by Cat Porter
“Stay down,” I hissed.
My fingers uncurled and flattened on his chest. His heart beat wildly under my palm.
So fucking priceless.
“Wes!” screamed a girl’s voice in the distance, a slight figure running toward us, red hair flying.
Wes craned his neck. “Lindy?”
My shoulders fell, and my lungs constricted tightly, the pain in my chest excruciating. The large figure beyond rushed toward us, a revolver at his side, his features snarled.
Pick.
“Kid all right?” Pick shouted.
The reply stuck in my throat. The banging in my ears so loud...so loud. My heart thrashed in my chest, galloping hard on rocky ground; there was no keeping up with it. My head knocked back, meeting the hard earth. The trees tilted. The blue sky whirled above me.
“Butler! Butler, you okay?” Wes’s voice was far away.
Pick hovered over me. Lindy. Wes.
Wes’s face faded, and in its place was my brother’s face. His voice in my ears.
“You’ve got a big heart, tough guy.”
My hand reached out.
Air. Stephan, I need air…
My heart raced to a finish line that I couldn’t make.
Would never make.
“A big heart.”
Hands pressed over me.
“He’s not shot! Then what the fuck—”
“Something’s wrong with him!” Wes shouted from far away. “Something’s wrong!”
Breaths stuttered in my chest, beyond my reach.
I can’t breathe. I can’t—
My heart hammered in my neck, pounded around my throat. Squeezing, squeezing everything from me.
I gave in.
“I’m so cold, so cold.”
Everything faded.
MY HANDS SHOOK.
I curled my fingers into tight fists, but it did no good. The trembling and shuddering came from my insides.
Critical condition, Boner had said over the phone.
Heart rate through the roof, had said the EMS worker. Severe palpitations. Tachycardia.
In the Emergency Room, they had tried an IV push drug conversion—whatever the hell that was—but that had been unsuccessful.
Unsuccessful.
Boner burst from the hospital elevator doors, long dark hair flying, a small plastic bag in his hands. He threw the bag on the nurse’s desk. “I got ‘em! I got ‘em!”
The doctor had sent Boner to Butler’s apartment to find any medication he may have been taking.
Medication.
Prescriptions.
Jill’s arm went through mine as we shot up out of our chairs.
“What did you find?” I asked glancing at the nurse who removed several prescription bottles from the bag.
“A lot of shit,” Boner replied. “A lot.”
Dready planted his hands on his waist. “I had no fucking idea. What the hell?” Dawes and Kicker stood at his side, their arms crossed, their faces drawn.
“Excuse me.” The nurse turned to us. “Do any of you know if Mr. Matthiessen was getting his blood drawn and tested regularly to monitor his—”
“No, I don’t know!” Boner’s green eyes flared. “I don’t know anything! He never said a damn word about—” Boner gestured at the pill bottles in her hands. “About—”
The nurse slanted her head. “His arrhythmia?”
“Yeah, that,” Boner said.
Butler had a heart condition he’d been hiding from all of us.
I approached the nurse. “What did he have to get tested?”
“With arrhythmia there’s the potential to faint and develop blood clots, so he’s been on Warfarin, a blood thinner, and Toprol—” She raised a bottle. “—to slow down his heart rate.”
“He’s a heavy smoker. And he’s been under a lot of stress lately!” I blurted.
“Oh. Not good. Plus if he’s skipped any doses of his medication and hasn’t been getting tested regularly to monitor his Prothrombin time and ratio—”
My brain zoomed back to all the times I’d noticed Butler rubbing a hand down his chest to his stomach, taking in deep breaths here and there, wincing while smoking. All the times he’d seemed tired, worn out, tense. So many times.
“Thank you,” I muttered and sat back down with Jill.
We waited together.
Emergency surgery.
Alicia and Dawes brought everyone coffee and sandwiches.
My stomach twisted at the memory of the cryptic remarks Butler had made in the past.
“I am an antique all right. Broken casing, rusty insides, faulty wiring.”
“I’m here on borrowed time, babe.”
Jill threw away my untouched coffee.
Rusty insides.
Faulty wiring.
Borrowed time.
We waited.
He has to pull through. This can’t be his end, it can’t. Not this, please God, not this.
And we waited.
The hallway doors separating the surgical area from the waiting room swung open, and a doctor emerged holding a tablet. “Matthiessen?”
I darted toward him. “How is he? Is he going to be all right?”
“I had to implant a pacemaker to control his heart rate. He also had a valve problem.”
“Fuck!” Dready muttered.
The doctor’s glance darted over us, an eyebrow raised. His attention returned to me. “We needed to convert this arrhythmia to a normal sinus rhythm since the IV medication conversion was unsuccessful earlier. It was tricky because he’s on the Warfarin, the blood thinner, and he could’ve bled out very easily.”
My eyes widened.
“But he made it through. He’ll be fine if he takes better care of himself.” The surgeon glanced down at his iPad. “Once his blood pressure, pulse, and breathing are stable and he’s alert, he’ll be taken to a room. We’ll keep him overnight for observation.”
“Thank you.” I let out a breath. “Thank you.”
I sank into Jill’s embrace.
“YOU LOOK BETTER, Uncle B. Much better,” Wes said. He and Alicia stood next to me in my hospital room.
Boner and Dready stood on the other side of my bed.
“You’re okay, Wes? You’re not—” I moved to sit up, and my muscles pulled from somewhere deep inside.
“Relax, man,” said Boner, a hand on my shoulder.
“I’m good,” said Wes. “It was like I could hear you in my head, and I knew what I needed to do. We had each other’s backs. That’s what we do, right?”
“That’s what we do,” I said, my voice hoarse. “You’ve got good instincts, Wes. Your dad taught you well.”
Wes’s dark blue eyes were clear. He had a few scrapes and scratches on his face, but he was standing. He was good.
A small smile broke on his lips.
“Come here,” I said hoarsely.
Wes leaned down, and I took him in my arms. “Love you, Wes.”
“Love you, too,” he mumbled into my neck.
I released him. “Like I said, once I get out of here, you and me.”
“Yep.” Wes nodded, his lips pressed together.
Alicia touched my shoulder. “Thank you for keeping my son safe, for everything. It means the world to me.”
“You don’t have to thank me,” I replied.
“Oh, yes, I do.” Alicia’s voice snapped. “We all do. And thank God that Broken Blade showed up when he did.”
“What Blade?” My mind drew a blank.
“Pick, Lindy’s dad,” said Wes. “He killed that Flame. Otherwise—”
“You know his daughter?” Alicia turned to her son.
“Yeah, Ma,” replied Wes, his eyes sliding to me. “She’s a friend.”
“It’s all good,” Boner said. Pick was real cooperative. Everything’s sweet and clean.”
“Good to hear,” I said.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Tania stood in the doorway and took a step back out of the room
, her face flushing.
Alicia turned around. “Come in, honey. We’re just going. Butler, we’ll see you when you get home.”
She went to Tania, and they chatted just outside the doorway.
“Oh, hey,” said Wes, turning to me. “I forgot to ask you. Before you blacked out, you kept calling me Stephan.”
“I did?”
“Yeah.”
My hand swept down my chest. “Stephan was my brother. He died when he was about your age.”
“Oh, sorry,” said Wes, his voice low. He gripped my forearm.
I covered his hand with mine. “You get some rest.”
“I will. See you, B.” Wes left the room, glancing back at me as he passed through the doorway.
I spoke with Boner and Dready for a few moments more, we said our goodbyes, and then they left. Tania stepped in and clicked the door shut.
My eyes held her full ones. Full of sadness, spilling with emotion.
“Hey you.”
“Hey.” She tightly clutched the handles of her handbag. She stepped closer to the bed, to me. “You look like shit, but from what the doctor said, it’s not deadly, if you take care of yourself.”
I let out a laugh. “You know how to make a man feel better, don’t you?”
She bit down on her wobbling lip, water filling her big dark eyes.
My insides dropped. “Tania, don’t, baby. Don’t cry.”
“Shut up, and let me feel what I’m feeling.”
I held out my hand to her. She took it, and I pulled her closer.
She planted a kiss on my forehead, a hand sweeping through my hair. “I can’t lose you. Not now. Not now.”
“I’m right here, Scarlett. Not going anywhere.” I held her as she cried, hiccuping little breaths. “Get up here, baby. I want to hold you, I need to hold you.”
She climbed into the hospital bed and wedged in next to me, sighing. I took in her perfume, the silk of her dark hair against my lips, and I finally breathed easier.
“Why didn’t you tell me about your arrhythmia? You must have had a physical wherever you went for rehab, right? Is that when you found out you had it?”
“I never went to a real rehab.”
“What?”
“I went to one rehab, but I didn’t last too long. Then, I didn’t have the money for a real rehab, and what money I did have, I needed to survive on. I did NA. Narcotics Anonymous. I made that commitment to myself and stuck with the program. Went to meetings. Still go.”
“You’re a strong man.”
“Look at me. This is strong? I have a heart condition on top of the addiction issues. Tania, I can make you a hundred promises, sweep you off your feet, but when it counts—when it really counts—will I be able to step up? I’m an addict, and now this. One day, I might fail you. One day, you’ll fall, and I might not be able to catch you.”
“Stop right there.”
“Babe, you can’t fly a kite when it’s attached to a stone. Kite’s got to roll with the wind, move through the sky. You’re up there, flying. I don’t want your string to break, baby.”
“You helped me fly.”
“Did I?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I let out a breath. “There I was, with this clear idea of what I was doing, what I could handle, where I was heading, and in a diner outside of Sioux Falls all that changed for me. Everything changed.”
“For me, too.” Her eyes searched mine. “Other than losing you, I only have one fear.”
“Tell me. I want you to give all of those to me.”
“I feel like I’ve just come up for air after being locked away in a musty basement. I like the fresh air out here, a lot, and I’m craving it in all sorts of new ways. There’s no place in my life for disapproval, skepticism, or hollow criticism anymore. I need to be trusted for who I am, which includes every little inch of my crazy—moods, ideas, my work. All of it. I realize it’s asking a lot from you, maybe too much, but I have to ask it of you. I won’t allow myself to be crushed or to willingly submit to that ever again. That is a special kind of torture—silent, insidious, soul-destroying.”
“I don’t want you destroyed, Scarlett. You’re soul is too beautiful, too fiery to be crushed.”
She blinked at me. This was new for her, hearing that belief in who she was, that admiration. It felt damn good to say it, to see that light in her eyes, that hope blooming where there had once been a deep ache.
I believed it with every fiber of my worn-out heart.
She squeezed my hand, and my eyes went to our entwined fingers. I was one lucky son of a bitch.
“Do you give enough of a damn, Rhett?” Tania wiped at her eyes, a grin pushing up her lips.
“I give way more than a damn, baby.” I held her watery gaze. “I want us to know every inch of each other, inside and out, clean and filthy, the pretty and the plain fucking ugly. The sweet and the sour. My cracked corroded parts and all your fragile tiny bones.” My fingers tightened over her delicate wrist. “I’m rusty and full of scars inside, and that’s as clean as I’m going to get. If that’s good enough for you, take it. Take it all.”
She brushed her hand down my chest. “You might think you have nothing but rust inside your veins, clogging your heart. But you know what? You and me together, what we have—it creates fresh blood. And that blood will scour the rust in both our hearts, wash it away, bit by clinging hard bit.”
She planted a kiss on my lips. “Although, you do realize, rust is a sign of history, experience. It has it’s own strange beauty. Some of us appreciate it.” A hand swept through my hair.
“That feels good,” I murmured.
“You go to sleep, you need rest. I’ll keep playing with your hair, Blondie. Don’t mind me.”
“Hmm.” My eyelids sank.
“I can’t sing you to sleep though. Sorry.” She giggled.
And, on the softness of that sweet laugh, I drifted.
“You didn’t have to do it!” Stephan puts his truck in gear, and we zoom down the mountain pass road.
“Yeah, I did,” I reply, wiping away the sweat from my hot face.
“I told you not to go near him! Racing on the bluffs? And you’ve been drinking?”
“Did you see it, Stephan? Did you see me finish?”
“How do you do this shit? How are you going to explain your dented bike to Dad now?”
I shrug, clicking my seat belt in place. “I’ll think of something.”
“You always do.”
“Dude, did you see me cross the finish line and wipe his ass with it?”
“Yeah, I did, Markus. You were amazing. You blew him away.” He squeezes my leg. “And I’m so relieved you’re in one piece.”
I grin. “And, on top of Austen’s humiliation, we got plenty of cash.” I show him the wad of bills I won.
“Holy shit.”
“It’s ours.”
Stephan only shakes his head at me. Such a worrywart.
“Ah, man, the look on his face,” I say. “Pouting on an epic scale. What a dick. I’m so glad you were there. I knew, if I’d told you beforehand, you would’ve stopped me.”
“I knew something was up when you were a no-show at the party tonight. Your band was up there, playing without you. You’ve never given up a night of playing. Especially a paying gig. They are pissed as hell at you, by the way.”
“I had an opportunity. I had to take it. They’ll get over it. It’ll be fine.”
“Well I got out here as fast as I could.” He glances at me, his lips pressed together, his wavy brown hair in his eyes. “You didn’t have to challenge him. You didn’t have to do this for me.”
I lean back against the headrest. “Of course I did. That shithead doesn’t get to go scot-free after accusing you of cheating just ’cause he got caught. Then, he comes on to your girlfriend? Fuck no.”
“I told you to stay away from him, Markus.”
“Have you ever known me to back down?”
“No.
That’s why I told you—”
“Admit it. You’re glad I did it.”
A grin blooms on his face. “I’m fucking ecstatic.”
We high-five, clutching each other’s hands for a brief moment. “Priceless!” we declare together, laughing loudly. Our chant since junior high.
We both grin like fools. Deep satisfaction.
“That smile on your face right there just made it all worth it. Even the dent on my bike,” I say.
“You’re nuts.”
“Austen thought he was the shit with that flashy new Yamaha his daddy bought him,” I continue. “You gotta know how to ride before you can glide, my friend!”
I howl out the open window, and Stephan only laughs harder.
He squeezes my arm. “You’re my kid brother. I should be looking out for you.”
“Shut up. It’s not such a big deal.”
“Yeah, it is, Markus. It is to me. You’ve got a big heart, tough guy. You don’t know how much it means to me that you’ve always got my back.”
“Shut up.”
“It’s true.”
“It wasn’t fair, what he tried to do to you. I wanted justice, and I knew how to get it.”
“You got it, all right. I just don’t want you getting in trouble again. With school, with Mom and Dad.”
“Don’t worry about me.”
“I do worry. Look, you’ve got to lay low the rest of the season, no matter what Austen and his crew throw at you at school, all right?” Stephan says. “We need you in the game next Friday, and Coach is going to have your ass if you eat another detention.”
I tap out a beat on my thighs. I am so ready for that game. So ready. Stephan and I make a great duo on the football field. He makes the plays, and I help make them happen.
“We’re in the state semifinals, man!” Stephan hoots loudly. “The semis! You get that?”
“Oh, I get that, and I’m totally psyched. And, by the way, tonight, Joanna Pelton let me know just how psyched she is about it, too.”
“What? The Joanna Pelton?” Stephan glances at me. “You’re too much.”
“I am,” I reply, pounding out the beat on my chest. “And she swallowed it all. Every last drop.”
“Unbelievable.”
“Believe it.” I rub my hands down my face and stretch out my lower back. “Shit, I can’t keep my eyes open. I’m exhausted.”