by Racquel Reck
“I was stupid.”
“You got that right.” She begins to pace.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you. I just saw you with him and it gutted me.”
She stops and looks at me. “I know that. But heroin isn’t a cure all. I’ve already gone through one relationship with an H-junkie. I can’t do it again.”
Maybe Dad was wrong. Maybe it was just a dream, if she hasn’t given me any hint that she wants to restart what we had. That’s not right. She wouldn’t be here if that were the case. There has to be a little hope. I’m going to have to prove myself. “I love you, Shay.”
Thirty-three
Morgan
Shay shakes her head and sits back down in the recliner.
Everything inside me goes still. She looks pale. Hell, it took a lot for me to say that. The frown on her face socks me in the gut. Should’ve kept that revelation to myself.
“Do you know why I’m here?” Her voice is flat.
Is this a trick question?
“Why I drove five hours to make sure you were okay, when Bebe could have just talked to Tryst and filled me in?”
“I—”
“I love you too, Morgan.”
Elation touches every part inside me.
“But I don’t want to love you.”
And everything plummets.
She stands, then sits down on the bed next to me and fiddles with the hem of her shirt. “When I saw you drop on stage, everything inside me stopped. I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t know if you just fainted or if you were dead. I’ve never felt fear like that before. In that moment, everything that went wrong between us didn’t matter and I had to get to you. Told myself that we could makeup and be fine. If you didn’t want me anymore, I was prepared to beg. But then I heard what happened. What you did.”
She shakes her head, but inches closer to me on the bed. “I don’t know if I can go through that again. For three days I sat here and watched you detox. Maybe I wanted a reminder of why I shouldn’t be with you. The emotions and feelings needed to be embedded in my head so that when you woke up I wouldn’t beg.” Tears are free-falling down her face. She sniffs and wipes her eyes then drops her gaze to the bed.
I caused her so much pain. It’s not right to put her through more. “You shouldn’t take me back.”
She looks up at me, and her hand lands lightly on my thigh. “I’ve watched Gary detox a ton of times, but seeing you go through it? It was the worst thing I’ve ever had to deal with.”
I think I know why it was harder for her, but I need to hear her say it. “Why was it worse?”
“I wasn’t in love with Gary. Not really. I was too young to understand that what he offered wasn’t love.” She bites her lip and looks down at the sheet. “Sometimes I’d sit there and wish the detox would kill him. It was a horrible thing to think about, but I was tired of the abuse and thought I’d never escape him.” Her eyes meet mine and she inches closer to me. “With you, I looked at you and felt pity. He deserved to go through that, you didn’t. You’re a good man, Morgan, and it kills me that I ruined you. I can’t watch you go through that again. I won’t.”
Ruined me? “It’s not your fault.”
She smiles. It doesn’t reach her eyes.
“Seriously.” I take her hand and she tries to pull it away, but I tighten my hold. “Yes, I was hurt. You went back to him, and I felt rejected, but you’re not the sole reason I shot up. My dad died of a heroin overdose when I was ten. I’m the one who found him. So when I picked up the needle I wanted to know why he loved the drug more than his family. And I found out why he did. And I don’t want to end up like him. ‘Morgan, the singer of Stones of Rage, was found dead, naked on a toilet, from a heroin overdose.’ That’s not the legacy I want to leave behind. I swear I’ll never touch it again.”
I loosen my grip and she doesn’t pull away.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that. No child should have to see it. Ben shouldn’t witness it either. I can’t believe you.”
“And I don’t blame you.” She’s been through this situation over and over again. How can I ask her to trust me when I’ve already broken the faith she’s had in me? “I’ll check into rehab.”
Don’t need it. I’ll never touch it again. I’ve learned my lesson. What I have with her is way better than the substitute feelings the drug gave me. But if it will prove to her I’m serious, I’ll do it. Was thinking about doing it anyway.
Her eyes brighten. “Really?”
Didn’t asshole ever promise to do that?
“Yes, really. Do you think I want Ben to find me dead? Do you think I want our daughter to see me like that? Hell, no. It hurts me so goddamn bad that I let you down. That I pulled a Gary. That’s not who I am or who I want to be.”
She lets go of my hand and hugs me tight. Her body is shaking and a sob erupts from her.
I hold her to me and cling to the possibility that we’ll be okay. Her being here, giving me this opportunity to make things right, tells me that she loves me. But there is one more thing I have to know. “Why did you dump me? And why did you make sex tapes with Gary?”
She pulls away quickly and stares at the door, then the ceiling, the wall, the window, everywhere but my eyes. Then her head falls.
There’s a knock at the door and Wiley peers his head in. “Is it safe to enter?”
Not right now. “Give us a couple more minutes.”
Wiley nods and closes the door.
I reach out to Shay, but she flinches and stands.
“Why’d you pick Asshole?”
Shay
How can a perfect moment turn so fast? He agreed to rehab, something Gary never did unless it was court ordered. He wants to take the steps to better himself, I can see the truth in his eyes. I believe, more than I ever have before, that Morgan won’t touch heroin again. He says I’m not the sole reason why he went and sought comfort from a drug. But all I feel is shame.
“Shay?”
I look back at him. He’s sitting straight up in the bed now. He still looks like Morgan, just a little sicker. Skinnier and pale. In a couple days he’ll be back to full health, ready to take on the world. Will he be ready to handle the problems that Gary now poses? I should have said no to Gary from the start, and none of this would have happened. I was weak and let my fear degrade me.
I take a deep, steadying breath. “I didn’t want to have sex with him. I hated it.” Then I go into the story about why I did it, how Gary was holding Ben over my head and I felt helpless. “I was hoping that you would see that I was acting. But you didn’t. And when I tried to tell you it was an act, you ran away. That hurt me the most—that you gave up easily.”
“I—” His voice cracks. “I thought you were picking him over me and I was hurt. But not as hurt as I was when I saw the videos. How could you sign on to do those?”
The videos. Gah. “I never agreed to do videos. He taped me without my consent.”
“That’s not what he said.”
“He lied.” My stomach twists. ”You actually think I could do something like that?”
“I don’t know, Shay. Where Ben is concerned you’ll do anything.”
“Not that.”
He sighs.
I wish he would believe me. “If I trust you enough to believe that you’ll kick heroin, you should trust me enough to know I’d never do that.”
“I do trust you.” He moves aside his hospital gown and points to the orange star I tattooed on his body. “Remember you asked me if I would ever forgive you if you messed up real bad and I said I would?”
I nod. “But you didn’t. You took one look—”
“And ever since then, when I look at it I’m reminded of the promise I broke. But the past doesn’t matter right now. What matters is how we’re going to fix the present so we can have a future.” Morgan runs a hand through his hair and lets out a frustrated sigh. “He wants me to pay him ten grand a month to keep those videos from going viral.”
> That asshole! And Morgan thought I consented to those? Anger slowly builds inside of me but I remind myself that this is just another way for Gary to drive a wedge between us. I won’t let him win. “You thought I was playing you, didn’t you?”
He shrugs.
“I’d never do that.” I lay next to him on the bed, hoping that my closeness will get through to him. I run my hand along his stubbled jaw. “You have to know that I love you too much to do that. What’re you going to do?”
“What can I do? I have to pay him the ten grand.”
“Absolutely not!” I jerk back from him. He will not. I’m not going to let him give any money to that jerk.
“Your rep—”
“I don’t give a flying fuck about my rep.” That anger I was suppressing comes back with a force so strong I want to tear Morgan a new one. He’s not giving that asshole a cent of what he makes. “I won’t let you do that. There has to be another way. I’ll sue him.”
“He said you signed papers.”
“I. Did. Not!” My heart’s beating fast and I inhale deeply. “The only papers I signed with him were the papers to…” That fucker.
“To what?” He grabs my arm. “Tell me.”
“He must have slipped those papers in with the documents signing his rights away. I knew he gave in too easy.”
“So what do we do now?”
I don’t know. But one thing’s for sure, I’m not going to let Morgan give any money to that bastard. “I’ll call my lawyer. There has to be something he can do.”
I hope there is something he can do. There has to be a loophole in the contract I signed, somewhere, that will prohibit Gary from blasting those tapes on the net.
He pulls me into the comfort of his arms. “If not, I think I know how to get him to stop. I can hack into his computer. There has to be something incriminating on it. We’ll blackmail him.”
He’d do that for me? He’s on my side. I told him everything that went on these last three months, and even though I saw the pain in his eyes as I retold it, he still wants to help me? Gary’s not going to scare him off like he did my parents or Tryst? He’s not judging me. I grab his head and kiss him hard.
Warmth swells in my chest as he kisses me back with as much as I’m giving him. The lacerations his actions caused on my heart slowly begin to stitch themselves back together. I feel whole. Strong—like nothing will ever come between us again. Our mistakes have scarred us, but we’re stronger now because of them, because our love is unconditional. If this is the worst thing that we’ll ever have to face and we can bounce back ready to take on more, there is hope for us.
His fingers go into my hair and he pulls back. “God, I’ve missed you.” His face falls. “I haven’t been good. I’ve done drugs and slept with other women while we’ve been apart.”
And I really don’t care. His words sting, but I slept with Gary and degraded myself. He’s seeing past that, and is willing to make us right again. He’s not perfect. But he’s perfect for me. He made mistakes and I made them too. But when we’re together we’re good for each other. He makes me feel special. He lifts me up and makes me believe that I have the strength to do what is right by my son and this baby.
“I love you. I don’t care what you did.” I lightly stroke the side of his cheek, running my fingers over the three-day stubble. “It’s over with me and Gary.” I kiss his cheek, then whisper, “You’re it.”
He rubs the back of my neck and stares deep into my eyes. Conviction. He’s reached some sort of conclusion that he’s serious about.
“He won’t take Ben.” His kisses along my neck, my cheek, and finally my mouth.
My stomach flutters and my heart gallops.
“I promise.” He holds me in his strong, protective embrace and everything inside me melts.
God, I’ve missed that feeling of comfort. His hands run down my collarbone to the mounds of my breasts.
“Ouch!” A sharp, swift kick to my ribs reminds me we aren’t alone.
Morgan quirks a brow.
I grab his hand and place it where she won’t stop kicking.
Morgan smiles. “You know, Logan played football in high school. Wonder if it runs in the family?”
I laugh. “She’s a girl.” He doesn’t know that because we were fighting.
“I know.”
He knows?
He smiles and pulls at his lip ring with his teeth. “Ben told me. And before you get mad at him, it was my fault. I interrogated him.”
“He really loves you. He was so pissed at me when we broke up.” My face falls. “He’s still mad at me.”
Morgan rubs my belly. “He won’t be for long. I’m sorry I was talking to him, but I had to know if you were okay. Every day we were apart, you were all I could think about.”
I brush my lips across his mouth then slip my tongue inside. Warmth floods through me, awakening every cell and destroying all the bad emotions I’ve had. This moment, right here, us all happy and loving, is how I want it to be. I’ve been choking on the negative long enough.
“Okay.” Wiley comes through the door. “Break it up. I want to know how my boy’s doing.”
We pull apart and stare at the ass who just broke our connection. But in all fairness, he’s been worried about Morgan too, and I shouldn’t be monopolizing all of Morgan’s time.
Tryst and the rest of our gang enter into the room, but Tryst stays by the door. “Shay, can I talk to you?”
Part of me is afraid to have this conversation with him, but I know we have to. He has to understand why I did what I did. I need my cousin back in my life. I have Morgan and our growing family, but Tryst has always been there and I want him in our future.
In order for him to know how serious I am, for them all to know how serious I am, I need to make a statement. One that shows Gary is no longer in my life, but Morgan is. I lean down and give Morgan a deep kiss. I’ve never done this before in front of Ben. I hope he understands how much I love Morgan.
“Awe, come on. There’s a kid present.”
Morgan chuckles against my lips. I break away and look at Ben.
He points to himself. “Kid right here. Save that mushy stuff for later.”
The room explodes into laughter.
I glance at Tryst. He’s not laughing. Of course not. “I’ll be right back.”
Morgan whispers into my ear. “Hurry.”
Thirty-four
Morgan
The door to my hospital room clicks open.
I hurry to close out of the real estate sites I’ve been looking at. Shay can’t know that I’ve been shopping around for her. She needs her own shop bad and I want to do this for her.
“I see you’re all showered.” It’s a nurse.
I sigh and place the laptop on the table beside the bed. “Yeah.”
It was the first thing I did once my friends left. Being out for three days and all the sweat from my detox made me feel nasty. I couldn’t get clean fast enough.
The nurse takes my arm and wraps a blood pressure cuff around my bicep. She puts the end of her stethoscope at the crease of my elbow and all is quiet for a minute. Then she releases the valve and unplugs the stethoscope from her ears. “Your blood pressure is back to normal. How are you feeling on a scale of one to ten?”
“If ten is exhaustion than I’m an eight.”
She nods. Then checks the angry lines on my arm. “Well, these look like they are doing a little better. Give it about a week on your antibiotics and you should be fine.”
“Can I go?” Hospitals suck. The cold sterility, all the people coming and going, and the amount of death that happens in them on a daily basis give me the creeps.
“No. The doctor wants to keep you one more day for observation. He’ll be in later tonight to look you over. You can order anything off the menu if you’re hungry. It should stay down.” She hands me the antibiotics and pours me a glass of water from the pitcher.
“This is the last time you will s
ee me in here.” I have no compulsion to pick up another speedball ever again.
She smiles and it doesn’t reach her eyes, then she nods and leaves the room.
She doesn’t know me or what I’m feeling, and she probably sees the same people come through here time and again for the same problem. I’m not them. I refuse to be just another statistic.
I grab Wiley’s laptop and reopen the link I closed out when she entered. I create a new tab and type in a search for rehab clinics in case Shay walks in. Even though I know I don’t need rehab, I’ll go if that’s what I have to do to prove to her that I’m serious about quitting.
Bringing the real estate page back up, I type in cites to check. I’ve searched West Bloomfield, Madison Heights, and Sterling Heights. I still haven’t found anything. I’m running out of rich neighborhoods. Northville and Ann Arbor are the only ones I haven’t looked at in the radius I’m searching for.
I type in Northville and hit send when the door cracks again.
I hop over to the rehab page.
“Feeling better?” Shay makes her way over to the bed.
“Yeah.” I search behind her. “Where’s Ben?”
“Tryst and Bebe took him back to the hotel to go swimming. I got a visitor’s pass until ten.”
We have all afternoon, then.
The bed dips and she climbs in next to me. She leans over and a lock of silky white and black hair touches my cheek. I breathe in her scent of orange blossoms. God, I love that smell. I’ve missed that smell.
“Rehab clinics?” She looks up at me with her gorgeous eyes. There’s an excitement in them…no it’s more like happiness.
“Yeah. I’m serious about quitting, Shay. I have to finish the tour. I have the show in Detroit the day after tomorrow. But I swear, after that I’m checking into rehab.” And depending on how long, I might miss the birth of my daughter. My heart feels heavy, like it was dipped in Quick-Crete.
