CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHANNING
Maybe I was being too harsh on her. After all, she didn’t have to admit anything. Amber was being honest, and I’d basically punished her for it.
But I couldn’t help my reaction. It downright pissed me off that she’d kissed Rory. It made me jealous as all hell. While I could accept giving her this time to sort things out, I sure as fuck didn’t have to be happy about it.
It had been four days since I hung up on her. I was being a dick. And I never called her back. She hadn’t called me either, though, so I had to wonder if I was losing this war.
On top of worrying about Amber, I had a lot to handle at home. While Mom was stable, I was spending my days figuring out a daytime situation for her. It no longer seemed feasible to have her all alone while I worked, so I was looking into hiring someone to look after her even if just for parts of the day.
I ended up moving back into the house I grew up in to care for her but kept my apartment for the time being. My life in Chicago looked nothing like it used to and suddenly came with a tremendous amount of responsibility.
But this was my mother—the only family I had left. If it was the last thing I did, I was going to make sure she was safe and well-cared for. No one was going to do that better than I could. No one loved her like I did.
Mom was still sleeping when my cell phone rang on this particular morning. It was Amber’s friend, Annabelle. Her number had been programmed into my phone from that one time I asked for her assistance in hand delivering Amber’s Christmas box.
But it was odd that she’d be calling me.
I answered, “Annabelle?”
“Channing, hi.” Her tone was melancholy.
“What’s going on? Is everything okay?”
“Amber doesn’t know I’m calling you, but I thought you should know that she was admitted to the hospital a couple of days ago.”
“What? What happened?”
“She has pneumonia and severe dehydration. I think she was so stressed out that she stopped taking care of herself…caught something. I’d gone to her condo to check on her after she stopped answering my calls, and she was in bad shape. She told me she felt like she was dying, so I drove her to Mass General. Anyway, she’s been here ever since. They’re pumping her with antibiotics and steroids, and they’re not letting her go until her lungs have cleared. I just thought you should know.”
My heartbeat was out of control, and a rush of adrenaline shot through me. I suddenly felt helpless. “Fuck…I obviously had no idea. We…hadn’t been speaking.”
“I know. She was really messed up over that. She’d kill me if she knew I was calling you right now, but I felt that it was the right thing to do. I figured you’d want to know.”
“You said…Mass General?”
“Yes. Room 805 if by some chance you can fly out here.”
***
I couldn’t believe that I had no idea she was so sick. That was proof that I’d let my anger go too far. Were it not for Annabelle calling me, I would’ve still been in the dark for God knows how long. If something had happened to Amber when we weren’t speaking, I’d never forgive myself.
I ended up driving my mother over to her sister’s house, which was nearly two hours away from Chicago so that I could head to Boston.
I didn’t even know whether Amber was going to want me there; I just knew I needed to be there.
The ride from the airport to the hospital was a blur. With only a small backpack, I had no idea how long I’d be staying or what was going to happen.
When the Uber dropped me off in front of Mass General, I rushed to the eighth floor as fast as I could.
It shouldn’t have shocked me to see him standing right outside of her hospital room door. But it did. I hadn’t expected to have to run into Rory at that moment.
My body went rigid, and my fists instinctively tightened. My guard was fully up when he turned around and noticed me.
“How is she?” I asked.
Rory tossed his empty cup of coffee almost violently into a nearby trashcan.
Nice to see you, too.
“She’s sleeping. In fact, she just fell asleep. I would wait to go in there. You’ll wake her up, and she needs her rest.”
“I’m sure if it were up to you, she’d be sleeping all day if it kept me out.”
I wasn’t about to take his word for it. Peeking through the glass, I could see he wasn’t making it up, though. Amber looked like an angel as she lay there with her eyes closed, an IV connected to her arm. She was wearing a light blue hospital gown, and her hair was disheveled
An incredible sadness came over me. It felt like I was breaking inside with each second that I watched her lying there helpless. Look at how much I missed because of my ego. This was a lesson to never, ever part with someone angry—never assume you’ll have all the time in the world to work things out. Amber was probably going to be fine, but what if that weren’t the case? Pneumonia is no joke.
Rory and I were now both side by side, silently competing for space to look through the narrow window on the door. If testosterone in the air could have cured her illness, Amber’s lungs would have cleared in no time
He spoke first. “I’ve never seen her this sick.”
My anger was rising. “We fucking did this to her.”
He abruptly faced me. “You’re blaming me?”
“I said we. Not you. This whole situation. She’s been under so much stress that it wore down her immune system.”
“I never meant to cause her pain by coming back,” he said.
“I know that.”
Rory seemed surprised that I’d agreed with him and seemed to calm down a little. “When did you get in?”
“Just now. I came here straight from the airport. Have you been here the whole time with her?”
“She’s been here for a couple of days. I’ve been here the majority of the time.”
Still looking through the window at her, I asked, “Is she gonna be alright?”
“Yeah. At this point, they’re just monitoring her. This is the first time she’s really fallen asleep. She needed it badly.”
As much as we were making an attempt to be cordial, you could cut the tension in the air with a knife. It felt like it was only a matter of time before one of us lost it on the other.
“Why did you even come here, Channing?”
And with that, it would seem my losing it would be happening sooner rather than later.
I whipped my head toward him. “Excuse me?”
“She told me you weren’t even speaking to her. She didn’t even do anything wrong.”
I was ready to punch him. “Well, forgive me if I got upset because my girlfriend kissed her ex-boyfriend.”
He angrily laughed at me. “Your girlfriend? She’s not your girlfriend.”
“The fuck, she isn’t. She became mine long before you came back from the dead and fucked everything up.”
“Sorry to ruin your plan of fucking me over the first chance you got. You mean to tell me that Boston job was a coincidence? You heard we broke up and wasted no time pouncing on her.”
I bent my head back in laughter. “Are you kidding me? You have some nerve to accuse me of that when you’re the one who fucking pounced on her the second I went away to college. You knew how I—”
“Excuse me, gentlemen!” A nurse interrupted our sparring. “You’re going to need to take this outside. A hospital floor is no place for a fight between two grown men.”
Rory and I just death stared at each other for a few seconds. Huffing and puffing, we stalked over to the elevators and down to the lobby.
Exiting the building in silence, I wasn’t sure if we were about to roll up our sleeves and go at it outside or what. All I knew was, whatever was about to happen between us had been a long time coming, a decade in the making.
We ended up in a grassy area off to the side of the building that was adjacent to a parking lot. There was no one else in sight, which was probably a good thing.
He held his hands out. “What are we even doing out here? What do you want from me, Channing? It’s not enough that you stole the only woman I’ve ever loved out from under me, fucked her, and manipulated her into falling for you?”
I got in his face. “Is that what you really think? You think what she and I have isn’t real? I feel sorry for you if that’s the case, because you’re gravely misinformed with a false sense of confidence. You weren’t there. You have no idea what’s developed between us.”
“You wouldn’t know a mature relationship if it hit you in the face, Lord. Have you ever told her exactly how many women you slept with before her?”
“She knows everything about me. And I’m not the guy you think you know. But I don’t owe you an explanation of how or why I might have changed. I’m not looking for your opinion.”
“I don’t believe that you have changed. I think Amber was a revenge fuck for you.”
Now, he was going below the belt.
“You’re really looking to get decked, aren’t you?” I unintentionally spit at him when I said, “Don’t you ever utter those words again unless you want your face rearranged.”
“So, then, tell me why. How was it that you ended up with Amber as soon as we’d broken up? Out of all of the women in the world you could’ve been with, you ended up with my girl?”
“I was there for her because you dicked her over, jackass—or so we thought. No one knew your real reason for leaving her at the time. She was shattered. You’d broken her heart. That was all I knew. Amber and I never stopped being friends even when you guys were together—you know that. Why should it surprise you that I was there for her when you crushed her?”
“‘There for her’ equals fucking her? Isn’t that taking advantage of a vulnerable person?”
“Again, I don’t owe you any explanations…but it wasn’t my intention to fall in love with her. Believe me, I tried as hard as I could not to.”
“Well, you should’ve fought harder.”
I leaned in and took pleasure in saying, “Best thing I ever did was to give up the fight.”
He gritted his teeth. “So, that’s it? You think you can just appear out of nowhere and steal her from me when she and I have nine years of history together?”
“Out of nowhere? I think there’s a little more to the story than that. Do I need to remind you that you stole her from under me? You knew she was interested in me before I left for UF. Yeah…she told me. You warned her against me.”
“She was innocent. You were not a good fit for her. It was the right thing to do at the time.”
“Of course, it was the right thing—for you. It was all part of your plan.”
“So, fucking sue me for wanting her so much that I was willing to sacrifice our friendship for it. That was how much she meant to me. I couldn’t help that I fell in love with her.”
“Well, I can’t help that I’m in love with her now. You threw away what you had because of a bad decision you made. You chose not to be up front with her. You ended it and left her completely devastated. I picked up the pieces, and you know what? I don’t want to give them back. I love every single broken piece of her. And I can’t feel guilty about that, even though I’m really sorry about what happened to you after the accident.”
Rory rolled his eyes. “I bet you are.”
Shit.
He couldn’t have been more wrong. I took a moment to step back and gather my thoughts.
“Is that what you think? What kind of a person do you think I am? You think what happened to you makes me happy?” An unexpected flurry of emotion came over me in that moment when I noticed the true sadness and regret in his eyes. “I’m fucking devastated for you. You were my best friend at one time. I would never wish that on you. Never.”
We stood in silence just staring at each other, seeming to calm down with each second that passed.
“Yeah, well…” He kicked some dirt. “I still think she’d be better off without me. I just don’t know how to stop loving her.”
“You and me both.”
We continued to stand face to face.
“I guess, in a lot of ways, we’re right back where we started,” he said. “We both want her, and we both can’t have her.” Rory paused, looking up at the sky and then back at me. “I know you probably think I didn’t care about what I did when I broke the pact we made all those years ago, but I felt like a piece of shit for doing that to you. Not that it’s any consolation now.”
“As much as you did me dirty, I honestly can’t say I wouldn’t have done the same thing if it were you who went away and if she’d expressed an interest in me. So, I can’t hold you to a standard that I couldn’t uphold when it comes to myself. I actually forgave you in my head a long time ago.”
“So, if you forgive me, why did you look like you wanted to kill me earlier?”
“That was because of your second-guessing my current intentions. Maybe this would be easier for you to accept if you thought all she was to me was a revenge fuck. But I think at this point, we just need to understand that the one thing we do agree on is that we both want what’s best for Amber, and we both want her to be happy. None of us chose the situation we’re in now. It just happened. And ultimately, it’s Amber who decides whom she wants to spend her life with. If she chooses you, I’m not gonna interfere. And I expect the same from you.”
I wasn’t anticipating what came out of his mouth next.
“I lie awake at night praying she chooses me. And the other half of the time, I’m praying she doesn’t…because I’ll never be able to give her everything she deserves.”
It genuinely did hurt me to think about what happened to Rory. I couldn’t imagine having to deal with that on top of everything else. But I knew Amber. And if she believed Rory was the one for her, his not being able to have children wouldn’t deter her from wanting to be with him. Amber was naturally loving. I could easily see her adopting and treating that child like it was her own. Just look at the way she was with Milo.
“Don’t do that to yourself, man,” I simply said.
His hardened expression seemed to soften. “Where do we go from here?”
“We shake hands and agree not to make this more difficult than it already is.”
Rory held out his hand to me, and I took it. I didn’t know what came over me when I suddenly yanked him toward me into a hug. Then, we patted each other on the back.
“I’m sorry to hear about your mother,” he said.
“Thank you.”
“She was always so nice to me.”
“Yeah. She always liked you.” I grinned and joked, “She never was a good judge of character.”
He smiled. “Jackass.”
As we walked back into the hospital, Rory turned to me and said, “I wasn’t thinking I’d be heading back in here unscathed. You disappoint me, Lord. I was expecting at least a bloody lip.”
“You hurt Amber again, and I’ll be happy to deliver that and more. No matter how this story ends, I will always have Amber’s back, which means you’ll have to watch yours.”
He smacked me hard on the back. “Same goes for you.”
The nurse who’d scolded us earlier was watching us like a hawk when we returned to the floor. Assuming our position in front of the narrow window on Amber’s door, we could see through the glass that she was no longer sleeping.
“Looks like she’s awake,” Rory said. “I was gonna go down to the cafeteria and get some coffee. You want anything?”
I knew he was intentionally giving me time alone with her, and I appreciated that.
“Nah. I think I’m just gonna go on in and let her know I’m here.”
He nodded once. “Alright.”
I watched as he walked toward the elevators. I’d come to Boston hoping to make things right with Amber. I never expected to make peace with Rory.
I guess holiday miracles do happen.