me and tries to make up tacky jokes to take my mind off the pain. “This time tomorrow you’ll be all better,” he tells me at one point.

  Well, that’s one way of putting it.

  ◊◊◊

  Next thing I know, we’re in New York.

  Well, sort of.

  Wes meets us at the hospital after the long flight, his eyes red rimmed with lack of sleep, his clothes crumpled, but he flashes a brilliant smile down at me, and that makes me forget the pain for a second. Dad says I went into cardiac arrest during the flight and they had trouble stabilizing me, but I don’t remember anything.

  The hospital is called Memorial, of all things.

  It’s vast, from what I understand, but I’m not interested in sightseeing right now, my body rigid with pain, my brain fuzzy with medication. Wes runs silently along the stretcher and exchanges a glance with my dad.

  “Thank you,” dad tells him.

  Wes just nods, out of breath. He grabs dad’s shoulder to support him as he falters, and they run next to my gurney until we get to the operation room. Then the nurses ask them politely to step back.

  Dad kisses my forehead and wets my cheeks with his tears.

  “I’ll see you in a few hours,” he tells me and I nod.

  This is happening. Okay. This is not the day I. . .

  “Hey,” Wes’ warm voice envelopes me like a hug. His eyes frantic but no longer scared, dart left and right, as his jaw works. There’s no time, I think in a panic. No damn time.

  “Phelps,” he says, his eyes filling with tenderness. “Ari.” Just my name, rolling like a caress off his tongue. Even now, just the sound of his voice is enough to send sparks all over my skin.r />
  “I couldn’t even say your name, did you know that? I thought for sure, anyone would guess how I felt if I so much as pronounced it.” Tears are running freely down his cheeks now, his voice thick with them, but he doesn’t even bother to wipe them away. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Remember what I said to you that first time, yeah? This is real.”

  He presses his mouth to mine hurriedly, thirstily, his tears mingling with mine. I drink him in, tasting my own sadness on his lips and I don’t ever want to let go.

  “Wes, I need to say—” I begin, but he cuts me off, deepening our kiss.

  “Don’t you dare say goodbye,” he says against my lips.

  Then he grabs me, lifting me bodily from the gurney from the waist up, and pulls me to his chest in a bone crushing hug. His whole body is shaking. My nose fills with his scent, my fingers aching to bury themselves in his hair.

  “I’ll be here when you wake up,” he whispers, his voice husky with intensity, as his cheek brushes against mine. “I’ll be right here, okay? I’m waiting for you. That’s a promise.”

  There’s no time for more, I’m being wheeled in.

  “Don’t you keep me waiting, Ari!” he shouts as the doors shut him out, in the pristine white corridor, away from my sight. “I love you,” he adds more quietly—or I think he does.

  His voice just about reaches me before the anesthetic kicks in.

  PART TWO

  Memorial

  Ari’s Journal

  Day Three

  Is it ironic that everything around me is stark white? Clean surfaces, bare walls, marble floors, stiff curtains, beeping machines, pristine windowsills. This is the world I’ve woken up to.

  I’d like to think it’s a symbol of the second chance I’ve been given, the clean slate that will be my life once I’m fully recovered, but the truth is much more brutal and simple than that: this is a hospital. People here die or live, they get better or worse, they come and they go. And now I’m one of those people.

  The verdict is that I’ll be fine.

  Not all tumors are cancer, the doctor explained to dad. I was drifting in and out of sleep, but I heard enough. This one would have crushed my brain as it grew—it was lodged near the vital bits of my head, which is why I almost died, but once they’d completely removed it and done a biopsy on it, it proved to be ‘benign’. Which is an obnoxious way to say ‘not cancer’. Anyway, I’ll need no chemo, no further observation, nothing. I’m not sick anymore.

  In fact, I’ll be as healthy as ever, once I recover and get out of this place.

  So, long story short, I’ll live. The tumor is out, my brain works just fine, no cancer in sight. Good news, right? Not good, the best.

  I’ve been assigned ‘nurse Jamie’. He’s a twenty-nine year-old dude with purple hair and steel toe Crocs, which is nice, but what isn’t so nice is how nosy the guy is. He started by asking me all these weird shrink-y questions about how I’m feeling and stuff and then he said he found an old, mostly empty, journal in my things and that it would do my head good to start writing in it.

  I asked him if he’d read anything and he said of course, he read everything. How did I expect him to pass the time while he was watching me sleep the anesthetic out of my system?

  I told him he didn’t have to watch me sleep, for crap’s sake!

  He said gently that yes he did, because some kind of big-shot movie star was breathing down his neck the whole time. At this I clamped up and he smiled smugly and left, his shoes squeaking on the polished floor.

  So here we are.

  Everyone is gone now, dad and Ollie both, since they hadn’t slept for three days straight. But now that I’m awake and ‘pretty much fine’ to quote Jamie, he sent them all to bed—they’re staying at a hotel in the next block.

  Wes left, too.

  They didn’t allow anyone who wasn’t family in to see me, and dad said he stayed in the lobby until I woke up and responded, and then he had to fly to London to enroll in this prestigious college for actors or something. He left me a note, which I still haven’t opened.

  Great.

  I’ve written fifteen lines and I’m exhausted. This is day three after waking up.

  I took a nap.

  Another one, I should add. Then Jamie woke me up to force some foul-tasting soup down my throat, and I tried to eat it, honestly I did, but it tasted like dirt. So he brought me chocolate.

  I tried it and almost threw up, it tasted so bad.

  “What’s wrong with your food in this country?” I asked him as soon as the retching stopped.

  He looked down at me with something like sympathy in his light blue eyes. “You have no appetite, honey,” he said. “It’s not your fault. But, let me tell you, that scrawny look is so two thousand and twelve.”

  “I do not look. . . ” He lifted a dark eyebrow. “Oh crap,” I said and he nodded.

  “You’ll be fine,” he said and took my tray out.

  After he left I turned on the TV, but was so bored by it that I turned it off again after a few minutes and opened this journal instead.

  Ok. Let’s see what we have here: I can’t move, I’m too weak, so I’m not allowed to get up and walk, because apparently I tried it yesterday and I was so dizzy they had to carry me back inside my room. I feel so weak it’s making me cranky and my head starts swimming whenever I move. Not to mention everything hurts like hell.

  Oh, and I have no hair.

  Like not even one. They shaved it all off before the operation. No way am I letting Wes see me like this. So it’s

  Day Four

  Now I really hate Jamie. The idiot was right. Not that I honestly think he’s an idiot. (Jamie if you’re reading this PUT IT DOWN! It’s none of your business, you sneaky, purple toy of a nurse.)

  And no, I don’t really hate you. Nobody can give a sponge bath like you.

  Anyway, he was right. Turns out it is therapeutic to write things down. I may have suddenly fallen asleep in the middle of writing, but I woke up feeling much better all of a sudden. I even managed to keep down a bit of mashed potatoes that tasted like shoe.

  Ollie and I walked all over the hospital hallways, and Jamie said that tomorrow I might be allowed to maybe go out. That would be nice.

  The doctors reassured dad that I’m completely fine, and so he’s thinking of going home and back to work in three days, if all goes well.

  Wes has been ringing my phone non-stop since the day before yesterday, so finally today I turned it off. I’m not ready for this, yet, and that’s what I told Ollie to tell him, when Wes switched tactics and started bombarding him and dad instead.

  I asked them to tell him to give me some time and that I’m fine.

  He hasn’t called either of them for three hours, so that’s progress.

  The hospital is settling down for the night. Dad and Ollie have left, so I’m all alone again. My room is a deluxe suite, spacious and full of light during daytime, and I’m the only occupant of it. I hate to think what it’s costing Wes, but Ollie said he’ll take care of it.

  I feel a bit more comfortable letting him pay for it, since he’s my brother and all, although that’s new too.

  All right, we have a problem.

  I just woke up sweating from a nightmare. I was crying too, which was fun. The thing is, it wasn’t exactly a nightmare. It was more of a memory. At the end it had a bad twist, but the rest of it was as real as when it happened.

  And that’s what makes it more painful than anything.

  An hour later, I’m still crying. I can’t stop.

  So, here’s the thing. I haven’t told Ollie or my dad, because I know they’ll try to make me change my mind, but with every passing minute one thing is becoming more obvious: I can’t do this, I can’t call him.

  Wes. I can’t call him. I haven’t spoken to him since before I was lifted onto the plane. I haven’t even called him to thank him.

  But I can’t do it. I can’t talk to him.

>   I don’t know if anyone who has ever gone through something like this felt the same. There’s no one I can talk to. All I know is this:

  I’m not the same person who was wheeled into that operation room. I’m someone else. I am the survivor of a sickness that almost claimed my life. I am someone who almost died and lived to tell about it. I am someone who is fighting for her life.

  That’s who I am now.

  I’m not the athlete, the stunt girl, the. . . I’m not the person he met. I’m someone else. A survivor.

  I don’t know how to be anything else, and right now, I don’t have to.

  I just hope he understands.

  And waits.

  Okay, it’s two hours later, and I’ve decided to write my nightmare down. I’ll write it the way I remember it, and I know I will re-live it, but maybe I’ll get it out of my system. I haven’t stopped thinking about it, and it’s made my head hurt and I had a panic attack, because my stupid brain thought that a headache automatically meant it was sick again.

  Jamie was not happy about it. He said, do what you have to do, but stop freaking out on me, I’ve got an entire wing to take care of.

  Those were his exact words.

  Stop freaking out. Easier said than done. Weird, isn’t it, how I never was afraid of doing a stunt, and this sickness, this is what’s crippling me with fear. After it’s passed.

  Anyway, he said to do what I have to do. This is what I have to do.

  WARNING TO FUTURE ME: don’t read this, Ari, it’s highly triggering! Listen to me, don’t read it again. You promised yourself before writing it, you’d only think about it once while you wrote it to get it out of your system and NEVER AGAIN. It’s freaky and crazy. Like you, right now.

  All right, here it is:

  It started out as a very real memory, as I said. Gosh, it felt so good to lose myself in the happiness of our last week in Corfu. Before it turned into a horror story, that is.