by Falon Gold
Dr. Blane lightly touched my trembling shoulder, getting my attention. “Don’t say goodbye to her, Mahogany. Say you’ll be back because you will.”
“Damn straight I will.”
I approached the bed and kissed my baby girl on both of her sunken cheeks beneath her eyes rimmed in black from her sickness doing its best to kill what was left of her. She resembled Chance so much, sometimes it hurt to look at her.
In her ear, I whispered, “Listen to me, Majestic. I cannot live in this world without you. I won’t, and you can’t leave me either. Give mommy a little more time to get what you need, and I promise you’ll feel better soon. Wait for me, baby girl. I’ll be back, and I love you.”
As I stood up, she made a sucking motion with her lips, an indication that she was hungry though she was being tube fed because she was being kept sedated to ease her pain. Just two-years-old and she could put away enough groceries to make a fat man judge her for it, or she used to. I couldn’t wait until she was eating me out of house and home again.
When I finally left the hospital, in my car, I pleaded with any higher being listening to perform a miracle for her, to give her back her vitality and precociousness. “Or just take what she needs from me, but do something. I need a sign that everything was going to be okay.”
Nothing out of the ordinary happened immediately to represent a glimmer of hope. I beat my fists against the steering wheel and railed at the world. “Just one damn sign is all I asked for and I can’t even get that!”
A sudden roaring above had me looking up to the heavens. For a moment, I was pretty sure I just ticked off someone upstairs and was about to pay for it, but it was a small plane emerging from the clouds, dropping in altitude over Arrow’s Airport tarmac. Someone arriving in Arrow wasn’t the sign I was looking for. People flew in and out of here all the time, mostly filthy-rich someones coming to check into their room booked at the ski resort where they would laze around in the high life for the weekend or reunite with a loved one who lived here while my little girl was dying.
“Fucking typical!” I screamed, growing bitter and angry at how some were favored more than others in this world, although, an orphan like me was accustomed to that.
After being abandoned near a fire station in Spindle and raised by people who didn’t have an ounce of kindness in them, I was personally acquainted with some of the pitfalls in life. That didn’t mean that Majestic should be treated unfairly too because life was a bitch. For the first time ever, I was beginning to hate my position in the world because it didn’t allow for luxuries like family members who lived close by and would return my frantic calls or could also be a match for Majestic. My pitiful excuse for an existence that was chosen for me was about to cost me the most precious thing I had. Before I lost her, I was going to fight tooth and nail for her life.
Short-term parking was available in the front of the old, aero dome-shaped building. I ran inside with just my purse and phone. Traveling light made security check a breeze for me, not so much for the other people who had actual luggage. More people were going out of Arrow than coming in. I was fidgeting in my aisle seat for half an hour before we were cleared for takeoff. When we coasted down the runway, I fell into a light doze instantly, sure I was well on my way to keeping my promise to Majestic, and used to resting when I could since she became ill. It seemed like the minute I closed my eyes, a pretty, red-haired flight attendant shook my shoulder and told me that we had landed in Fredrickson.
“Thank you.” I yawned, moved along the aisle with the rest of the passengers while checking my phone that no one had reached out to.
I didn’t know whether to scream or punch something. Do neither, Mahogany. Now is not the time to catch a disturbing the peace charge.
I dialed Chance’s number again while speed walking through the much classier airport in Fredrickson, getting his voicemail again. “Dammit, Chance, please pick up! I’ll do anything if you help my daughter! I won’t ask for anything else from you! You don’t even have to meet her or see me, just be a decent man and save her! And call me! Please!”
Reaching the exit on the other side of the building before I had even finished leaving the panicked message, I hailed the first cab I saw and gave the driver directions to Middleton Architectural. In the back of the car, I stared at my phone, willing it to ring. It hadn’t by the time we reached Chance’s building. Ten minutes had passed and I was a wreck. Not how I’d want my ex to see me for the first time in years, but my wrinkled cocktail dress and limp hair sagging on my shoulders would have to do.
Outside the building, I urged the cabbie to wait while I ran inside. The middle-aged driver in a colorful dashiki with an African accent promised he would wait because I hadn’t paid him yet. Twenty minutes before closing the doors to outsiders for the day, I skidded to a stop on the Italian tile at the security personnel’s desk.
The uniformed rent-a-cop looked at me suspiciously. “Can I help you, ma’am?”
“Yes, I need to see Chance Middleton. It’s an emergency. Life and death.”
His tanned facial features fell under the weight of his sudden sympathy. “I’m sorry but—”
“Don’t be sorry! Just get him down here!” I demanded at the top of my voice.
The man huffed. “Ma’am, I’m trying to tell you that even if I could reach him, he’s not here.”
No, no, no.
I started to pace in circles, slowing losing my mind. “Where did he go?”
He shook his head. “I can’t tell you that.” Not what I wanted to hear, so I rushed the desk, and slapped my palms down on the gleaming brown-wood top with so much force the guard nearly jumped right out of his chair.
“Then get him on the phone wherever the hell he is and tell him I’m here! Mahogany Jefferson! He’s the only one that can help my daughter, his daughter who’s dying from cancer as we speak! She doesn’t have long! Please find him!”
I had to look like a raving lunatic snarling with my teeth gritted, eye sockets stretched to the max as my dry eyes gobbled up the security guard.
“I-I’m sorry, ma’am,” he stammered. “I don’t have a way to contact him. He’s not my boss technically and…” He stopped to pan the lobby as if he was afraid someone was listening in, but there was no one else but us around.
He stood up to lean over the desk, getting so close I could smell the cigarette smoke on his breath. “Mr. Middleton isn’t even in Utah right now. He left for some work emergency I think, about an hour ago. Just took off out the building, yelling at his secretary to call his driver, email him everything he’d need for the trip, to have his pilot get his jet ready, and arrange transportation after he got wherever he’s going. It’s Friday, so he won’t be back here until Monday at least. I’m sorry, ma’am. So sorry about your daughter. I have one too. Can you call his family?”
When did Chance get a jet? Why would life give him a way to escape his daughter’s fate but not her and me? The bottom of my stomach dropped, and the world tilted on its axis.
“No, I can’t call his family,” I said softly with my head and shoulders drooping, couldn’t speak above a whisper. “I don’t have their numbers and I can’t stay here for long.” Was all out of places to track Chance to and had to go home and tell my child that I’d failed her—she wouldn’t make it to three-years-old.
Chapter Two
Half an hour before landing
~Chance~
The flight attendant entered the cabin of the plane where I sat before a wireless printer in its slot carved in the round table bolted to the floor, waiting for it to spit out the last sheet of the paperwork I’d be taking with me once I was on the ground again. She halted in the center of the red-carpeted aisle.
“Mr. Middleton, please buckle up, terminate your access to the internet and all calls. We’re waiting for the air traffic controllers to let us land. Right now, they have us circling around the airport until space has been found for us to set down. It seems Arrow’s Airport is pretty b
usy today,” she announced in a pleasant tone meant to soothe.
I didn’t bother to look up, could see every inch of her from my side view. She was beautiful, blonde, and built to attract with curves that would make a race track jealous. “Okay, Alice.”
“Thank you.” She loitered and tilted her head to the side instead of vanishing like I wanted her to. “Is everything okay, Mr. Middleton? Do you need anything before we land? A Scotch? A back rub?”
You wish. I transformed that thought to my face, then glowered at her. She paled, about-faced on her sensible heels, and ghosted the cabin.
I should feel bad about intimidating her. Yeah, well, I don’t, not after dealing with enough gold diggers to know one when I see and hear one.
When the last sheet glided onto the printer’s tray, I slammed my laptop shut, placing it in the empty seat beside me to do as the stewardess asked, beyond infuriated with Mahogany Jefferson. She was so many things to me. Love of my life. Breaker of my heart. Ruiner of my future. I assumed I’d never hear from her again, then out of the blue came a voicemail from her about my daughter dying of leukemia.
My daughter.
After stacking the paperwork in a manila folder and banging it down on the table, I leaned forward and cradled my head in my hands, distressed, heart beating fast enough to worry a cardiologist. It hadn’t pumped a single drop of blood since Mahogany broke things off with me. Now, it was making up for lost time of lying dormant in my chest after I’ve learned that she’d done the one thing I’d forbidden her to do. Not because I really was the cold son of a bitch she thought I was, well, I am that, but because having my blood type was a death sentence.
I’d hoped if I acted like a cold son of a bitch when it came to children, Mahogany would let the subject drop. I could spare her and any child we weren’t supposed to have together from the tragedy she and Majestic were currently locked in anyway. Selfishly, I could also avoid admitting that I wanted children with only her but wouldn’t dare risk her having them, condemning them to suffer from a variety of possible illnesses if not all of them at once. I would’ve been open to adopting when she was ready for motherhood, a moot point now. I was a father and all my nightmares had become reality.
From the way I talked to Mahogany before she left me, she likely expected me to ask for proof that Majestic was mine before I underwent any procedure to save our child, just to make her life a living hell. Majestic’s illness was already producing a living hell for Mahogany, who I thought loved hard. Apparently, she loved not at all when pertaining to me. She had me convinced she could be too loyal for her own damn good sometimes. I don’t believe that about her anymore either, so I would ask for proof of paternity but it’s a waste of time. Mahogany would’ve already been warned of the risks if she called up the wrong father and allowed him to give her daughter their stem cells. And if she called me, it was because she wanted her daughter to live.
Just like Mahogany to raise a child alone because she was stubborn as hell. I guaranteed that hadn’t changed, but my daughter was the true reason why she left me. I felt ridiculous for believing Mahogany was a good woman through and through back then, one I couldn’t look in the face and confess my deepest, darkest secret to because I didn’t want to lose her faster than I was already going to. Well, that secret was out. Yet, I can’t bring myself to talk to her. I just left in the middle of a meeting with a potential client, jumped on my plane, and flew to Colorado to do what I could for Majestic, therefore for Mahogany. Her name itself made me weak-kneed. I can’t count how many times I wished I could forget it. Forget her and every time I slid into the soft, soaked tunnel of her body and slaked my thirst for her. Never quenched.
Satisfaction lasted for a little while until she smiled or turned a certain way. If she just breathed on me, I was ready to make love to her again. It was a beautiful but vicious cycle. The desire never went away. I never found someone else to take her place. God knows I tried. Took me six months of useless dating and not being able to bring the night to a satisfactory close with any woman after Mahogany to figure out that she was it for me. Being incapable of making love messed with my head big time, until I figured out what my problem was: my heart was longing for Mahogany and affecting my body to the point where it wouldn’t take satisfaction from any other woman or give it, as if it would be betraying her. At least my cock allowed my hands to take her place but gave empty climaxes. I was okay with that. Knew I would never find another like her. Loved her enough to let go, so I wouldn’t keep her from what she felt that she needed and would only get from another man. I had no idea how that choice made before we broke up would affect me mentally and physically until I was without her. Low and behold, she’d already had the one thing I wouldn’t give her tucked safely and secretly away in her body when she packed her bags and jetted away without leaving a Dear John letter behind for me.
I regret now more than ever not finding her. Not bringing her back. Not making her tell me what was truly on her mind the last night we spoke. Not making her tell me the truth just as she tried to get me to do. And now I regretted not raising my daughter the most. If my child was anything like her mother, she was majestic, stood tall and regal like Mahogany, stubborn, but fair-skinned where Mahogany had a drop of beige to create her earthy skin tone. I had used my fingertips to trace every inch of her flesh for hours while I wondered what gene pool had mixed to create that gorgeous woman who was now the bane of my existence. She had made me into a fucking killer anyway and Majestic, my only child, was my victim.
Grief struck me so damn hard I threw my head back and howled like a madman, more sorrowful for what Majestic was going through than me. And if I didn’t get there in time to save her, Mahogany would rue the day she ever met me.
My phone beeped, signaling a voicemail had come through. The ringer was turned off for my peace of mind and because my business was at a standstill until my daughter was out of the woods, but my shareholders and business affiliates didn’t know that. I picked up the device from the top of my briefcase next to the laptop, then swiped the icon of the program that would read the voicemail to me like a text.
Dammit, Chance, please pick up.
I’ll do anything if you help my daughter.
I won’t ask for anything else from you.
You don’t even have to meet her or see me.
Just be a decent man and save her.
And call me.
Please.
‘I’ll do anything if you help my daughter.’ I must’ve reread that line over fifty times on the app before I was forced back in my seat by the plane dipping down to land finally. Mahogany made two major mistakes when she left an open-ended line like that on my voicemail. One, she left it on my voicemail when she’d already done all she needed to do to get me to her and Majestic’s side with the first voicemail. Two, she had let her desperation take control of the situation and compel words from her that she didn’t expect to be taken in literal context. No one ever did... until their words were used against them to get something from them that they never thought they’d have to give up unwillingly.
The more I read the line, the more I plotted against Mahogany. She’ll do anything, she said. Well, I needed something done: reversal of the heartache she caused me. I had lived with it unhappily for her. I wanted liberation from her hold on me, freedom to have a happy life with someone else. Only a fool would’ve fallen in love with her in the first place, trusted her. She hadn’t deserved for me to willingly endure loneliness to insure her happiness, nor the lies I had told myself about who she was inside: loving, loyal, and worthy, but I still wanted her who was a witch.
I won’t be shocked if she practiced black magic, binding me to her. A grave mistake on her part because I was going to give my body what she made it want the most: her, using her body to fall out of love with her, break my heartstrings attached to her. All I had to do was hold her to her promise on the voicemail until every one of those strings was clipped and my disgust for what she had done
to me, but more importantly to Majestic, built so high I couldn’t stand to be in her presence.
Looking out the porthole next to me, the last plane waiting for takeoff on the tarmac rose into the sky as my mind made an extensive list of the things Mahogany would be doing. Mentally staging a war was the only thing keeping me from going insane as my child, who does not know me, laid in a bed near death. Mahogany would do everything I asked because once she was a keeper of her word, who never promised that she wouldn’t have my child. So what she had found a loophole? She had still broken my trust. Now, that cold son of a bitch I could be sometimes would be let out to play with Mahogany until I loved her no longer. Finally.
Alice appeared in the doorway between the cabin and the flight attendant’s quarters. “Mr. Middleton,” she called to me timidly, “You can deplane now and ah, I want to apologize for—”
I sat up abruptly, gathering what I needed for my trip to the hospital. “Don’t worry about it, Alice. We all do what we have to, to get what we want in life, right?” Including taking it from others even when they don’t want to give it.
She nodded, twisting and untwisting her fingers in knots nervously. “Right.”
“Just don’t do it again.” The warning of what would happen next to her was in my tone and unmistakable.
She nodded even faster. “No sir… I mean yes sir.”
“Go back home. Rest. I’ll be in Arrow for a while, at least a week. Tell that to Captain Norlen for me, will you? I’ll call him when I’m ready to go home.”
“Yes sir.” She vanished into the cockpit to relay the message.
I exited the plane, then entered the building to find the checkout counter where I was handed the keys to a top of the line BMW. The heavily-tinted sedan was parked beside a Dodge Avenger that seemed to be on its last legs. Accessing the GPS system, I entered Arrow General Hospital on the touch screen, then let the automated female voice lead me to my destination, to my daughter.
