Stay: A Second Chance Badboy Romance

by Melinda Minx

  But then I jolt awake. There’s drool on my face and my head was tilted down. I slept. But I don’t feel at all refreshed. The exhaustion is even worse than before, and the back of my neck feels like there is a truck resting on top of it. It crunches as I move my head.

  “Dr. Sinclaire?” I look up. Oh, the doctor woke me up. “I’m Dr. Finnegan.”

  “Yes?”

  “He’s stabilized. Your father suffered a stroke. The episode is over now, but your father is unconscious.”

  I realize I’m standing up already. “You said he was stable!”

  “He is,” Dr. Finnegan says. “But his body needs to recover from the trauma.”

  “When will he wake up?”

  I hear a huge commotion down the hallway. People screaming and wailing. A man is shouting, saying the doctors didn’t try hard enough. I try to tune it all out. I focus only on Dr. Finnegan. On my father. I don’t have room in my head for other people’s grief.

  Dr. Finnegan purses his lips. “We don’t really know. It depends on...the extent of the damage.”

  “Permanent damage?” I ask.

  “You can go see him now,” Dr. Finnegan says. “But we are going to airlift him to Boston. We don’t have the necessary imaging and diagnostic equipment here to know your father’s current state.”

  I feel myself seething with anger. All of these stupid fucking euphemisms to try to stop me from freaking out. “My father’s current state,” also known as, “Whether or not he’s a vegetable.”

  “Please,” I say. “Tell me.”

  “I really don’t know, Sophie,” he says. “I can get a gut sense with other types of injuries or traumas, but strokes have too many variables. You’ll want to make preparations to go to Boston.” He looks toward the door. “After you go see your father.”

  “Can he hear me?” I ask.

  “There’s every possibility that he can.”

  I go into the room. Dad’s skin looks grey, and it tears my heart out to see him like that on a hospital bed. There are IVs hooked up to him, and an oxygen mask over his face.

  “Dad,” I say, taking his hand as gently as I can in mine. “You’re going to be okay. The doctors said you’re going to get through this. You have to fight, though. You can’t give up, okay?”

  I don’t care what the doctors said. If Dad is still in there, then he needs to fight, to start rebuilding connections between all his damaged synapses. He can start right now, just by hearing my voice and knowing he has a chance.

  “They’re going to take you to Boston,” I say. “I’m going there with you. I know I was going there anyway in a few days...to interview...but don’t worry about that, I’ll stay by your side—”

  His pulse increases. I look at the screen, seeing his BPM go up and up. He can understand me.

  “Doctor Finnegan!” I shout. “He can hear me!”

  There’s a commotion outside in the hallway again, but this time I recognize the voice. Mason.

  “Let him in,” I say, rushing to the door. I open it up. “He’s family.”

  The nurse nods to me and lets Mason through. It’s not the Mason I last saw, though. He looks almost like Dad does. His skin is pale, his hair is a complete mess, and there are deep bags under his eyes. He smells like the ocean. Like a fish that washed up on shore. His eyes don’t really stay focused anywhere, instead they dart back and forth like oil on water.

  “Mason?”

  “Is he okay?” he says, ignoring me.

  Could Mason really be this shaken by my father’s stroke? I know that my father and Mason had some kind of “men’s understanding” with each other, but I didn’t think he’d be this completely rattled over Dad’s stroke.

  “He can hear me,” I say. “Sit down with me.”

  I pull a chair up, but Mason doesn’t sit. I take his hand, and he looks over at my dad. He takes in deep breaths as he sees the state he’s in.

  “He’ll be okay,” Mason says.

  I look and see that his heart rate is back down again.

  “He heard me, Mason,” I say. “His heart rate went up when I told him I’d stay by his side.”

  “Of course you will,” Mason says. “We will.”

  I smile.

  “Um,” I say. “They are airlifting him to Boston. I’ll understand if you can’t—”

  “No,” he says. “I will go.”

  I sigh in relief. I’m so glad Mason will not just be there for Dad, but for me as well. I need him now. It’s hard to be strong for someone when you’re completely alone, but I’m not. I have Mason.

  “Jesus,” I say. “There’s so much I have to get done now, Mason, I can’t keep it all straight in my head.”

  “I’ll help you,” he says. “You can’t forget the interview. You’ll be in Boston, so it will be easy—”

  I scoff at him, jumping out of my chair to meet his eyes. “Are you serious? You’re worried about my fucking job interview when my dad is bedridden?”

  The heart monitor starts beeping as Dad’s heart rate spikes.

  “Look!” I say, realizing I’m raising my voice. I go back to an angry whisper. “Look, Mason, he’s upset now.”

  “He wants you to get that job, Sophie, that’s why.”

  “He also wanted to eat like five strips of bacon every morning,” I say, my nostrils flaring. “But he needs me now. Forget the interview, I can’t start a new job when he’s recovering from a stroke.”

  I pull out my phone.

  “What are you doing?” Mason asks.

  “Calling Pfizer. Cancelling the thing.”

  Mason tears the phone out of my hand and slams it on the ground. “Hank, she’s not cancelling. I’ll make sure she goes. I’ll keep my promise to—”

  I shove Mason into the wall. “Are you shitting me?” I whisper. “You can’t keep a promise to me, but you can keep one to my father? Get out of here.”

  “Sophie,” he says, “I…”

  “Out!” I hiss. “Now!”

  His eyes stare off into infinity, losing focus. They finally snap back into focus, and when he looks at me, I can tell some kind of weight has been lifted from him.

  “Yeah,” he says.

  “What?” I whisper back.

  “I’m out of here, yeah,” he mutters, and he turns his back to me and walks out of the room.

  As the door opens, I hear the most God awful screeching I’ve ever heard coming from the lobby. Are those people still doing that?

  When the door shuts, I can still hear them through the door. It sounds like they are right outside now. The last thing Dad needs is to hear that.

  “I’ll be right back,” I tell him.

  I open the door, shut it quickly behind me, and step into the hallway.

  I see an older couple that I vaguely recognize just outside the room. Two nurses are holding them back, and they are shouting and screaming.

  “That murderer! Let me go! Let me go!” the man shouts.

  They turn to me and scowl. “He’s back because of you!”

  “Who?” I ask. I’m so tired that it feels all like some kind of waking dream. Or waking nightmare.

  “Mason Steel,” the woman says. The nurses are still holding the two of them back, and I see a plump security officer scuttling over toward us.

  “Good,” the husband says. “The police are finally taking this seriously.”

  “I’m hospital security, ma’am, you’ll both need to calm down, or I’ll have to escort you out.”

  “Our baby is dead,” the woman hisses. “And you’re going to take us away from his body?”

  “Can you calm down?” the nurse asks. “Please calm down.”

  “Fine,” the husband says, stepping out of the nurse’s grip.

  “Who died?” I ask. “Who is your baby?”

  “Samuel,” the wife says. “And Mason Steel killed our baby.”

  24

  Mason

  I get everything packed up in just a few minutes. I don’t even know w
here I’m going to go, but wherever it is, I won’t need furniture. Or a bed.

  Maybe the Special Forces will take me back. There are plenty of wars left to be fought. At some point, I will be too old for it, but not yet. I can still do what I’m best at.

  Out! Now!

  I can still see Sophie’s tearstained face, hissing at me with pure hatred.

  I all but killed a man—no, I did kill him. It doesn’t matter if the police said it wasn’t my fault. I know it was. Samuel’s parents are right.

  I can give half of my savings to them, and half to Sophie. It won’t make me right with either of them, but it’s all I can do.

  I don’t need money to go wherever I’ll go. I never really needed money in the first place. It was only something I thought would matter when I pretended I could go back in time and be with Sophie.

  I dump my clothes and toiletries into a big bag, and that’s all I need to get the hell out of Tuckett Bay, and Massachusetts, forever.

  I throw it into my car, and a pang of something hits me. Maybe it’s guilt, maybe it’s my feelings for Sophie, or maybe it’s whatever the opposite of nostalgia is—but I know I’m fucking up right now. I’m watching my car drive off a bridge in slow motion, and my hands aren’t even on the fucking wheel.

  How can I break my promise, again? Not even just one promise this time, but two. I told Sophie I wouldn’t leave her again, and I told Hank I’d get her to take that job.

  I can’t just go, can I? I have to at least try. I can try to convince Sophie that she doesn’t want me, and I can make sure she goes to that fucking job interview.

  I got it. It clicks. I’ll offer to watch over Hank while she interviews, and if she gets the job, I’ll stay with him. She might hate my guts, but I’ll do it for free. It’s all I’ve got, it’s the only thing I can think of other than running away. Again.

  I drive to the hospital as fast as I can. She might still be there.

  I get there in record time, and I run so fast through the hallways that a few nurses yell at me. But I don’t give a shit.

  I reach Hank’s room...but it’s empty. They already airlifted him. Sophie is—

  “I’m going to Boston.” It’s Sophie’s voice.

  I turn around, and she shoves past me into the room.

  She reaches down to one of the chairs and picks up a phone. “I forgot this.”

  “Sophie…”

  “Didn’t I tell you to get out? Why are you back here?”

  “Look,” I say. “Forget me, forget you—”

  She scowls. Okay, that was the wrong thing to say.

  “Not forget,” I say, “but putting us aside, whatever problems and complications there are, I know how to give your dad the best shot at recovery.”

  “Did you study neuroscience in the Special Forces, too?” She says, staring me down and crossing her arms.

  “No,” I say, “but trust me Sophie, your Dad wants you to get that job. Look at it all from his perspective, just for a second. You spent your whole life working toward this goal, and you achieved it. Now you—”

  “God,” she scoffs. “You’re going to judge me, too?”

  “I’m not judging you. God knows I’m not in the place to judge a single soul. Not after what I did.”

  Sophie looks at me with apprehension. She must have heard something by now.

  “But Sophie,” I continue, “your dad wants to see you do something with yourself. Tell him you’re interviewing, then tell him you got the job. He can hear you, and it will motivate him to get better...so he can know you’re okay.”

  She sighs. “I don’t feel okay. What happened, Mason?”

  “If I hadn’t been on that boat,” I say, “Samuel would still be alive.”

  “So you killed him?” she asks, her voice skeptical.

  “I may as well have.”

  “So you didn’t, then.”

  Applying the same standards, I killed my own brother. I fought with that for over a decade before I finally forgave myself. Am I going to do that again?

  “Right now,” I say, “I feel guilty. Like it was my fault. Maybe it was, or maybe it wasn’t. His family blames me. I blame me.”

  “The police don’t blame you—”

  “Look, Sophie,” I say. “Let me drive us to Boston. You must be exhausted. I want you to go for this job, if not for yourself, then for your dad. I’ll take care of him while you interview, and if you get the job, I’ll take care of him while you work.”

  “Mason,” she says, shaking her head. “I couldn’t—”

  “I will,” I say, taking her by the shoulders. “I need to do this.”

  “Fine,” she says. “Your car or mine?”

  “Mine.”

  We get to Boston in just over two hours.

  “You know,” Sophie says, “I could still live at home and commute here.”

  “Four hours of driving per day?” I ask. “Come on.”

  “I could,” she says. “At least while Dad is recovering.”

  “Worry about that later.”

  We park at the hospital and check in at the front desk.

  “Your father is getting a CT scan, and then he’s due for an MRI,” the receptionist tells us. “If you’d like to have a seat, we will have a doctor come talk to you when he’s done.”

  Sophie starts to cry.

  I pull her toward me with one arm, and she presses her face into my chest. I feel her warm tears stain through my shirt.

  “It’s okay,” I say.

  I guide her toward one of the chairs and get her to sit down.

  “No,” she says. “It’s not. I knew Dad wasn’t eating healthy enough, and I finally convinced him to see the doctor a few months ago. He ducked out of the appointment while I was at work. He kept rescheduling and pushing it back. They could have caught whatever this was.”

  I shake my head. “Men are stubborn. Trust me. You can’t get a man to do something he doesn’t want to do.”

  She glares at me. “So when we are both old, you’re going to do the same thing to me? God, I should just live alone.”

  When we’re both old? I thought she wanted me gone. Maybe not. Still, I’m not convinced that I’m any good for her. Right now, I just have to help her get through this. That’s all I’ve got in me right now. The urge to run again—to break all my promises—is almost visceral. I have to fight it every moment, and knowing just how bad Sophie needs someone right now is the only thing holding me down here. I pray that the feeling will pass. I pray that after the memory of Eric—fuck, no, Samuel—dead in my arms dies down, that this need to run will pass. That I will realize I’m where I need to be. That I should be with Sophie.

  But I’m not there yet.

  “When he’s better,” I say, “I’ll give him a man-to-man. I hated the doctor, too—all men do—until a wicked piece of shrapnel got stuck in my leg. I tried to just bear the pain for a few days. I just kept marching on, doing what I had to do, and it just go worse and worse. It was only later—when I finally saw a medic—that I learned each step I took was making the shrapnel dig deeper into my leg. If I had just gotten seen right away, they could have pulled it out while it was still in my fatty tissue. But since I was a stubborn dumbass, it started cutting through muscle. If I had delayed it any longer, it would have gnawed through bone.” I reach down and press into where the shrapnel entered my leg. “It still hurts when it gets really cold.”

  Sophie scoffs. “You really are an idiot. Just as stupid as my dad.”

  I shrug.

  Sophie falls asleep with her head on my shoulder. She slept some in the car, but she kept jolting back awake. She’s been awake way too long, her body is working in overdrive. When I first got deployed, I had the same problem. How was I supposed to sleep when there were bad guys out there who wanted me dead? My adrenaline never stopped flowing, and I slept for only a few minutes at a time. I’d jolt awake and grab my rifle.

  That passed after a few weeks. Afterwards I realized that b
eing groggy, exhausted, and half asleep all the time was more likely to get me killed than just sleeping for a few solid hours would.

  Sophie doesn’t have to worry about getting killed, but she may soon realize she needs to get her rest if she really wants to be there for her dad in the best way possible.

  Hours pass, and I try not to think about Samuel. Finally a doctor approaches us. I nudge Sophie awake.

  “Sophie,” a doctor says, “and...is this your husband?”

  “Yes,” she says without hesitation. “This is my husband, Mason.”

  I realize then that she has to say I’m family. Otherwise they’ll give me a hard time about visiting.

  “I’m Dr. Hessen,” she says. “Nice to meet you both. I’ll get right to it. We’ve finished imaging your father’s brain. And we’ve run a number of other tests to try to figure out what happened, and where we go from here.”

  “Is he okay?” Sophie asks, clutching my arm with a vice-like grip.

  “It’s too early to say,” Dr. Hessen says. Sophie’s nails dig into my arm. “But, I can give you an initial assessment. The stroke was caused by a blood clot, and while there was some brain damage, the clot cleared up fast enough that it wasn’t severe. A nearly full recovery is not unlikely, but I cannot promise anything at this stage.”

  “Full recovery,” Sophie says. “What are the chances?”

  Dr. Hessen shakes her head. “I can’t give you a percentage chance, but if you’re there for him, and if he’s motivated, he could very well recover. Of course, this is an initial assessment, and we may discover something later on that changes things, but I’m tentatively optimistic.”

  “Can we see him?” I ask.

  Dr. Hessen purses her lips. “Maybe in a few hours. We’re still doing some tests. We think the blood clot was likely caused by high blood pressure. We’re trying to figure out which medications to put him on so that he doesn’t have another episode like this.”

  Once Dr. Hessen is gone, I take Sophie outside for some fresh air. She’s been breathing in the harsh antiseptic air of the hospital for hours.

  “They’ve got some trees and benches over this way,” I say, pointing. “You can get set up, and I’ll go get us something to eat. We can eat out here and—”