Playing Dirty

by Lauren Hawkeye

  She expected him to cup her breasts, to toy with the piercing that he loved so much. She wasn’t sure what to think when, instead of playing with her, he eased her back on her bed.

  “Roll over onto your stomach.” He patted her lightly on the ass. “Do you have any lotion? Oil?”

  Huh?

  “I have some sweet almond oil in my bedside drawer.” She gestured lazily, but the prone position was somehow making her sleepy, despite the fact that she hadn’t been sleeping well at all lately.

  “Perfect.” Retrieving the bottle, he squirted some into his hands, cupping it in his palms to warm it up. “I know you’ve been dying to try anal sex. No time like the present.”

  “Jackass.” Still, she couldn’t help the soft laugh, even as she tried to get her stomach to settle from the food she’d forced into it.

  “Be nice, or I won’t do this.” Tipping his palm over above her back, he drizzled the warm oil down her spine. With a flat hand, he slicked it over her skin, then nudged her over so that he could climb onto the narrow bed and straddle her hips.

  “Haven’t had many boys in your room, huh?” She felt him shifting above her, trying to get comfortable. “How do you sleep on this thing?”

  “Well, unlike you, I don’t sleep crossways and spread-eagle.” Pillowing her head on her hands, she moaned as traced a line beneath her shoulder blades with his thumbs. “And I’ve had plenty of boys up here. It works. You just have to get all nice and...tight.”

  “Temptress.” Still, the hands stroking over her back continued what they were doing, the touches meant to soothe rather than arouse. He worked at a tight spot at the base of her neck, and she pushed into the good kind of hurt that his fingers found.

  “Your hands are swollen.” He worked his way down her arms, and she could hear the frown in his voice as he worked on her grease-smudged hands. “I told you you’ve been working too hard.”

  “They are?” She hadn’t noticed, and an alarm bell started to ring in her head. His soothing touches quickly melted her concern.

  “Yeah.” Finished with her hands, he worked his way back up her arms. Sliding his hands into her hair, he started to rub the muscles of her scalp in a way that made her go cross-eyed with pleasure. When he stopped, she gurgled a protest. “Hey.”

  “You’re warm, too. Way warmer than usual.” He stopped rubbing her back, and she could all but hear his thoughts racing. “Are you sure you’re feeling okay?”

  “Yes.” The response was automatic, but she found herself quickly scrolling through her mental checklist. Swollen hands, slightly feverish. Weight loss and fatigue, a stomach that struggled to digest what she’d put into it.

  Damn it. How had she been so stupid?

  She hadn’t been feeling great for the last week, but she’d really thought she was just working hard and stressed about money. For all the attention that she paid to trying to keep herself healthy, she hadn’t considered that what she’d been experiencing was a flare-up.

  “What is it?” Ford rolled her over suddenly, and she struggled to smooth her features into blankness, even though her heart started to beat triple time.

  She wasn’t special. She was one of thousands of people who had lupus, a condition in which her body basically attacked itself.

  But not all of those people had almost died from a sudden, wicked onslaught of symptoms. Not all of them had lost their careers and saddled the people they loved with such massive burdens that they feared they might never crawl out from beneath them.

  This—this was why she couldn’t let herself get too attached to Ford. She already fought not to buckle under the guilt every single day of her life. She couldn’t add to it with another person that she was dragging down into the dirt.

  More than that, what if she actually did die next time? It was too late for her not to love her family, and her family to love her in return.

  But she didn’t need to add anyone else to that list.

  “I’m fine.” Closing her eyes, she let Ford pull the covers up around her as she feigned sleepiness. “Thank you for this. I just need some sleep—you were right.”

  “Good girl.” The bed dipped beneath his weight, and an invisible fist squeezed her heart when he pressed a soft kiss to her forehead. “I’ll talk to you later. Get some sleep.”

  With her eyes squeezed shut, she waited until she knew he’d gone, then sat straight up in her bed. Holding out an arm, she examined the pale skin.

  Yup. There was the start of the nasty rash. She hadn’t been paying attention. Her mouth was dry and her joints were stiff and sore, though she’d chalked that up to the physical labor she’d been doing.

  How could she have been so stupid?

  She needed to go to the ER to get checked out. The memory of the last time this had happened flashed in her mind’s eye—the time her symptoms had come on so strong and fast, her body deteriorating so quickly that she almost died. Her pulse started to thunder, fear of a repeat making her nauseous.

  But...a trip to the ER cost money. Money they didn’t have, especially right now. She winced as she thought of the balloon payment—of how deeply they were all rooted in this home.

  She hadn’t had a flare-up since that first time because she took excellent care of herself. She ate well, exercised, took handfuls of prescribed vitamins and supplements. There was no way it could be as serious this time, and if she dragged her ass to the ER when it wasn’t really necessary, she’d collapse beneath the weight of the guilt.

  She’d be fine. She just needed some rest.

  Arranging herself on her pillow, she ignored how painful it was to move her limbs. Gulped some water from the bottle on her nightstand to counteract the dry mouth.

  If she’d been awake for it, she would have been surprised at how quickly the fatigue dragged her down into sleep.

  * * *

  “Baby girl, I thought you said you had an eight o’clock oil change this morning.” Jo pushed into Beth’s bedroom, the words piercing through her feverish dream. She jolted awake, staring wide-eyed at her sister as her brain struggled to work.

  She couldn’t move. Everything hurt. And something was wrong with her breathing. Her mouth opened, her chest moved, but she just couldn’t get enough air.

  She watched, paralyzed, as her sister’s eyes widened in terror. Jo bolted across the room, gathering her in her arms, pressing on her back and chest as if trying to force the air into Beth’s lungs. Beth felt her sister shake against her, or maybe it was her shaking. The voice that echoed around the room in a scream, though, that wasn’t hers, because she couldn’t draw in enough air to make a sound.

  “Mamesie! Meg! Amy! Help!”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THE NEXT MORNING, Ford drove the streets of Boston’s South End, unable to settle. Something was up with Beth.

  Something more than her being spooked at the fact that he’d told her he could fall in love with her.

  He thought of the way she’d looked yesterday, the weight she’d lost apparent in her sunken cheeks. Her skin had been so pale that it was almost transparent.

  She’d brushed aside his concerns about her temperature and swollen hands, telling him she hadn’t been sleeping very well and was just tired.

  His instincts said it was more than that. She’d shared that she’d been sick, sick enough that it had forced her to change her life.

  But she still hadn’t trusted him enough to tell him what, exactly, had happened. He’d wanted to wait for her to open up to him, to give her that respect.

  Something wasn’t right.

  He ignored the blaring horns and screeching tires of the car between him as he swung the SUV to the side of the road. Lifting his hips, he worked his phone from his pocket. Pulling up his browser, he tapped out the words with his thumb.

  beth marchande illness

  The first
few news articles that came up were fairly generic, with headlines like Local Girl Cancels Piano Tour Due to Health Reasons. While Beth had achieved something that very few people did—a recording contract—she still hadn’t been that big a name. Piano enthusiasts knew of her, as did people who were into cutting-edge music, but she hadn’t achieved the widespread popularity of the Gagas and Katys and Rihannas of the world.

  His frustration grew as he scrolled through. Finally, on the tenth entry, he saw words that caught his eye—words she’d written, it looked like. An entry on the front page of her website, which was no longer actively updated.

  Clicking on it, he was greeted with a breathtaking image. There was his girl, her sleek curves outlined in a fitted black sheath that formed a sexy V in the front. The sheer black sleeves of the jacket she wore over it muted the prismatic colors of her ink, but the bright hues still shone through.

  She was seated on the bench of a piano—a fancy one to his eye, not that he really knew the difference—with her legs crossed demurely, one hand resting lightly on the keys. Her legs were bare, the tattoo work there peeking out teasingly from between the satin ribbons that wound from her high-heeled pumps to wrap temptingly over her calves.

  Her hair had been tamed back into a sleek bun, but he smiled when he noted that it was cotton-candy pink. She smiled brightly out at the camera, a young woman with the world at the tips of her fingers, but he frowned, tracing his fingers over the image of her face.

  Some makeup artist had worked their magic, smoothing out Beth’s naturally rosy skin, doing that stripy thing Peyton used to do—was it called contouring?—and adding smoky stuff to her brilliant blue eyes to make them pop. Her lips were glossed a bright red, her eyebrows penciled in dramatically.

  She looked gorgeous. Stunning.

  But he liked her better in her coveralls with grease on her nose.

  Scrolling down, he found the message on the homepage—a note from Beth to her fans.

  I know many of you are disappointed that I’ve canceled the remainder of my tour. I’m very sorry to have to announce this, but due to an emergency with my health, I will not be rescheduling these dates or booking any other tours in the near future. I do not make this announcement easily, and I want to thank all of you for participating in this beautiful musical journey that I’ve been on for the last few years.

  Bless,

  Beth

  The message was vague, just as she had been with him, but as he scrolled down to the comments he started to get more information. There were the inevitable nasty comments from the trolls. As he read some of the shit that people had thrown at her, his temper rose.

  One long comment caught his eye, and as he read it, he found himself freezing.

  PIANOGRRL94:

  My sister is an ER doc in Cincinnati and I got the scoop. Beth was admitted in the morning before that first show she canceled and was moved to the intensive care unit. She was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder called lupus.

  KEYKEYSKEYS:

  So? Lots of people have autoimmunes. My brother-in-law has Crohn’s but he still gets his ass out of bed and goes to work every day. She’s a lazy bitch

  ADAM4732:

  So is she going to reschedule her shows?

  PIANOGRRL94:

  You guys are assholes. She was admitted because her entire body shut down. I guess she’d been ignoring that she felt sick because she thought she just had concert fatigue. She almost died. Like, my sister didn’t think she was going to make it. It’s not advisable for her to tour anymore.

  ADAM4732:

  Why is your sister telling you this? Isn’t there patient confidentiality shit that she’s supposed to have?

  PIANOGRRL94:

  Whatever, guys. Just though you might want to know.

  Beth had almost died.

  Things began to click into place. The way she no longer drank, her inexplicable devotion to salads. The shroud of reserve that seemed to cover her at all times.

  She was having a setback—he would have put every dollar that he had left in the bank on it. But why on earth wouldn’t she just tell someone or go to the hospital? Why would she try to convince him that she was fine?

  The balloon payment.

  “Well, fuck.” Beth was nothing if not stubborn, determined to prove that she was still capable of everything she’d been able to do before she got sick. She’d been so angry at her family for trying to cover for her, to make the payment without her, that she’d gone and made herself sick over it.

  Anger and frustration radiated up his spine, exploding through his fingers as he pulled up his contacts and hit Beth’s name. Putting it on speakerphone, he pulled away from the curb and started to drive, hanging a quick U-turn in the middle of the busy street, leaving honking and swearing behind him.

  “What?” It wasn’t Beth that answered, but one of her sisters.

  “I think Beth’s sick again,” he blurted out. “I think she’s hiding it because she’d worried about money.”

  “No shit, Sherlock.” It was Jo, he was pretty sure. The acid in her tone was her signature, but it didn’t melt away the worry that was there as well. “We’re at Boston Medical Center. She didn’t get up for her first appointment today, so I went into her room and she wasn’t breathing.”

  “What?” Ice was a frigid spike that slammed into the length of his spine. “No. What’s happening?”

  “She’s in the ER.” Jo’s voice was tight, and Ford felt her pain as well as his own. “It’s...they say it’s not as bad as it could be. I don’t know what she’s told you—”

  “She refused to tell me shit, so I just looked it up.” He didn’t even feel guilty. “I know what happened before. I know that she almost...died.”

  “Yeah.” On the other end of the line, Jo’s voice shook. “It’s not that bad this time. We just can’t believe she hid it from us. I can’t believe I didn’t see.”

  “She didn’t want you to see.” Ford sighed, taking one hand from the wheel to wipe the sweat on the thigh of his jeans. “Look, I’m on my way.”

  She thought that Jo might tell him not to come—not that he would listen—but instead she made a humming sound.

  “Good.”

  * * *

  “This is unacceptable, Elizabeth Serena Marchande.”

  “I’m sleeping.” Beth squeezed her eyes shut. The touch of her mother’s familiar hand on her brow had them flying open again.

  The women of her family were gathered around her hospital bed in a tight ring. All of them were pale, clearly having lost sleep over the last twenty-four hours, and not a single one of them was smiling.

  “Beth.” Pulling up a hideous olive-green chair to the bed, Meg sank down into it, leaning forward to clasp her sister’s hand. “What the hell were you thinking?”

  She’d been thinking that she was avoiding placing a bigger financial burden on her family, and yet here they were. Another hospital bill and stress.

  Sister of the year award did not go to her.

  “Do you have any idea how scared I was when I went into your room yesterday morning?” Normally Jo would be the one right beside her, soothing her and offering comfort. Instead, her fiercest sister was standing at the end of the bed with her feet planted shoulder-width apart. Her arms were crossed over her chest, and her expression was terrifyingly blank. “I thought you were dying. Dying, Beth. Do you understand?”

  “I—” She had no words. No excuse. She’d been trying to do the right thing, and yet she’d fucked it right up.

  “Hi.” Ford poked his head into the room. Her heart leaped at the sight of him, sinking again when she saw the ferocity on his face. She swallowed past a suddenly thick throat as her family greeted him, let him into the room, then filed out to give them some privacy. She was more than a little shocked by the courteous nod that he and Jo cast each othe
r’s way as they passed.

  Great. She’d made a mess of her entire family, but her closest sister and her boyfriend had bonded over it. Fan-fucking-tastic.

  Ford circled her bed, settling himself in the chair Meg had vacated. Beth studied him with trepidation.

  Was he her boyfriend? If not, what was he? They hadn’t been back together for very long, and yet she felt as though he carried a piece of her heart around in his pocket.

  It was terrifying.

  “Before you say anything, you should know that I went digging online. I know about your lupus.” Beth winced. Ford shook his head. “I wish you’d shared that with me. Beth, you almost died.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” Her voice was rough, groggy from all of the medications that were currently pumping through her system.

  “Beth.” He caught her hand. She tried to yank it back, but instead he laced their fingers together. “Talk to me.”

  She pressed her lips together. She hated this. Hated it all.

  “Forget the guilt over the money part.” She choked out the words. “This is how I feel. When you have a brush with death, and you survive, it’s a new beginning. Treatment has been successful, so it’s like...it’s like people expect that that chapter of your life is over. They’ll treat you with kid gloves, but the focus is on picking up and carrying on. Moving past it.”

  She swallowed, trying to find the right words.

  “There can’t be a return to normal because normal is gone. I’m not the same person I was before. I monitor myself constantly, and yet I’m in denial.” She waved a hand around the room. “Like, hello. I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop, and I still missed it somehow.”

  “Oh, baby.” He tried to tighten his hold, but she tugged her hand away. The simple touch was too much.

  “Survival is a lonely place,” she started, looking down at her own hands, which she twisted in the sheets. “But for me it’s the way it has to be. You say you’re falling in love with me, but how can you fall in love with all of this? I could get sick again, really sick, at any time. I got my life back, and I want to live it, but how can you treat me normally now? You’ll be monitoring my every movement, since I’ve proven I can’t take care of myself. That’s no way to live.”