I’D GONE AND fucked up again, and I didn’t have the first clue what I’d done wrong this time. Bea had been almost in tears when she’d scurried off to the bathroom—I could sense her distress in the air between us even if I couldn’t see the shimmering evidence of it for myself.
The temptation to follow her into the bathroom and refuse to leave until she filled me in as to how I’d screwed myself over nearly overwhelmed me, but I forced myself to give her some privacy. I owed her that much and so, so much more.
I flipped on the lights, dragged on a pair of shorts, and tried to tidy up the room a bit while she was in the bathroom, attempting to distract myself by keeping busy. It didn’t take me very long to clean up the random pieces of clothing we’d tossed, though, and soon I was wishing I had something to do with myself again—maybe one of the coloring books or some crocheting—something. But all I had was my phone.
I’d left the coloring books I’d brought with on the road trip in Grandma’s room in the hospital, thinking they’d be of more use to me there while I sat by her bed and she slept. Should’ve brought them with me, even though I hadn’t realized it at the time.
Just served as further proof that I was an idiot. Not that there’d been any lack of evidence on that score.
Taking out my phone, I pulled up a mind-numbing game app to try to waste some time and entertain myself for a bit, but it didn’t help much. None of these games required enough thought to be a true distraction. I closed that first one down and opened up a nine-by-nine Sudoku puzzle, hoping that would do the trick until Bea returned and I could apologize for being an ass.
She was in the bathroom for a long time—well after the water had shut off and I’d completed probably twenty or more Sudoku puzzles, because they didn’t present enough of a challenge to me anymore. I had to fight off the urge to barge into the bathroom and demand answers, but obviously acting on my impulses was a bad idea, especially when it came to this relationship.
I only ended up getting myself into trouble when I did things like that.
When she finally came out again, I tossed my phone on the bed and tried to prepare myself for the tongue-lashing I’d earned.
But she didn’t give me one.
“You should shower and get dressed so we can get you something to eat,” she said without bothering to look at me. She started folding up the clothes I’d set on the foot of the bed, tidying things up beyond what I’d already done while she showered. “And then tomorrow we can go back to the hospital to see your grandmother again. Unless you want to go back tonight? What time are visitation hours over? I’m sure she’d like that, now that you’ve gotten a bit of rest. Does this hotel have a restaurant downstairs, or—”
“Bea,” I cut in. I wasn’t even sure what I wanted to say—just that I needed to say something to dig myself out of the hole I’d apparently buried myself in.
“Hmm?” She folded my shirt into a tidy square and fastidiously set it on top of my already folded jeans, studiously avoiding my gaze.
“Do I need to apologize?” I asked. “Because it definitely feels that way.”
“You don’t need to apologize.”
I only wished I could believe her.
The hollow tone she’d used and the fact that she still wouldn’t look at me, though? Between those two things, there wasn’t a chance in hell I’d believe her words.
Especially not once she turned away from the bed and started packing up the clothes she’d been wearing earlier, stowing them in her suitcase when she ought to be emptying its contents into the drawers.
My stomach jumped into my throat. “Are you leaving?” I croaked.
“I’m going down to the front desk to see if I can get another room.”
“What? No.” I jumped off the bed but didn’t know what I intended to do with myself now that I was up.
In lieu of answering, she slipped her laptop into a sleeve and tucked it into the protective pocket of her carry-on bag.
“Why?” I demanded.
“Because I think it’s better this way.”
“Better for who? Because it won’t be better for me.” Which could only mean it was better for her. I’d fucked up well beyond anything I could have imagined if she was refusing to stay here with me.
She didn’t respond to this. A couple more items got placed into her bag, and then she zipped it up and headed for the door, slinging the strap of her purse over her shoulder.
I jumped into action without thinking, darting past her and blocking her exit.
Bea’s glare did a number on my nerves, but I refused to budge. If she wanted to get past me, she was going to have to move me out of her way.
“Tell me what I did wrong,” I demanded. “Did you not want…?” The thought that I’d pushed her into anything she wasn’t ready for made me sick to my stomach. I mean, I wanted to get laid as much as the next guy, but Grandma had instilled in me a healthy respect for boundaries. Over the years, I’d happily fucked plenty of women who’d offered themselves up for the taking, but they’d always been the ones to initiate, not me.
And when it came to the women who had a permanent position in my life, those boundaries were even more important. Granted, until recently, Grandma had been the only woman I’d consider to be in my life and not just on the outskirts of it, but that was neither here nor there.
But Bea wouldn’t answer me.
Hell, she wouldn’t even look at me.
After prying her bag from her hands and setting it next to the door, I reached over and tipped her chin, hating myself for the tears glistening in her eyes. She shook her head, dislodging my hand, and tried to sidestep me.
“What?” I repeated, refusing to let her past me just yet. “I thought we agreed that you’d explain shit to me when I don’t understand something.”
Her eyes closed, as if she couldn’t bear to even look at me while we spoke. Her voice cracked as she said, “I just thought that you’d want to rethink things. You know, now that you know.”
No wonder so many marriages failed if people were always talking in riddles to each other. “Now that I know what?”
“What I’m like,” she whispered.
“I already know what you’re like. You’re funny as shit, and you’re not afraid to bust my balls—”
“Underneath my clothes,” she cut in, trying to back away from me.
I reached for her wrist and locked my hand around it, preventing her from going too far. A risk, sure—she might not take too kindly to my interference, but I had to do something. “The only thing I’m rethinking,” I said cautiously, “is that I should’ve made sure I had condoms on hand for whenever you were ready.”
She shook her head, like she was refusing to believe me.
“Bea,” I said, but she tried to tug her wrist free. She was surprisingly strong, but I was stronger. I tightened my grip, being careful not to hurt her. But then I waited until she glanced up and met my eyes again. “I want you more than I know how to handle,” I admitted, because the truth seemed to be called for. “Touching you earlier—getting a taste of you—that only made my want for you even stronger than it already was.”
“But…” And for once, she didn’t seem to have a ready comeback waiting to bust my balls.
“Come with me,” I said, and I tugged her into the bathroom. She stumbled slightly, thrown off by the shift in gears, but she followed without putting up a fight. I flipped on the light and faced the mirror, standing her in front of me. “Tell me what you see.”
She rolled her eyes, so I pinched her upper arm lightly before settling both of my hands on her shoulders, anchoring her in place.
“You really don’t want me to tell you,” she muttered.
“Do it. What do you see?”
“Too much of me and not enough of you.”
Yeah, so maybe she was right. I definitely did not like hearing that shit.
“Know what I see?”
“Are we playing Twenty Questions or something?”
“I see a gorgeous woman who’s scared to look at herself, so she won’t let anyone else look at her.”
“I can’t stop you from looking.”
“Bullshit. You won’t let me have the lights on. You won’t let me see you.”
She scowled, shrugging my hands off her shoulders, and then left the bathroom. “We should get going,” she said with finality, effectively putting an end to the conversation. “Get showered, Blake.”
“Are you going to take your things and get another room as soon as I get undressed and can’t chase you out in the hall?”
She didn’t answer me with words, but eventually she gave me the tiniest shake of her head.
It might take me a while, but eventually, I did learn from my mistakes. So instead of arguing with her further, I did what she’d asked—I got into the shower, hoping that she would still be in my room when I was done and not down at the front desk or already established in some other room without me.
“SHOULDN’T YOU BE getting back to your team soon?” Lillian demanded in lieu of a traditional greeting when the two of us returned to her hospital room the next morning.
“They know why I’m here. They know this is more important.”
“Watching an old lady die is more important than living your life, hmm?” But despite her barking at him, she couldn’t stop herself from smiling at the bouquet of tulips he’d brought in. “Where’d you find tulips like that at this time of year?”
He handed them off to me, and I arranged them in a vase I’d found down in the gift shop, filling it with water before positioning each stem carefully.
“You can buy flowers of all sorts at any time of year these days,” Blake said. “I’d think you’d remember that from the last time you had cancer.”
“I’m an old lady. I don’t remember shit I don’t want to remember. And that is definitely something I’d rather forget.”
“You don’t want to remember flowers?” he shot back.
“I want to forget being sick before. Hell, I want to forget being sick now. You should help me out with that.”
I snorted but tried to cover my laugh with a fake cough.
When I surreptitiously glanced over, I found Lillian eyeing me, but Blake didn’t seem to notice. He was scanning the dry erase board on the wall where the nurses noted items about his grandmother’s care. He was studying it so intently that it seemed he was trying to memorize every detail or detect if she’d been neglected in some way while we were gone.
I kept myself busy on the other side of the room, fussing with the flowers even though they already looked perfect other than being slightly droopy—but they’d perk up soon, now that they were in water.
“Blake, I need you to go hunt down that male nurse for me,” his grandmother said.
“I can do that for you,” I volunteered.
“I want Blake to do it,” she bit off, not even looking in my direction.
“Can’t you just press your call button?” he asked.
“I can but they keep sending Nurse Ratched. I want Brett.”
“There isn’t a Nurse Ratched on your team,” he said, scanning the board once more. “Looks like you’ve got Emily and Samantha today.”
“Emily is Nurse Ratched. Hell, so is Samantha.”
“They’ve both got the same name?”
“I want Brett.”
I snickered.
He grumbled a few things about her getting sued for molestation or harassment, but he left the room.
“He doesn’t take hints well,” Lillian said to me.
“He also doesn’t appear to be familiar with One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”
“No one’s perfect.”
“You should’ve just told him you wanted a word with me.”
“I could’ve. But then he would have wanted to know what it was about, and I thought this should be just between the two of us.”
“Sounds serious.”
“I don’t have time to be anything less than serious, so if you don’t get that impression, we have problems. And I don’t want to have problems with you.”
“Fair enough.”
“Have you thought any more about what we talked about before?” she demanded. “About whether you can let him love you?”
After everything that had happened between us at the hotel, I wasn’t sure how to answer her question. And even though my skin wasn’t prone to revealing a blush, I felt my cheeks heat.
“You have thought about it,” she said definitively.
“I haven’t— There’s just—” I cut myself off, stumbling over my own words.
“He’s not always thoughtful.”
“That’s not the problem, Lil. I am.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t even know. I just— I can’t let him see me.”
“He already sees you,” she barked. “He’s not blind.”
“I think you know what I mean.” Having finished arranging the tulips in the vase, I placed it on a table near the window so the sun would hit them.
“I do. And I also know it’s horseshit.” She scowled so fiercely I felt it in my toes. Her expression made me think of Blake, to be honest. “He knows you used to be fat, right?”
I nodded.
“Well, he’s not an idiot. Might not always seem that way, but he’s got a hell of a brain on him. You got stretch marks and shit you think he won’t like—”
“It isn’t just stretch marks,” I cut in, taking small sips from my bottle of water that I always carried with me. “That’s not even the half of it.”
“Well, everybody has something. I’ve got old, wrinkly skin. And I don’t have any tits anymore. Cancer took ’em. But shit like that never stopped me from knocking boots with the mailman.”
I spluttered on my water, almost spraying her. “The mailman?” I choked.
“Once or twice. But he wasn’t perfect, either. Had a massive beer belly and hairy balls. Don’t like getting pubes in my teeth when I give oral. Makes me choke, and I do that well enough on my own these days without any help.”
I was about to choke, myself, but mine was due to surprised laughter.
“Point is, Blake’s got enough sense to know it isn’t all about superficial shit. He’s had to deal with more than his fair share of that kind of thinking over the years—because of his ADHD and shit. But he’s not gonna give a rat’s ass what you look like, as long as he likes you and you like him. He just wants to be with you. So maybe you need to figure that out, too.”
Blinking in surprise at her frankness, I said, “Maybe I do.”
“So see to it. Because I don’t think I’ve got that much time left, and I need to know he’s got someone looking out for him when I’m gone. If it’s not going to be you, I need to help him figure something else out, without letting him onto the fact that I’m interfering.”
Before I could respond, Blake had returned, toting a nurse who very clearly did not look like she could be named Brett.
“I thought I told you I didn’t want Nurse Ratched,” Lil groused.
“Mm hmm,” the nurse replied. She headed for the bed and pulled a curtain, shutting Blake and me out.
He reached for my hand and nudged his head toward the hall.
A series of tingles raced up my spine when the warmth of his palm met mine. I felt an urge to inch closer to him and allow his warmth to seep all through my body, but I didn’t want to use him, and that was exactly how it would feel. At least to me, it would. Maybe not to him.
Had I used him earlier? Again, he probably didn’t think so, but I was starting to think I had—especially since I’d almost immediately shut him out afterward.
“She give you a hard time?” he asked once the door to her hospital room closed behind us. “She can be kind of blunt. I love that about her—I need blunt—but some people don’t get it.”
“Maybe I need a dose of bluntness, too.”
He snorted in laughter.
“She wasn’t any harder on me than I deserved.”
“Stop that, all right?”
“Stop what?”
We were wandering through the halls of the hospital without any true destination in mind as far as I could tell—neither of us had any need to eat, and we’d already been to the gift shop today. Before long, I realized we were heading toward the pediatric ICU and oncology units. That probably wasn’t the best destination for us, but we kept walking, Blake guiding me as though he knew exactly where he was going and why.
“Stop beating yourself up,” he said. “And maybe stop pushing me away without telling me what I’ve done to deserve it.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” I insisted. “You don’t deserve me treating you the way I have been.”
“Hmm.”
I tried to turn us down a different hallway, but Blake tightened his grip on my hand and tugged me through the double doors.
“What are we doing? Where are we going?”
“There’s someone I want to see in here,” he said.
A woman at the nurse’s station looked up when we came in, and she smiled at him. “Back again?”
“Grandma sent us away so she could yell at her nurse, so I thought we could come and say hello to Christopher.”
“Christopher?” I asked Blake softly, but he didn’t react. Maybe he hadn’t heard me at all.
The nurse grinned, oblivious to my query, her eyes glued to Blake. “They didn’t send her boy toy this time?”
“If they’re smart, they’ve reassigned him to a different ward for as long as Grandma’s in this hospital. Maybe they can prevent a lawsuit. So is it all right if I check in on Christopher?”
“Absolutely. You know where to find him. He’ll be thrilled. He hasn’t had any guests all day—hardly any all week.” She walked around to the front of the desk to join us and bent her head close to mine. “Both parents are working two jobs just to be able to pay for his treatments, and his grandparents don’t live in the state. Sometimes his friends from school stop by, but no one’s been here all week other than his parents for overnight stays, and he’s usually sleeping then.”
She waved us back through the halls, and Blake took off as if he knew exactly where he was headed.
He knocked on a partially closed door, poking his head into the room.
“Koz!” a crackling child’s voice shouted with unbridled glee.
“Mind if I bring my girlfriend in to see you?” Blake asked, drawing me into the room alongside him without waiting for the boy’s response.
“I didn’t know you had a girlfriend,” Christopher replied as we slipped inside the room.
He had the face of a gaunt ten-year-old but the body of a seven-year-old, with protruding bones visible everywhere. Not a hair was to be found on him, but he more than made up for that with IVs and hospital bracelets galore. A bulletin board hung on the wall next to his bed, covered in get-well-soon cards and artwork that I imagined his classmates had created for him.
My heart did a flip, but not because this little boy thought I was Blake’s girlfriend; it was because Blake had taken it upon himself to spend time with a sick child. For all the faults he had—and they were numerous—he truly was a good man underneath it all.
His grandmother was right. He had a good heart, if you could learn to see past his issues. And who the heck didn’t have issues? Lil had made it perfectly clear that my own issues were easily as big as Blake’s, if not bigger.
“I haven’t had a girlfriend for very long,” Blake replied, squeezing my hand. “Not too many girls would know what to do with me. But Bea does.” Then he faced me again and dropped his voice so that only I could hear him say, “At least, I think you do. Do you?”
This time, my heart flipped so hard that it almost stopped beating and I wasn’t sure it would recover. But somehow I managed to nod.
And then I hoped he was right.
I smiled for Christopher’s benefit and took a seat near the window so he could have Blake all to himself for this visit. Blake dragged one of the chairs closer to the little boy’s bed, and in no time, they were deep in conversation. They started off talking about hockey, and then they moved to football and the Bills’ chances at getting to the Super Bowl this year. Before long, I lost track of their discussion, my thoughts returning to everything Lil had said.
If she could be believed—and I saw no reason to doubt her—then Blake just wanted to be with me.
Which meant somehow I had to get over myself.
Because, whether he was ready for it or not, he was going to need someone in his corner sooner rather than later.
He wasn’t alone in that regard, though. I needed someone in mine, too.
And I wanted that someone to be him.