We’re adults who for all intents and purposes are attracted to each other, but we’ve made our attraction forbidden so now I feel guilty as I microwave leftovers and move around the kitchen to find the things we’ll need for dinner. The name of the drug I need to find crosses my mind every few seconds, and that’s the only thing distracting me from his naked body. The muscles. The man they’re attached to. I have to make this right even if it’s already labeled impossible. My father destroyed so many lives in his pursuit of success that even if I manage to right a couple, it would be something.
I’m staring at a plate of tacos growing cold when Nate wanders in wearing a pair of gray sweatpants and a tank top. “Enjoy the show?”
“What show?” I ask, deep in thought.
“I saw you acting like a Peeping Tom. No need to lie now.” He smiles. “You’re a real perv.”
“If you’d just get naked and show me, I wouldn’t have to snoop around to catch small glimpses here and there.” That shocks him into silence for a few seconds. “Show me now and I’ll leave you alone forever.”
Shaking his head, he sits in front of the plate I put in front of the chair opposite me. “What if I don’t want you to leave me alone forever?”
“Well, then I guess you just get to deal with me stalking around your house when you’re naked.”
“You realize how insane that sounds, right?”
I nod, shrug, and fill my mouth with food. Chewing, in thought, trying to come up with a few different plans to get the drug I need. More, I’m trying to think if I know anyone who can open the company back up to start producing again. All of my contacts are lost with my old identity, and it will go against all the rules I agreed to when I went into the protection program. “I do, and I also know you don’t care if I’m insane.”
He doesn’t argue, which tells me I’m right. “Friends don’t stalk naked friends.”
“Speaking of naked friends, does your ex-girlfriend live in Montana? Near your family?” It doesn’t come out as suave as I hoped it would.
He licks his lips. “Are you asking if I’m going to bang my ex while I’m home and sad?”
“No. Yes. Kind of,” I reply. “It would make perfect sense. That’s how it happens. You go home and see her after a long time and old feelings come back. You can’t help yourself so you kiss, but then that feels so familiar and comforting, that it turns into sex, and then you wake up the next morning with regret, but not really because it did make you feel better. At least for a little while, anyway.”
“Sounds like you have experience in that,” Nate says. Pushing his nearly empty plate away from him as he leans back in his chair. “That’s how it will happen? For sure?”
“That’s how it always happens. It’s science.”
“I need to send an email. Are you okay to drive home by yourself,” Nate asks after looking at his watch.
“Of course.” When I walk to pick up my roller skates Nate asks if I plan on using them. I tell him no, even though I most certainly do. I’ll need something to distract myself while I’m left friendless in this place. “I hope you have a good trip, Nate. I’m sorry about your cousin.” I pick up the laptop and cell phone he’s letting me borrow.
He smiles weakly in response and throws up one hand. I notice his biceps and look away. “I’ll miss you.”
I don’t even chance looking at his face before I leave out the side door. As I pull away, I see Nate in my rearview mirror standing in the threshold of his door. I also think I see a shadow rounding the cabin, heading back to the garden. I’m sure it’s just my mind playing tricks on me. It has to be. As his house vanishes from view, I concentrate on the world’s most important task. I have to save Felix, and if Nate is right, if I am too late, I have to save others like him. For the first time since I got here, I have a purpose. One that isn’t self-serving.
CHAPTER TEN
Nate
I can’t feel anything. I’m numb to the emotions I’m supposed to feel because everyone around me feels so much. It’s a defense mechanism so I can be an exacting Charge Man, except now that I need to feel things I can’t. I’m torn between worrying about Presley, even though I know she’s fine as Gray has sent me reports three times a day, and wanting to crawl into a hole a die next to Felix. Gray says Presley isn’t even leaving her house for the bakery in the morning. It worries me, but also makes me feel relieved as she’s not getting into her usual trouble. All I can think about is how weak I am around her. I know who her father is. I know who she is. It was a moment of weakness, feeling like I had a friend when I told her about Felix, his illness, and the medicine that would be keeping him alive if her father wasn’t the world’s biggest dick. I was awful for doing it, but I couldn’t stop myself.
Felix’s wife is hysterical. His children don’t really know what’s happening, but they know it’s not good. I’m sitting at the patio table outside with his youngest, Willow, because we’re probably on the same wavelength. Get me the fuck away from whatever is happening because I don’t like it.
“Do you want me to push you on the swing?” I offer as she slurps up the last sips of a juice box. Willow shakes her head, and blonde curls bounce in front of her eyes. “What about the slide? I’ll catch you at the bottom if you go too fast.” Yesterday, I made the mistake of not waiting at the bottom to catch her and she flew off so fast she skipped like a rock across the grass.
She shakes her head again and crushes the small box with both hands like a savage. “We could color in the unicorn coloring book again,” I offer. “Or play dolls in your dollhouse. I’ll be the dog again.” She belly-laughed when I made the dog cook dinner and give the baby a bath. It’s the only time she’s laughed in the past three days.
My mom pokes her head out and gives me a worried look. It won’t be long now. It’s sadistic. The whole watching someone you love die thing. I wouldn’t wish it on my enemy. It should be outlawed. Closing my eyes, I pinch the bridge of my nose. Willow senses the swift change in demeanor and takes off to the playhouse in the corner of the yard next to the swing set.
When I don’t say anything, Mom moves in. “Honey, I’ve missed you so much. I haven’t seen you look this good in a long time.” The words unsettle me. She senses the shift in my emotional duress. The training that didn’t take. The failure of a Charge Man I’ve become. “Felix is asking for you.”
I shake my head. “I’m taking care of Willow. He’d want me to take care of Willow instead.”
“Son, you can’t run from this.”
I’m running from everything right now. “Running is part of my job.”
“It doesn’t have to be. Why don’t you settle down? I know you have enough money now. You know you don’t have to work another day in your life. Please, honey. If Felix can teach you anything it’s that life is short and the things that are important aren’t things. They’re people.” Another pang in my chest, a scar bubbling to the surface. Presley. Felix. Family. Children. Fuck if all these things aren’t tearing at me like a plague.
“You know it’s not that cut and dry,” I reply, not meeting her eyes.
“It can be and you know it,” she says softly.
The doorbell chimes, echoing through the entire house including outside. “That’s probably the doctor,” Mom says, voice cracking. “They needed him here to, ah, pronounce him. It is the only way to avoid an autopsy, having a doctor present at the death.”
“Go sit with your sister, Mom. She needs you right now. I’ll play with Willow.” Because I can’t face the cold hard truth that she’s right about everything.
She nods. “You’ll regret it forever if you don’t say goodbye.”
Mom goes into the house to find my aunt, and I hold up one finger to Willow who is peeking at me through the window of the playhouse. “I’ll be right back,” I call out.
Willow doesn’t reply, she slinks back into the shadows of her imaginary, perfect house, unlike the one she actually lives i
n. Just say goodbye, Nate. I tell myself. Easy. I say goodbye all the time. In the military, I said last goodbyes to many. This one is cutting deeper. When I get to the living room, I see my family grouped around a man in the doorway, dressed in all black, covered in tattoos who is breathing heavily. His look is ominous, but his face changes when he sees me.
“Sullivan,” he says.
I nod and gather the air of dominance I usually have as I stride forward. This is business. I don’t know what kind yet, but I follow him outside leaving my family staring after us. He leads me down the long drive to a white van. I’m unarmed, but I’m not worried. “Listen, man. I can’t give you information, but this is for your cousin.” He pulls out a large suitcase from the back of his van and hands it to me. “Call the number inside when you need more.”
“Wait, who sent you?” I ask, trembling as the realization hits.
He shakes his head. “No, man. That’s not how this works. Hurry on,” he says, accent thick. “Was told it was an emergency.”
Presley did this. Presley did. My heart racing, I turn and run back to the house quicker than I’ve ever run. Everyone makes way for me as I head down the hallway into the back room where Felix is dying. The doctor is sitting in a chair next to the bed, defeated in every way except that he’s still there—waiting for the inevitable. Delicately, I put the suitcase on the floor next to the bed and unzip it. “Save him!” I scream. “Do it now!” It’s not a polite order, but as soon as the man sees what’s inside his eyes light up and he moves into high gear.
“How did you get these medications? Where did you find them?” I take the card from the top and tuck it into my pocket.
“No questions, just do it now.”
“This is everything I need to save his life right now. Whoever sent this knew exactly what stage and state Felix is in right this second. How?” The doctor is talking to himself as he draws up the drugs and inserts them into the IV on his pale, unmoving arm. What if I’m too late? What if this doesn’t work? It means that Presley cared enough about me to risk her life.
Felix doesn’t come to for another hour and a half, and it’s a long ass hour and a half. His organs eventually start working for him instead of against him and the doctor is running all kinds of tests in the makeshift lab they’ve set up for him in a guest bedroom. I come in behind him as he’s staring at a small tablet screen. “It doesn’t make sense, Nate. He was nearly dead. These were drugs that maintained him before he took a turn and lost access to them, now it seems they’re curing him. Making him well again. Each dose I give him improves his numbers more and more.”
“The drug has been improved?” I ask, tone low.
“It has. It’s the only thing that would make sense. I think if we dose him over time with what you were able to get, it might cure him altogether.” He breaks his gaze from the screen. “You have to tell me where you got these. Do you know how many more I could save if I had access to these medications? Illegal as I’m sure it is, I’d risk it all to save my patients. I haven’t had this much hope since Lexington Pharma closed down, granting many unwarranted death sentences.”
“That’s not how this works,” I repeat the man’s words. Swallowing hard, I think of other men and women like Felix. Who don’t have connections, nor a chance in hell at surviving. “I’m sorry, doc. That’s not possible.”
I leave the room before he can ask anything else, before I say too much. I find Felix’s wife in a completely different mood in the kitchen. “Felix is hungry. Can you believe it? He asked me to make him soup. Soup,” she says mindlessly. “He was never supposed to eat again and now I’m cooking for him. I can’t believe this day. I owe you my life, Nate Sullivan. I owe you everything.”
“No,” I say, loudly. “No. I had nothing to do with this. Do not say that again.”
She flinches away. Good. I need her to be fearful. “This can never be spoken of. When friends ask, you say it is a miracle and the doctor can’t explain it.” I pull the card out of my pocket. “This is who you call when you need more, okay? Do not ask questions. Do not.”
She nods, terror streaking across her face. “What did you do for this?” Her voice shakes.
I laugh sardonically. “Believe it or not, I did nothing for it.”
“I will guard this with my life.”
“All of our lives depend on it.” I say it forcefully so she knows I’m serious.
“Of course.”
I call the phone Presley has and there is no answer, so I call Gray who tells me she’s asleep and he’s listening to her snore as confirmation. I breathe a sigh of relief, even though I’m disappointed I don’t get to hear her voice. How dirty was the deal she made? What did it cost? I can’t think of it in depth, and I know I need to do what I’m loathe to do.
With heavy limbs, I slink into the chair next to Felix’s bed. “Hey man. Heard you’re hungry.”
He turns his head. “I’m starving.” Felix hits me with a smile that transports me back to the past when things were far simpler. While his face is still stark against the dark sheets, he looks a million times better than he did last night when death was knocking on his door.
“How did you do it?” Felix croaks. “I know you’re a hero, but damn, this is next level. Even I knew I was dying. That’s how bad I was dying.”
“How do you know I had anything to do with your miraculous recovery?” Forcing my voice to a jovial tone, I say, “You have the best doc around.”
Felix’s face wilts. “He is, but you need to stop fucking around and be honest.” Honesty. This goddamn quality everyone wants that seems to complicate everything.
“Honestly,” I parrot, “I didn’t do anything. There is a woman.”
His smile returns. “No shit?”
I grin because I’m so relieved to see him resemble his former self. “Yeah, and she did something. Not quite sure what yet, but she was able to get what you needed. Not only that,” I say, shaking my head, “She was able to improve what you needed, but man, this is on the down low so low that it’s at the bottom of the ocean. You feel me?”
There are several silent moments of him staring at me. “How though? How? When they stole that away from you?”
My stomach churns. “Still trying to sort through that,” I say quietly. “But maybe they didn’t steal it all after all, yeah?”
“I’m happy for you. I’m glad I’m alive and all, but this is twofold happiness. I always knew you’d make a great partner for a lucky woman.” Lucky isn’t the word I’d use. Cursed, sure.
Willow bounds into the room with a brightness I haven’t seen in her since I got here. She climbs the bed and curls up next to her dad. Felix strokes her curls with such a fondness I have to look away. She thought he’d never touch her like this again. Never get to hold her, or whisper that he loves her more than the stars in the sky. I leave the room when Willow begins to weep, the first sign of emotion I’ve seen from her. Before I exit Felix calls out, “Bottom of the ocean, bottom of the ocean.”
I nod and go upstairs to the small attic room where I’ve been staying. My phone rings from my pocket and I know it’s her. “Was it too late?” she whispers.
Choking back tears, I have to stay silent a moment. When I compose myself, I say, “No. Right on time.”
Presley breaks down crying. “I’m so sorry for what he did to your family.” I know who she means, but she doesn’t know exactly how much I know.
“Don’t apologize, Presley, but I need to know how you did what you did.”
“I called in a favor, that is all. It’s no big deal.” She breathes on the other end for several seconds and it calms me. Her breathing pattern actually calms me. I don’t know if it’s because it means her heartbeat is safe, or because it’s her, and my infatuation has reached a new level. “I miss you, Nate.” She sniffles. “Will you come home soon?”
Come home. Home. Home. For the first time in my life, I feel like I do have a home, and it’s wh
erever she is. “Yes. I’ll be on the next flight.”
“Good. I don’t feel safe without you here.”
My heart pounds again. “I miss you too.”
She hangs up, and I’m left with a nagging feeling that someone is still on the line. Swallowing hard, I stare at the screen as the call stays connected and seconds tick on, and I know without a doubt that Presley forgot to dial the code for a secure line. The call should have ended when she hung up.
I should tell Gray hello, but I hang up instead.
****
As soon as I hung up the phone, I didn’t have time to worry about Gray or what he heard, because that’s not even on my radar. Being near Presley is. What she did for me, for Felix, for my entire family was the single most thoughtful, and selfless thing anyone has done. I need to find out exactly what kind of favor she called in first and foremost. I touchdown early in the morning and go straight to the bakery where Ryan greets me at the counter with a big, goofy smile.
“We missed you around here. We missed both of you around here.” Presley rounds the corner, covered in flour and runs into my arms. She smells like soap and cookies. Like salvation and relief. I bury my face in her hair and inhale deeply. I hold her up and close and pull her feet off the ground. When she pulls back there are tears in her eyes. “Everything is still okay?” she asks. Felix is more than okay. When I left it was as if I was looking at a long-forgotten shadow from his past. I wouldn’t have believed it had I not seen it with my own eyes.
The Love You Hate: A Charge Man Novel (The Charge Men Series Book 1) Page 14