I hit my head back against the mattress and let the sob that had been bubbling up in my throat free.
I didn’t want to die for a lot of reasons, but none seemed so essential as my desire to stay with Zeus.
There were too many things we still had to do.
Too many rides to take on the back of his bike with his big body between my thighs and the dual rumble of the bike and his laughter vibrating through my core.
Too many nights spent at The Wet Lotus, eye-fucking across velvet booths and scantily clad dancers.
Too many battles to win. Too many people to kill. The Nightstalkers most of all.
I wanted time with him, I needed it more than I needed my next breath and even those were limited.
There wasn’t time and there wasn’t much of a choice but whatever was left of both, I wanted to use to be with Zeus Garro.
It had never occurred to me that he might not want to spend that time with me.
Zeus.
The light comin’ in through the slatted curtains fell in fat grey fragments across the hospital bed, highlightin’ the gold of Lou’s hair but shadowin’ the beauty of her face. I leaned back in the chair with my broad back pressed uncomfortably to the rigid plastic contours and raked a hand through my hair.
It was hard to look at her as she was, curled up and frail in a white room stripped of all personality. It was embarrassin’, avoiding a bedridden face, like racism or sexism, any-ism. But I couldn’t wrap my mind ’round the fact that my girl had cancer.
Again.
And that she hadn’t told me about it in the fuckin’ first place.
It had taken five hours of ridin’ my bike through coastal back roads to figure out where she’d been comin’ from.
’Cause she had a point.
If she’d told me about the cancer from the get-go, there’s no way I woulda let myself go there with her. I wouldn’t’a kissed, fucked or held her like she was my woman.
I woulda coddled her, told her to take care of herself and maybe watched from afar, like I’d done the first four months after seein’ her again at that party.
And then Lou wouldn’t be mine.
That was somethin’ even harder to wrap my head ’round.
Because that girl lying in that bed was mine the way a sculpture created by an artist was his. I’d formed her soft clay shape with my words then cast it in copper with my hands and finally she’d settled in her current shape. A little warrior rebel with the soul of an angel in the body of a sinner.
A contradiction and the most beautiful one ever born in nature.
A nurse came in with a soft, nervous smile at the huge biker sittin’ in his leather cut beside the bed of a teenager. She checked the machines and glanced at me like she wanted to ask for a minute alone to do something to Lou a man shouldn’t see.
The plastic chair screeched as I pushed it back.
The woman watched me as I dipped down to place my hand across Lou’s damp forehead and press a kiss to her cheek. “Be back.”
I walked the white corridors with my hands shoved deep in my pockets and my shoulders at my ears.
To occupy myself, I went to the vending machine ’cause I’d forgotten lunch in my quest to find Lou.
Took the side staircase and found it had that stale dead and dyin’ smell.
Counted the stairs as I took ’em two by two.
Lingered over my choice of drink—tea or coffee, milk or sugar—when I only ever drank coffee black.
Kicked my boot against the vending machine while it poured my drink then thrummed my fingers against my thigh when it took too long.
Anything to keep myself from thinkin’ about my little Lou up in that hospital bed sick and wrong with somethin’ I was helpless to fight.
I grabbed the coffee and took the stairs back up at a clip, reachin’ her room with a head fulla panic like somethin’ could’ve gone wrong in the three minutes I wasn’t by her side.
The nurse was still there. Her startled expression collapsed with empathy when she caught the fear in me.
“She’s good for now. Just got a little dehydrated. We’re giving her fluids and after some rest, she should be just fine.”
“Thanks,” I grunted, movin’ around to sit in that fuckin’ orange chair again.
I pulled it right up to her bed and took her hand.
The nurse left quiet.
I was lucky Betsy had been on staff that day or else I wouldn’t’a been allowed in when I found out Lou was even there. I’d spent two hours thinkin’ worse, that the Nightstalkers had got ’er or she’d been hit by a car or some shit.
It’d been her ex-boyfriend of all fuckin’ people who called H.R. to tell her that Lou’d been taken away from school in an ambulance. No surprise that the kid knew ’bout us at that point—everyone in Entrance fuckin’ did—but I had to give the kid some grudging respect for pickin’ up the phone for his ex like that.