I’m alive.
Are you surprised?
Me too. But there I am, broken nose, eyes swollen, and head pounding. To my left, my clothes, cut off me, covered in what appears to be a mixture of blood, vomit, urine. . . who knows.
I shift, I’m uncomfortable, sweating and nauseated. My head spins, my gut retches. I feel sick.
My hands are confined to the bed. Waking up in handcuffs is usually cool, until the chick is gone and you realize you’re in a hospital bed with a catheter. Welcome to hell.
Shade’s beside me, in a chair, arms crossed over his chest and glaring at me.
“What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to be here. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
I look out the window.
“Are you okay?”
“Am I what?” My eyes don’t move from the window.
“Okay?”
I lift my handcuffed hands, the metal hitting the edge of the hospital bed. “What the fuck do you think?”
Shade nods. “Right.” And then he swallows, shaking his head. “I called her.”
“Why?”
“Thought she should know.”
I wondered how much groveling I’d need to do if I ever wanted to get back in her life. No. The price is too high. We are done. I know I won’t be forgiven, and shouldn’t be. I’m not going to bother asking. My amends should be death. They’d be better off. They wouldn’t have to hurt anymore, and I wouldn’t be able to cause pain. They can forget me this way, forget I ever existed at all. Amberly can move on, find a good guy.
The thought of her with someone else dips my stomach. It’s the darkest darkness that bleeds purple.
Shade clears his throat. I don’t look.
“You didn’t have to come,” I tell him, fidgeting with my IV, and then I look at him. I feel his pain right then. “And you look like shit, Shade.”
The corner of his mouth curves. Scratching his forehead, he then yanks on his beanie hat and pulls it down over his hair. “I know, but you know, a crazy thing happened last night. My brother tried to kill himself, and I’m kinda pissed off about it given the shit I’ve gone through with addicts. What was it?”
“What was what?”
He sighs. “What were you taking?”
“I don’t remember.” It’s the truth. I don’t.
A word rattles in my head. Addicts? Am I an addict? I could quit, couldn’t I? No. Probably not.
“What do you remember?”
I don’t think about it. Don’t want to. I want to be blind and dumb and not remember. I don’t want to have a heart. There’s a certain point of blackness I’m clinging to where my memory fails me. “Nothing.”
“Tell me something.” Shade pauses, and waits until my sore eyes find his. “Why’d you do it? Why do you want to forget?”
I shrug. It’s painful. I’m shaking. My hands, my chest, my heart pounds. I’m completely fucking lost. But there’s no answer good enough. At least one I’m going to give anyone.
But I don’t get away with that answer because this is Shade, and he’s a relentless son of a bitch. He waits. “I’m not leaving here until you tell me.”
I look at him. Then the wall. He doesn’t leave.
“Oh, Christ. Fine. Fuck. I wanted to forget. I want out of this pain,” I admit. “Didn’t work. Now they have me on a twenty-four-hour suicide watch.”
“Where did you get the drugs?” he asks, and I know why he’s asking. Rhya, his friend who shot herself in the head, she was an addict and got her drugs from my dealer.
“Why?”
“You know why,” he growls, the intensity of his wild stare swallowing the sky-blue.
I groan and toss my pounding head back against the pillow. “Just fuckin’ leave it alone, man.”
“Fine. Destroy your life. See if I care!” he shouts, standing up and knocking the chair over.
He cares. He can’t deny that he does, but I don’t stop him from leaving. I want to be alone. I want this chaos inside my head to be gone, along with the memory of her. I want to rip my face from my skull, dig out the memories and suffocate them until there’s no life left to live.
Just when I think maybe I might get some alone time, nurses come in, check on me and then Ricky appears.
I groan. “Awesome.”
“Don’t give me that shit.” He shakes his head and sits in the same chair Shade knocked over. Only now he gets right in my face and makes me look at him. “I’m glad you’re still alive.”
“For now, I suppose.”
He stares. Like he can’t believe I said that.
“Why are you here?”
His stare doesn’t leave. I wish it would. “Because I have some things to say to you.”
“If I listen, will you leave?”
He chuckles, then speaks. “I never really took the time to understand you.”
Oh, Jesus Christ. I wish this shit would have killed me so I didn’t have to sit here today and listen to this. Am I thinking about the girl? Which one? I think I’m thinking about both.
“I admit, Tiller, I didn’t know how to deal with you, and I was just trying to survive and keep you fed. Dealing with you. . . well, I didn’t. I just let it go that it was just the way you were. I get that you’re a badass, Tiller. I get that no one and nothing controls you. Not the sport, not the sponsor, nobody. I understand that. It’s hard to conform to something you started to do as fun.” He pauses, like Shade did, and waits for me to look at him. I do because maybe then he’ll leave soon. “But what the fuck, man? Drugs? I raised you. I gave up everything to make a life for you, and this shit. . . was I so bad at parenting that I didn’t teach you to be a decent human being? What did I do?”
“It wasn’t you,” I mumble, hating he’d question himself. “It was never you.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you then? If you need help, I’ll get you help. We’ll be there for you, but I can’t sit by and let this happen to you. I can’t let a boy I love as my son kill himself. This is it for me, man. I’ve put up with the drugs, parties, the arrests. . . not anymore. You saw what losing Rhya did to Shade. What do you think he’s going to do if he loses his blood to it too? What are you doing?” He waits. I say nothing. “We all cared about Rhya. It was hard, and here you are being your typical selfish self only thinking about you. Your whole life I’ve stood by and let you take chances. I stood by and let you do what you wanted because that’s you. That’s the Wild Cat we all know.”
He has valid points, doesn’t he?
Straightening his posture, Ricky stands and tosses a brochure on the bed. “We talked about it and here’s the deal. You want to keep living in the house and riding for Honda, you go get help. You go for thirty days and follow the program, and you get your shit together. You talk to someone if you can’t talk to us because we can’t do this anymore. If you don’t go, Honda’s out. They’re dropping you and so is Monster Energy.”
I knew that would happen and you know, I’m surprised they’ve given me as much as they have.
Just before Ricky leaves the room, he looks over at me, tears in his eyes. “My brother might have been your father, but you’re my son, Tiller. I’m not going to stand by and watch you kill yourself.”
And as my luck would have it, like they’re all waiting for their turns to tell me how much of an asshole I am, Roan comes in and I know, because I’m handcuffed, I won’t be able to walk away and he’s counting on that.
Roan scowls at me, menacing and mean, just like I’ve always known him to be, and steps on the tube running to my dick. “I don’t like you.”
“Nothing new.”
“Shut the fuck up. Just listen.”
I roll my eyes. It hurts. “Ordinarily I wouldn’t, but I’m handcuffed to the bed.”
But then he’s staring at me.
I stare back and sigh. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Why did you do it?”
“You’re gonna have to be more specific than that. Apparently, if you ask everyone else, I’m a fuck up, and I’ve done a lot of shit.”
“Why’d you fuck O?”
Of course he wants to know this again. “Shit. This again? Just let it go.”
“No. Fuck you.” He steps on the catheter again.
My hands fly to my dick in pain. I scream, and the nurse comes running. “What’s wrong?”
“None of you goddamn concern.” Roan turns to face her. “Get the fuck out.” And then the motherfucker gets in my face, grabs my neck and squeezes. I can’t do a goddamn thing because well, I’m handcuffed, remember? “Why did you do it? You know what she means to me.”
I can barely get the words out, what with his hands around my throat, but I croak out, “You fucked that reporter, so she was looking for payback and I was a willing participant.” He lets go, stands up and glares. “Don’t over think it. It wasn’t planned. It just happened.”
“How would you feel if I fucked Amberly and took her virginity?”
I stare him in the eye. I breathe slowly, clench my jaw and say, “I already did, so too late.”
“I had my chance a year ago. I could have.” He’s lying, or is he? “How the fuck would you have felt then?”
And then I do think about it. I think about it longer than I want to and the idea of someone else touching her, like that, it sends my blood boiling and my pulse racing.
He looks at my face but not my eyes. He lets go of my throat, then says, “I kissed her.”
I take a sharp breath, an inhale I don’t deserve and grit my teeth. My cuffs clank against hard plastic and I’d give anything to destroy him for touching her. “When?”
His smiles degrading. “Does it matter?”
“Yes, it fucking matters.” I’m unsteady, weak, and vulnerable. It’s why he’s doing it. “I swear to God, Roan, if you tell me recently, I’m going to kill you.”
“Paybacks are a bitch, aren’t they?”
“That’s fucked up, and it’s not the same thing.”
“Yeah, asshole, it is the same exact thing. Amberly’s been yours since we were kids and Ophelia has been mine. It was unspoken, but shit, it shouldn’t have had to be said.”
He has a point. But I can’t agree with him.
“Look, I don’t know what you want me to say,” I admit, sighing. “It wasn’t planned. It wasn’t something I did to hurt you or her. It just happened. It was one time and it’ll never ever happen again.”
He nods, stares at the floor. “I know it won’t.” He’s confident, but in me, he’s faithless. “I don’t want you to die, ya dumb motherfucker.”
“I hear you. Let’s leave it at that.”
We leave it at that.
He leaves.
Willa comes in next with a nurse. She gives me detoxification drugs and medicine to stabilize my blood pressure to ease me through the withdrawal.
The nurse leaves. I’m alone with another set of disappointed eyes. I look at her, the bright fluorescent lights blinding me. She touches my cheek. I try to slow my breathing, the nerves, my heart, but I can’t, so I wait for what she’s going to say to me.
She hands me an envelope. “You’re her father.”
I don’t look. I didn’t need the test to know. I examine at my body. My torso’s covered in cuts and bruises underneath the ink. I’m worn and beaten. Dead and withdrawn. I didn’t always look this way. To the one beside me, the one who took in a lonely four-year-old boy who’d just lost his father, she’s been there with Ricky, raising me if not professionally, but mentally.
The thought slams my heart. I’ve let her down too. I feel myself preparing for what she’s going to say next. I tense up, clench my jaw, and stare straight ahead, eyes fixed, focused, and unblinking at the wall.
Willa’s breathing is deep and slow and her eyes are focused on something in the distance, though they aren’t really looking at it. Her eyes are looking inside, reviewing, remembering, figuring out how to tell me what she wants to say. I’m not sure I want to hear it.
It’s what she says to me that breaks me. “You’re enough.”
Willa could have said anything to me right then, anything at all. But she said that.
I inhale and stare at her. My instinct is to look away, but I don’t. I smile, though I have no words to offer her. If I did, they would mean nothing.