Never Let Go: Top Shelf Romance Collection 6

by Steiner, Kandi

  “When did your mom die?” Chills sweep my skin.

  “The day that Olive did.”

  Tears fill my eyes. I swallow, and they fall.

  “Have you ever heard about string theory? Everything is tied together, works together, shrinks, expands, and breathes together. Maybe we’re on the same string, baby. We’re right beside each other. We’re the same thing.” His mouth takes mine. He pulls away. “My blood, your blood...” Another kiss... his voice hot on my cheek. “One day I tried to calculate the odds of how we met. The odds of February 14. There are no odds. For us, there are no odds because it isn’t chance.”

  He’s inside me mere seconds later. No one pushes the chair under the doorknob. There’s no need to. Arethea skips the 2 AM IV—the only time she ever does.

  When I wake up in the morning, I’m so hot. Like I’m living on the sun. I turn toward Kellan and my heart sinks.

  Twenty-Three

  Cleo

  The house of cards falls so, so fast. I can tell by just one glance that something’s very wrong. He’s lying on his side, behind me, his right cheek against the pillow. His skin looks slightly gray, his lips a little pale—maybe a tinge of blue. His eyelids sag. His blue eyes almost seem to glow. I don’t have to ask what’s wrong because I feel him up against me.

  He’s hot. Really hot.

  I turn around to face him. “Kellan?”

  I’m so alarmed, I grasp his face. He winces, and I move my fingers off his bruised cheek.

  “Shit, I’m sorry. What’s the matter?” The fever isn’t triggering alarm bells for me. It’s the way his face looks. His coloring is off.

  He blinks at me, and his eyes have that glazed quality, which makes more bells peel for me.

  He reaches for a strand of my hair. “Nothing,” he says.

  But he sounds weird and raspy. Breathless.

  My eyes fly to the little box that keeps track of his pulse and the amount of oxygen in his blood.

  Pulse is 130, blood oxygen is 81 percent. I lay my hand on his jaw, just below the bruising. I stroke the stubble. “You’re not fine. What do you think is wrong?”

  He reaches out for me and pulls me closer. “Just come here...” He tries to tuck me up against him.

  “Kell—we need to call someone.”

  His eyes squeeze shut. “Nothing…to…say.”

  “I can hear how breathless you are.” I stroke his burning brow and feel a sheen of sweat. I look into his eyes in time to see them swim with tears.

  “I’m so sorry. Just let me call Arethea and we’ll figure out what’s up.”

  He shakes his head, and one tear spills down toward his nose.

  I brush it off and lean to touch his temple with my lips. I smooth my palm over his hot forehead and Kellan grabs my forearm. “Cleo—please. Don’t call... please. Not yet.” He grasps at me. He wraps an arm around me, pulling me to him. Pushing my backside against his dick.

  “I want to be inside you. Cleo, please.” His voice cracks, and I know I have to call Arethea. “K., we have to call. We have to let them know something is wrong.”

  His hand comes up to his face, and my chest aches. “Kell...you’re so strong. You’re doing so well. I love you.” I reach for the bed’s remote, with the call button.

  His hand grips my elbow. “Cleo—no.” He pushes up, half sitting. He looks pale and dazed. “Don’t call. Please. Hold me. I need you. Cleo, trust me—please.”

  I scoot back toward him, wrapping my arm around him even as I press the nurse call button.

  “Yes?” It’s Arethea’s voice, thank God.

  “Hey, could you come here, please?”

  “Of course.”

  I look down at Kellan. He’s wrapped both arms around me and his head is on my thigh. I’m sitting cross-legged but I shift us so we’re lying face-to-face on our sides. I wrap an arm around him, kiss his fingers.

  “You’re okay. Don’t be scared. I’m here. I’ll be with you.” I smooth my palm over his hair, behind his neck. Good God, he’s warm. I feel his back shake on a sob and my heart stops.

  “Baby...hey...” I try to lift his face but he won’t move. Arethea bursts in at that second and I’m so confused. She’s flanked by several doctors from our team: the pulmonologist, the infectious disease expert, the trial coordinator, and finally, a few seconds later, Dr. Willard. Their faces are grim.

  My eyes fly to Arethea’s. Her face is careful.

  “Oxygen?” I manage.

  She nods, then looks at Willard.

  I kiss Kellan’s forehead.

  Dr. Willard steps over to the bed as Kell curls up to me.

  “Cleo—I spoke with Kellan yesterday, while you were meeting with Arethea about the outing.”

  “What?”

  “You ever heard of CMV pneumonia?” he drawls.

  I look with wide eyes at the crew at the foot of our bed. “No… What is it?”

  They explain: it’s something a lot of people have been infected with at one point or another. In people with healthy immune systems, it doesn’t cause any problems. He caught it from my blood. My blood was positive for CMV when he received the transplant.

  “We’ve been monitoring him since then. It came up on his blood work recently, and now he’s started showing symptoms. We’ll need to do some imaging to really know, but—”

  “If it is, what will you do for it?”

  “We’ve already started treating it with antivirals,” Willard tells me.

  “And?”

  “It all depends on Kellan.” He looks over at Arethea, then at Kellan’s blood oxygen saturation. He’s wearing oxygen now; his pulse is 112 and his blood oxygen level is only up to 88.

  Dr. Willard looks into my eyes. “What he’s got is serious. But I think he could beat it. Might have to spend some time on ventilation, but—”

  That’s all I hear.

  A ventilator. Kellan on a ventilator.

  Arethea rubs my shoulder as the doctor shakes his head. “I’ll be honest, I’ll be real surprised if we don’t need to try the vent with him, we’re on full-blast here and we can’t pull a 97, 98... It’s not what I’d prefer to see. But Kellan’s strong. He can come through this.”

  I look down at him but I can’t see his face. His arm clutches around my middle.

  I take a few deep breaths and start my questions. Forty minutes later, all the doctors leave.

  Kellan kisses me. His eyes are tired. “I want to be inside you.”

  “You’ve got a CT scan in thirty minutes.”

  He shakes his head, his grip on my shoulder surprisingly strong. “I need it. I need you.”

  I wrap my arms around him. “You have me.”

  His hands rub mine. “I love you. You remember what I said last night?”

  I shake my head.

  “I love you more than anything.”

  I nod and cry and stroke his cheek.

  “I love you, too. I love you so much.”

  A ventilator... fuck.

  We cling to each other.

  “Cleo baby?”

  “Yeah?”

  “During the CT...go get me... I want another robe. One with a better tie...in case...the ICU.” His eyes roll slightly, and the oxygen monitor sounds its alarm.

  Arethea comes running. They take him straight back to CT. I veer the other way, like Kellan said.

  Twenty-Four

  Cleo

  “I’m sorry, ma’am but you’re not listed as a visitor.”

  I thrust my arm out across the desk. “I have an armband. I’m with Kellan Drake. He had a bone marrow transplant.”

  The woman scans the bar code on my arm band, and I hear a low, discordant thrum. “Your band expired, honey. If you want to get into the ward again, you’ll need to have your relative notify us.”

  “I can’t! He’s going on a ventilator.” I burst into tears. “Please let me in, I have to see him now. I don’t have time to wait!”

  “Sit down over there.” I fidget in a
plastic chair as the woman makes calls. Then she beckons me to the desk. “Someone’s coming to talk to you.”

  A moment later, Arethea comes through the doors... pushing a cart. My belongings are heaped on it.

  I clamp my hand over my mouth and have to struggle not to pass out.

  “He’s okay.” She nods, and tears start dripping from her eyes.

  “Arethea, what the fuck?” My heart is pounding wildly.

  “He’s okay. Come here...” She steers me around a corner to a more private nook, and sits beside me on a leather couch, wrapping an arm around my back.

  “Cleo—” her eyes widen— “he doesn’t want to let you back in.”

  “What?”

  “He’s worried about this. This ventilator,” she explains.

  “Are you kidding me?” I feel a swell of panic, followed by a sharp ache in my chest. “Can’t you help me? Go get Willard!”

  She shakes her head. “Yesterday, the going out. We all knew about the CMV. He planned this. I think he will change his mind. Kellan is strong. You might have to give him time.”

  “Just give him time?” I start to sob. “I want to talk to him. I need to see him, please!”

  “I am so sorry.”

  “You can’t do this! You can’t just... throw me out!”

  Arethea wraps her arms around me. I hop up and pace and try to reason with her. Cut a deal.

  “He doesn’t want you in there. Not right now,” she says softly.

  “Talk to Willard. He could let me in!”

  She shakes her head. “Kellan is the patient. Cleo, we are with you...in spirit, but I can’t let you in against his wishes. You want me to text you?”

  “No!” I hold my head and sob so loudly, someone peeks into the little room to see what’s going on.

  Arethea sits with me until she’s paged. She says she’ll try to text me. I nod, even though inside I hate her. I hate all of them.

  He’s mine. Kellan is mine. I won’t stop until I get back in.

  * * *

  I don’t leave the transplant unit’s waiting room for three days. Arethea said she’d try to text, but I don’t see a message from her. I play on my phone and do sit-ups and change my clothes in a nearby bathroom, never leaving the area outside the locked doors for too long, in case he calls for me.

  As for me, I call the ward incessantly. I talk to every nurse I know and beg them all. When someone walks through my waiting room, I try to talk to them. I call Kellan’s dad, his brother, leaving messages. I call Manning, Whitney. Nothing.

  At the end of the third day, the woman at the desk appears in front of me with a short, red-haired woman, who explains that I can’t live here, as they put it.

  I give her the Carlyle Hotel’s address, and before I leave, she passes me a big, tan envelope.

  “Arethea left it for you that first day,” she tells me, dashing all my hopes.

  I rush to the Carlyle, get a room, and open the envelope in the privacy of my room: a new notebook from Kellan. When did he find the time to write in this? I flip through the pages. Love notes. Three’s an envelope as well.

  Afterward, it says. Fuck that.

  I dress in something clean and go back to the hospital. I shower in the day and sleep in the main lobby at night.

  The receptionist who sent me packing can’t help noticing I’m back. I tell her our story. She seems sympathetic but she never gives me any news.

  Five days pass. I forget to eat, forget to sleep. My mother calls. My phone rings and rings.

  Six days.

  A week. Unfathomable.

  I go wandering the city blocks. I call his phone, and call and call. I buy myself a neck pillow so I can sleep out in the waiting room. The receptionist is my friend now. She says she is praying for me.

  Manning shows up on the eighth day, and Whitney on the ninth. Something Whitney says turns my friend the receptionist against me. I’m asked to leave the waiting room and not come back.

  I wander the hospital halls. I wonder if I do this long enough, if I can catch his cancer. They would let me in, then.

  I ask every day about him. Sometimes janitors I recognize, a few times nurses. No one tells me he’s dead. So I assume he is alive. I write him letters. I send them. I start a list of quotes I wrote on the sparrows and one day, in a fit of delirious exhaustion, I walk a few blocks down and get one tattooed on my ribs.

  “Unless you love someone,

  nothing else makes any sense.”

  –e.e. cummings

  My clothes hang loose. I find a pair of Kellan’s narrow-waisted lounge pants in my bag and vow to never take them off. One afternoon—day twelve, I think—I take the subway to the Carlyle and shave my head. My mother comes and tries to make me go. She threatens me, like Kellan’s dad did him.

  I call his dad’s office. I call Manning, begging. Whitney comes again, this time with a plane ticket home. I refuse it. She claims she doesn’t know how Kellan is. He made it through the first night on the ventilator, but no one is being updated.

  He’s on a ventilator. Kellan is.

  “So he’s in a coma?” My voice sounds dead and dry.

  “Cleo... I don’t know.” She holds my hands. We’re in my suite at the hotel. “You need to eat.”

  “I eat chili dogs. Did you know it’s my blood?” Tears leak from my eyes. “I made Kellan sick.”

  “No you didn’t. CMV is common. Very common. He got it at the most likely time for transplant patients to get it.”

  Whitney pulls me into her arms, and I sleep a little while. She takes me downstairs to the hotel restaurant. I push some eggs around and ask her to go with me to the hospital.

  When we get there, she cries. “Cleo—I’m worried. You’re so much like I was. After Ly.”

  “Is he dead? Are you telling me that Kellan’s dead? I’m not like you! Lyon is dead!”

  I run away and don’t come back to Memorial Sloan-Kettering for two days. One of them, I drink in central park. I call Kellan’s father’s office. I call and leave another message for his brother, Barrett.

  Manning calls me, asking how I am.

  “How’s Kellan?” I ask.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Liar. Fuck you, Manning. I want to see Truman.”

  Manning arrives with the dog the next day. Truman is wearing service dog clothes. “He’s a PTSD dog. Kellan’s service dog.”

  PTSD from what? But I know the answer: The first transplant. He was alone. I hug the dog. I fall asleep in the waiting room while Manning talks about...something.

  I wake up in my hotel room. Manning wants me to eat soup.

  I laugh. “I need a feeding tube, or TPN. An IV. I think I have cancer too.”

  Manning’s freckled face goes serious and frowny. “Cleo, you have to stop. He wouldn’t like this.”

  “Wouldn’t? Or doesn’t? Is he dead? Manning, tell me please.” I start to sob. He shakes his head, like it’s a shame, what’s happened to me. I shove him. “Go away! If you know nothing, go away!”

  That night, when Manning flies back home to man the grow house, I hatch a plan. I wait for my ex-friend the receptionist to leave her desk, and then I hit the “open” button on her desk and dash right through the doors barring the hall.

  I run straight to Kellan’s room—our room. I throw the door open and nearly pass out from the rush of seeing—

  Nothing.

  Holy fuck. Our room is fucking gone. The bed is stripped.

  Kellan is dead.

  I scream and wail. The noises are so strange. They don’t sound like me. A second later, nurses burst into the room. I don’t even look at them, just throw myself on our bed, clutching the railing as I curl into a ball. “I want to sleep here! One more night... please, one more night!”

  Twenty-Five

  Cleo

  “No! No, no! Cleo! Look at Arethea!” Tight hands grab my wrists. “Kellan is not here.”

  “I know,” I sob.

  “No! He is d
ischarged! He is discharged!”

  “What?” I sit up slowly. My chest is heaving. “What did you say?”

  “He is discharged,” she says more quietly.

  I note the nurses’ faces. Sad and sympathetic. They file out. The room goes still. I’m tired, so I lie down on our bed. No more sheets. Arethea reads my mind. She grabs a blanket from the closet. She lies on the bed with me and holds me while I cry.

  “He doesn’t love me.” I sob violently. “He didn’t want me.”

  “It’s not true. I held him while he cried for you. It happened many times.”

  * * *

  Kellan

  November 14, 2014

  The apartment I’m renting is on the twenty-first floor of a new high-rise overlooking Central Park.

  It’s strangely designed, with just three rooms, all made of mostly glass. The bed is just your basic queen, pushed into the corner of two glass walls, at the corner of the corner unit on the twenty-first floor.

  I sit on the bed and look out over the city. The park is a dark splotch, with gold freckles: twinkling lights. All around it, buildings gleam. Between sky-scrapers, the sun rises and falls, tossing streaks of color at my windows.

  Tonight I watched the sunset sitting cross-legged on the bed, and since then, haven’t really gotten up. I watch the world move out my window and am glad I’m up so high; no one can see me.

  I found a shirt of Cleo’s in my bags—a t-shirt that says GREEK SING—and I’m wearing it, even though it’s a small and I’ve already gained enough weight back to need a medium.

  The t-shirt pushes my central line against my chest, and that’s uncomfortable. But I don’t care. If I had her pants, I’d wear them too. As it is, I wear the pants she bought me. Lounge pants in green and black and blue. I never noticed what she did until I got packed up to leave the unit. How there are three pairs of each pant, two pairs of three waist sizes: 34, 32, and 30. I thought about why, and the only thing I could come up with was that she wanted it to be easy on me, wasting away. When I started dropping weight, she would just rotate the pants out and I wouldn’t even notice when my clothes hung loose.