“Mel, you have to know that I lied to Chevy. I thought I was doing the right thing by pushing him to do better by his girl than I did all those years ago.” I shook my head. “It was foolish, but also, I thought it was the only thing that could be said to keep him from resenting me too. If he thought that I’d learned my lesson and regretted not fighting harder, then he wouldn’t hate me.”
“He wouldn’t hate you either way, Gabe. That kid knows the truth of what went down between you and his mom, how old you were, and how everything factored into what happened. You had nothing to prove to him in that regard.”
“Yeah, well, it took talking that through with John to really understand, and unfortunately, that talk happened a too late to help our situation.”
Mel sat there a moment, seemingly lost in thought. I wanted to give her forever just to process everything, so long as it meant that she didn’t leave my side. When she started growing fidgety, I began to worry. “Mel, I don’t want you to go. I don’t want to lose you. Please, tell me what I have to do. What can I do? I swear to you, nothing like that will ever happen again. I knew better, about you. I just didn’t have the faith in me.”
“And you do now?”
“I understand that you aren’t like all the other people in this world, and that I need time to think before reacting. I have a scheduled meeting with a psychiatrist before I leave the hospital,” I pointed down to my leg. “They wanted to make sure I was in a good headspace before I left.” I stared down at the bandages that wrapped around my thigh. “I’m going to see if I can find someone when we get back to Georgia, and work through the issues that nearly two decades in this business have left me with.”
“That’s probably a wise decision,” Mel told me as she stared at her hands that were clasped and resting in her lap. It almost seemed as though she did that because she was fighting putting her hands somewhere else. It was probably wishful thinking to hope that she wanted to touch me and had to fight herself not to. “I understand what you’ve explained to me, Gabe.” Her eyes came up to meet mine, and it was the first time I noticed that they were brimming with unshed tears.
“Maybe the therapy will help with the way you respond to things in the future. Maybe it would help me with the same, because I’m definitely not blameless in this mess. I could have pulled up my big girl pants and stuck around to talk things out with you at the hotel, but the sentiment you left your son with was one scenario that I had already lived through, and that man had excuses a plenty for too many years.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. Shit. Imagining how she must have felt when she overheard me talking to Chevy was even worse when she put it into perspective with her own words, her past. “I’m so sorry, Mel.”
“I know, and I accept your apology, Gabe. For everything.” I didn’t dare get my hopes up because her body language didn’t match the words. Not in the way I wanted it to. “I could have gotten over what you said to Chevy. In fact, I’d taken the day to think everything through and was going to speak to you about it, then when I got back to the venue, Lonny’s emergency happened, and well, you know how that played out.”
Yeah, I wanted to shoot myself in the other leg, knowing she was coming back to talk to me, and I fucked it all up by jumping to conclusions. Unlike Mel, I hadn’t taken the time to just think it all through.
“Your world, the reactions all of you have to life, it’s unreal. Just look at where you are right now. You were shot. I never want to be in Calista’s shoes, where she falls in love with a man only to have someone else tug his strings. No matter if it’s your son, his mom, the band, your manager, some woman you were with once upon a time ago, or a recent groupie trying to get her 15 minutes with someone famous. There’s always going to be something, and while it wasn’t a concern for me before, it is now because you reacted to me based on what everyone else in this life would have done.
“I don’t know if I can trust you, this life, or what that will mean for a future with you. The worry will always be lying there, dormant and ready to wake. What if you leave for a tour that I can’t go on, and we argue? In the back of my mind, what I’m going to see there, is you with that groupie pinned to the wall, ready to fuck away your frustrations.”
“I wasn’t going to go through with it. I swear to you, Mel. The most that happened was we kissed. I shoved my hand up her skirt just as the room to that door opened, and only because I thought… I thought you should see what you just put me through.” I hung my head. The shame so thick inside me, I nearly choked on it. “I understand it will take you time to get over seeing that, and the fact that I did it.”
“No, I don’t think you do. Gabe, we can’t…” I started to tell him when the door to his room opened.
“Sorry, I just need to do a vital check on Mr. North-man,” the hesitation in her voice, when saying my name was odd. Apparently, Mel thought so too. She stood and turned, first glancing at the board on the wall and then at something on the woman who entered the room.
“Get out!” She hissed while pointing a finger toward the door.
“Excuse me? It’s my job, we have to check on…”
“It is not your assigned job tonight, now get out of this room before I insure you never work in a hospital again,” Mel threatened just as the door to the room opened once more.
“Abby, what are you doing in here?” The nurse who had been assigned to me asked.
“I was just, the machines, I was checking.”
“Mr. Northman isn’t your patient, now remove yourself from his room immediately.” Once the woman fled, my nurse, Mrs. Carter, turned back to us. “I apologize for the intrusion. I promise you, that will not happen again.”
“Thank you,” Mel managed to say before coming to sit back down beside me. That time, she didn’t keep her hands away. She reached over and took hold of my hand instead.
I waited. Then I just watched as she closed her eyes and held tightly to my hand. “I’m so very happy that you’re okay. I don’t know what I would have done if you had been hurt more seriously, or not made it.” Her eyes opened slowly, the tears that had been sitting there, trapped by her lashes, finally tracked down her cheeks. “I am so grateful that you are doing well, will make a wonderful recovery, and are going to get some help about how to handle the life you lead.”
“But?” I asked because I could feel the finality of her words thick in the air.
“I just can’t do this with you right now.” She sighed. “I’m a nurse practitioner, Gabe. Your first thought when you saw me in the room set up for emergencies, shouldn’t have been that I was sucking someone’s dick as revenge for hearing you call your son’s mom the only love you’ll ever have.”
I cringed at the thought that she’d heard me say that because those words rang false in every way. “Let’s be honest,” I tried to add some levity to the situation. “My first thought would never have been, ‘maybe that guy got his dick chomped on tonight.’” I fake shivered at the thought. Mel laughed with me, but it wasn’t enough.
“Right, but it shouldn’t have been, ‘Mel’s sucking Lonny’s dick in here.’” She did shiver at the thought. “It was bad enough I had to see it, along with the damage that girl did.”
“I know,” I told her. “There aren’t enough apologies in the world.” We sat silently for a few minutes with Mel still holding on to my hand. “You’re leaving in the morning, aren’t you?”
“I think it’s for the best,” she told me.
I tipped my head into a half-ass nod before responding. “I’m not giving up on us, Mel.”
“Okay,” was the only answer she had for me. Not very promising, but at least she hadn’t told me I’d be wasting my time.
20 – Discharge & Disaster
Once I was discharged from the hospital, my band, Chevy, and Wen’s daughter all hopped back on the bus and took off for Georgia. Kendra flew back first thing in the morning, and they were able to pay to get Chevy’s ticket transferred into Mel’s name so tha
t she could fly home with her. She wanted a head start, no doubt to get all of her things out of the house before I returned.
Everything was fucked and I didn’t know how to unfuck it. “You doing okay?” John asked as he sat beside me.
“Not really. My leg feels like it has been through war. My woman is in the process of packing her shit and leaving, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to make up for what I did and earn her back.” I tipped a smirk up to him then. “Plus, I get you lot, crashing my pad, for however long it takes.”
“I’m thinking about buying a place not too far from you.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, seriously. Just need to convince Jade that moving won’t impact the kid negatively. She thinks the school change up will be a challenge.” He shrugged. “I think Wen’s been thinking about it too. We’re all pretty much over the poison that LA breeds.” John tapped the table repeatedly, while staring off into space for a bit.
“What’s going through your mind right now?”
“I was just thinking,” John mentioned as he pointed to my leg. “Don’t you need someone around to help change that bandage for you and get you back up and walking good and proper?”
I grinned at my friend and then asked him the biggest favor known to man. “Can you make her stay?”
“I’ll call and stall her, but you’re going to have to make the case for her staying once we get there though.”
“Fair enough.”
~*~
It took a little over five hours to get back home thanks to a traffic snag we hit along the way. I had hoped that the call John put into Mel would keep her there until we were able to make it to town. Thankfully, Kendra and Mel’s flight had been delayed due to a mechanical issue with the plane and it turned out they were coming in a little later than we’d get there. That gave me plenty of time to put a plan together and formulate a convincing argument for her to stay.
When they finally got in, I was tucked away in my bedroom upstairs. The stairs were not fun to ascend, but I figured Mel would be too consumed with yelling at me for taking them to leave. That was step one. Do something stupid to prove I couldn’t be left to my own devices.
“How the hell did he get up there? All of you idiots just stood around and let him go up the stairs? He was shot. They had to repair a tear in his femoral artery! Seriously?” I heard her yelling before she made her way up.
“Sorry, Mel,” one of them called out to her.
“We weren’t thinking,” Chevy added. I couldn’t see her, but everyone paused in speaking so I figured she was giving him a look.
“Out of everyone here, you should have known better, Chevy. That was inexcusable.”
“You’re right. Maybe you should check on him, just in case then, and yell at us later?” My son made the suggestion, to which Mel’s reply was to huff and stomp into my room.
“Did you do this on purpose?” She asked, the minute she walked through my door.
I shrugged my shoulders and smiled. “It wasn’t my best decision, but I wanted to be comfortable in my own bed, with my own shower that has a seat in it,” I told her as I pointed to the bathroom in question. “Besides, I’ve missed sleeping in my own space and I didn’t want to force Chevy to move out of his room downstairs for me. It’s his and he’s had enough upheaval this year.” All of that was true enough. “Besides, I’m worried he'll move out into the pool house if we make a big deal about this,” I pointed to my leg. “To be honest, I don’t want him any further away.”
“Fine,” she huffed. “Did one of those assholes help you up here, at least?”
“Yes. John argued the whole time he took the weight off my hurt leg, I promise.”
“I really don’t think this is such a good idea, Gabe.”
“Same reasons apply as they did for my son, and for adding you to the tour, Mel. You saw that nurse try to come into my room while you were at the hospital with me. What do you think will happen if we go looking for an at-home nurse? I trust you. More than that, I need you to be the one.”
When her features softened, I knew she wouldn’t argue any longer. “When was your bandage changed last?”
“Right before I left the hospital,” I told her and then she went about making sure I got washed up, freshly bandaged, had taken my meds, and eaten a solid meal.
After a week, she finally started to thaw a bit and carry on conversations that didn’t revolve around what I wanted for dinner, how to shower properly without causing myself unnecessary pain, and how to do exercises that would prevent blood clots and promote healing in my thigh.
“What are you up to?” Mel asked me as she came in carrying fresh sheets for my bed.
“You don’t have to do that,” I told her, nodding my head toward the sheets.
“Yes, I do. Making sure you’re resting in a clean space is just as important as keeping the wound cleaned.”
“You know what I mean. Chevy could come in and help me with stuff like that.” She laughed then.
“Have you seen the way Chevy makes his own bed?”
“No,” I admitted. “Should I be concerned?”
“Very,” she teased me and winked. Actually winked. It was the first bit of playfulness that I’d seen out of her since the night before I screwed it all up.
“Anyway, I was just writing, coming up with some new material to work on.”
“Another album? That means another tour, right? Or will any new stuff just get added to your playlists for the makeup dates for the tour that got put on hold?”
“If this was stuff for my band, I’d say that it would probably just get added at this point, but it’s not for Valhalla Rising.”
“You’re writing for someone else?” I grinned at her as I flipped the notebook around and showed her the title of the song. “Chasing Cars?” She asked.
“That’s the name of the band the boys have,” I told her proudly. My son, his two brothers, and a friend of theirs had finally decided on a name. Since each of them was named after a vehicle, and their friend after a famous race car driver, it seemed too perfect to pass up.
“Let me see!” Mel clapped excited as she put the sheets down on the chair in the corner and crawled up across the bed to sit beside me. Feeling the warmth of her body so near mine was damn near heaven. I allowed her to grab the notebook out of my hands and took the time to study her face. Those eyes of hers shimmered with emotion as she read through the lyrics. “This is beautiful, Gabe.” She turned to look at me then. “Has he seen this yet?” I shook my head, ‘no’. “I’m betting he’s going to love it too,” she told me as her eyes dropped from staring into my own down to my lips. It took every bit of determination I had not to push forward and take that kiss. The want was there in her eyes, in her stare, but she wasn’t ready yet.
“Sorry to have just hopped in here like this,” she mentioned as she started to move away from me.
“Please, don’t.” My words came out quiet, but felt as though they were powerful enough to be heard throughout the whole house. “Sit with me for a minute, Mel.”
“I really shouldn’t.”
“Maybe not, but I enjoy the company.” It had been a while since I’d just been able to appreciate her closeness. “Stay, please. I could also use the inspiration.” I tapped the notebook in her hand. “Maybe you can help me out with the rougher parts?”
She laughed. “I’m the nurse, remember? You’re the musician. If anyone should be in here helping you with this song, it should be Chevy.”
“You know him, and have been around the other boys enough, that you can be more helpful than they will be.”
Again, her laughter rang through my room and warmed my heart. “That’s probably true. If you let them have a go at it, I can see all the ego that will get dumped inside.”
“Hey! You two look cozy.”
“Speak of the devil, and he shall appear,” I called out to my son, who was inadvertently going to be the one to burst this bubble I had going with Mel
. Sure enough, she scurried off the side of the bed and went to retrieve the sheets from the chair.
“You didn’t have to stop whatever you were doing,” Chevy called out and I could tell by the look he offered me that he was sorry for interrupting.
“It’s okay. Your dad was just showing me a song he was writing, and I have some things to get to once this is done.” She held up the sheets for him to see. “Don’t suppose you’d mind helping your dad swap to the chair while I get this done?”
“Sure thing, Mel. You know, I could have done that. You’re not a maid here,” he told her and then tossed me a look like I was being an asshole making her do something that seemed more housekeeping than medically necessary.
Mel laughed. “Like father, like son, huh? Your dad said the exact same thing, and then I informed him that I’d seen the way you make your own bed.”
Chevy visibly cringed before turning a sheepish smile to me. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “So what song are you working on?”
“Something for you, for your band. Mel’s going to help me with it later, when she gets done whatever else it is she needs to do today.”
My son smiled widely then. “Great! Can’t wait to see what you two come up with,” he told her before he turned quickly to leave after he helped deposit me in the chair.”
“You shouldn’t give him hope that there will be more here than there is,” she warned me quietly while stripping the old sheets off my bed.
“Maybe it’s not him I’m trying to offer hope to,” I explained.
“Gabe,” she whispered.
“Mel,” I called out with far more confidence that I felt.
Revived Page 21
