Thank god for Vanessa and Theresa these past couple days. I haven’t had to leave Zane’s side too often.
I’ve stared at him for hours. Touched him, held his hand. Prayed, oh how I’ve prayed.
I both can’t wait for him to wake up and be better, but I’m terrified too.
Because he’s going to hate me even more when he finds out this is all my fault. It’s past time for me to come clean.
I feel like I’ve been body slammed, run over by a truck, swallowed by a t-rex and then regurgitated. So in other words, I feel like shit. Everything, and I mean everything, hurts.
Opening my eyes to slits it takes a minute for me to focus in on the beeping monitor and my surroundings. There’s an IV in my arm, I’m wearing a hospital gown and it smells like rubbing alcohol and copper.
I remember collapsing.
Looking around the room, I see Jax sitting in a chair. His head is resting in his hand and his elbow is on the arm of his chair – his eyes are closed.
Trying to speak, nothing but gravel comes out of my mouth. It feels like I’ve had cotton shoved inside of it for days. My throat feels sore as well and I’m thirsty. Clearing my throat makes Jax jerk up in his seat and his eyes swing in my direction.
“Where’s Sutton?” I ask.
He stands and immediately moves to a glass and pitcher and pours me water then places a bendy straw in the glass. “The nurse said you would likely want some water when you woke up.”
He hands me the glass and I have it downed in three seconds. Handing it back to him, I ask again, “Where’s Sutton?”
“She’ll be back. She went to get some coffee. She’s barely left your side other than to go tend to her son a couple times. Rowan actually has him now – she offered and Sutton agreed. Guess he’s having fun helping her take care of Lily.”
Nodding I hand him back my glass, “I collapsed.”
“You remember?”
I didn’t immediately. But then I remembered talking to Jax before the fight, waiting for Sutton to arrive, finally making my way to the arena and waiting for my name to be announced.
I recall feeling off, hot, feeling like my throat was swollen, my tongue thick. I wasn’t able to breathe and my vision started to waiver.
“My throat closed up. I was wheezing. I couldn’t breathe. My god, that hasn’t happened to me in years. I know exactly what it is.”
Jax nods, “Yep, I remember too. It was seventh or eighth grade – I can’t remember our teacher’s name. Billy Carpenter brought in cookies for his birthday. You had one and minutes later you were on the floor.”
“Her name was Mrs. Harper and the cookie…”
“Must have been made with or in the vicinity of peanut butter. Your peanut allergy.”
“Yes,” I nod. “Luckily Mrs. Harper remembered my epi pen.”
“That was scary back then,” Jax says. “This time was even more so. We were lucky they keep paramedics on site during a fight and we always keep one of your epi pens on hand just in case. I wasn’t sure if that was what was going on, but I grabbed it out of the med bag and administered it just in case.”
“I bet Sutton freaked out.”
“We all did. We’ve all been here the last couple days. That shit is scary, man. The docs ran an enzyme test and confirmed it was an anaphylactic reaction. We did our best to retrace your steps – I was with you practically all day – and we narrowed it down to your health shake.”
“You think there was peanut butter in it?”
“Yeah I think so.”
“But, Andy knows…” I trail off remembering it wasn’t Andy that made my shake, it was the new guy.
“The new guy made it. He should have had the ingredients for the shake and everyone knows about the peanut allergy, but that’s the only thing we could come up with.”
“Did you ask him?”
“We uh, haven’t been able to get ahold of him.”
“How long have I been here? I know I’ve been in and out, but things are mostly fuzzy.”
“A couple days. Your reaction was bad. They wanted to keep an extra watch over you. I asked lots of questions. They gave you IV medicine that helped relax your airway, reduced your tongue and throat swelling and helped settle your body’s reaction to the peanut butter. It’s made you tired and you’ve been pretty out of it. They also ran several tests and kept you monitored.”
“How am I still in the hospital for this?” I ask looking at the IV in my arm in annoyance. “This seems like overkill.”
“You know how serious your allergy is. Plus, you had a second wave of symptoms come. They said it’s called biphasic reaction. So, they kept you here to monitor you until it’s completely out of your system.”
Just then Sutton walks into the room. Her eyes go to Jax first and then instantly swing to me. When she sees I’m awake, her mouth falls open and she rushes over to the bedside.
“Zane! You’re awake!”
“Yes, and I feel fine.” I take her hand in mine.
She looks at Jax, “Did you call the doctor?”
“Not yet.”
She nods and then squeezes my hand, “I’m going to let a nurse know you’re awake.” She quickly leaves the room, her coffee discarded on a table.
“Uh, there’s something I want to tell you before she gets back.” Jax says.
“Okay.”
“Sutton has been a mess. She was near hysterical when she first got here. She keeps saying that this is her fault. I’ve got a weird feeling, brother. Just a heads up, yeah?”
“Yeah. I’ll talk to her.”
Sutton walks back in with a nurse trailing her. Jax and Sutton are asked to leave so the nurse can check my vitals. She fills me in on the last couple days, her description matching what Jax has already said to me.
“If your friend there hadn’t reacted so fast with your epi pen, things could have gone differently,” she tells me. Of course Jax didn’t mention that tidbit. “You could have needed a hole in your trachea or CPR, but luckily the epi pen helped and then the EMR team took over. The doctor will be in here later and he’ll discuss your discharge and next steps.”
“Alright, thank you.”
Once she leaves Sutton walks back in, but alone this time. When she reaches my side of the bed and takes my hand again, I pull her toward me intending to give her a brief kiss on the lips not caring that I have two-day-old disgusting breath.
“You okay?” I ask her. If I had a mirror and could compare, I’d swear out of the two of us, she looks worse than I do.
“No, Zane. No, I’m not okay. I need to talk to you.”
“Okay. Jax said it seems like something is wrong.”
She nods, “When I saw you collapse… my heart… it stopped. I thought… I thought… well I was afraid I would lose you.”
“But you didn’t. I’m here and I’m fine. I just have to be really careful with the peanut thing. It’s been years since something like this has happened.”
She’s quiet and I can tell she’s working out something in her mind.
“Talk to me, what’s going on in that gorgeous head of yours?”
“I need to talk to you about something and I want to ask that you hear me out.”
“You’re concerning me. What’s going on?”
She sits down in the chair next to my bed, but then she stands and walks to the foot of my bed. She begins to pace back and forth and just when I wonder if she’s ever going to say anything she starts talking.
“When my parents died, long story short, I ended up meeting a man. He was an older man but with him came the promise of being taken care of. Of no longer being alone, trying to make ends meet working shitty jobs and wondering how I was going to pay my bills. He took me under his wing, gave me anything and everything I could ever want. I fell in love with him so when he told me he had one favor in return for all he was and had already given me, I happily agreed. This is the person and situation I referenced to you before.”
She st
ops and stares out the window for a minute before continuing.
“Nico started teaching me how to count cards. He was a casino manager, but I knew he also had some shady side businesses going on. To this day I still don’t know what they are for sure, but I’m sure it has to do with drugs. Anyway, he taught me and I was good at it. Really good. And I figured I owed him.
“Going out to other casinos to use my skills was addicting. It was the thrill of winning and watching the chips pile higher and higher, but it was also feeling important. It went to my head and I got sloppy and long story short I was caught as you know. Somehow they figured out I was counting and they brought me into a back room to question me and I stupidly tried to run. Police were called and I was arrested.
“Nico didn’t come to my rescue. He didn’t bail me out, he didn’t come to the brief hearing to testify on my behalf, he didn’t do anything. It was my first offense, I was sentenced to community service and rehab.”
She looks at me and smiles softly, “I was so angry. So angry and pissed off at Nico, I told him it was over when I saw him when I was released before I had to check in at rehab. He laughed it off, said I got off easy and would do my stint and then it would ‘all be good’. What I didn’t expect was to meet you.”
I smile because I remember all too well meeting her and how our attraction was practically off the charts from the first time we met. One night she knocked on the door to my room, she stood there and stared at me for a moment before kissing me.
Shocked, I pulled away from her and looked into her eyes. In them I found need and when she said, “please” to me with those full lips of hers eyes bright and shining, I couldn’t say no. I brought her in my room and we fucked right there against the wall. It was fast and amazing. It began weeks full of the same, but we also became more.
“I remember,” I tell her quietly and I know she sees in my eyes what I’m remembering. She nods and smiles a little.
“There’s a few things I need to tell you. One is clearly more important than the others. First, I want to tell you the reasons for the most important thing because once you hear what it is, I’m not sure you’ll hear anything else I have to say after that.”
“You’re not making any sense.”
“When I got out of rehab Nico tried to get me to count cards again. But there was no way I was going to do that. I had changed during our time together and I took more away from our time together than you can imagine. That’s when I realized I wanted to work with kids that needed someone like I did when I lost my parents. I was lucky to find my job at the orphanage and I’ve loved it ever since. I love those kids I work with, Zane. They, in many ways, feel like my own children. I know I should probably refrain from getting too close emotionally, but that’s impossible.”
“I understand.”
“I’m afraid of Nico.”
“Afraid of him? Why? Is he still around? Trying to get you to work for him?”
She flinches at my questions, “Nico has been blackmailing me. I fear for my life. Those are the things I need you to hear me say.”
I sit up further in bed, more alert than I have been since I woke up. “You’re afraid of him? What has he done? Why are you afraid?”
She laughs, but there’s no humor there, “Zane, I’m going to tell you the big thing now.”
“Sutton, you’re freaking me out.”
“Remember how we didn’t exchange any information before we left? No numbers or anything?”
“Yes, of course. You know I remember that. I didn’t want to do that. You said if we met again it would be fate.”
“I can’t tell you how many times I thought about that and regretted it.”
“I thought about it too, but hey, you were right. Fate clearly wants us to be together.”
She smiles sadly, “A few weeks after I left rehab, I had what I thought was the flu and went to the doctor for some meds. But it wasn’t the flu. I found out I was pregnant.”
“You found out you were pregnant,” I repeat. It takes a second for it to work itself out in my brain and when it does I freeze. I can’t move. If I didn’t know better, I’d think my suffocating symptoms were returning.
“Ryan, is your son.”
Staring at her, I see her lips moving but all I hear is this whooshing sound in my ears. “Ryan is your son,” keeps repeating in my mind over and over again. For a minute I wonder if the last half hour has been a dream and I’m still out of it from the drugs they gave me. Maybe this whole conversation is some fucked up dream my mind created.
I think Sutton is saying my name over and over, but all I can see is Ryan’s face. Dark hair and green eyes like his mother’s; he’s a miniature version of her. But, how am I so stupid. He’s the right age. He’s exactly the right age from the when Sutton and I were in rehab.
He’s four. He’s four fucking years old and I’ve missed out on four years of my son’s life. His birth, his first smile, first word, when he started to crawl and walk and throw a ball and play a game. I wasn’t there for any of that.
How could she do this to me? To him?
“How could you? How could you not tell me?” I voice the thought in my mind.
“I didn’t know how to get hold of you.”
“Did you even fucking try?” I bellow. “Did you call the rehab center, see if they could tell you anything? Hire a private investigator? Look up Zane’s on the internet or for fuck sake Zane’s on Facebook in Mesa, Arizona? Tell me you fucking tried, Sutton!”
“No, I didn’t. I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry. You’re sorry? You kept me from my son for four years and all you have to say is you’re sorry.”
“I was scared, Zane. I was scared of Nico. At first, he acted like he understood about my hooking up with you in rehab. But, every day I watched him become more and more unhinged. Whether it was a look in his eye, the way he would snap at me for no reason, the way he would scream at people on the road or a worker over the phone. I was afraid. I was so afraid of him. And it ended up being for good reason.”
She keeps talking and I want to tell her to shut up. I want to tell her that I don’t care about anything she has to say but it’s like my mouth isn’t working in correlation with my brain and nothing I want to say is coming out of my mouth.
“He was angry when I started to work at the orphanage too. His grips on my arms or face would become stronger and harder. Sex…” she trails off and looks away ashamed, “Sex became almost violent sometimes. I started to stay as small and as quiet around him as much as possible because I feared for myself and the baby.”
“Then why didn’t you leave?” I ask with disgust.
“Where would I have gone? I was living with him at the time. I had no one and nothing.” She goes on to tell me stories about mean things he would say and do. How he arranged for her to come home and find him with another woman. How she moved out afterward, but he still owned her by threatening the life of Ryan and the kids she worked with.
“Why?”
“Why, what?” she asks.
“Why was he blackmailing you? You moved out, you weren’t counting cards for him any longer… why did he keep you around?”
“I think it’s because to Nico I was like a possession he owned. He wasn’t going to let me go. Then, he did end up needing me again.”
I had been looking out the window but when she says this, I focus back on her. Her eyes are sad, the lines around her mouth are tight, I know she feels remorse but I refuse to let myself care.
“He wanted to use me to find out information from you.”
“From me?”
“Yes. He found out the two of us were seeing each other. I was terrified at first to do anything with you afraid he or one of his stupid men would see us and I would pay for it. Then he approached me with a request and another blackmail threat.”
“What was it?”
“I was to do whatever it took to get information from you about your upcoming fights. He wanted to use
any inside information you offered in order to place bets against the fights. He wanted to make money,” she shrugs, “Plain and simple.”
“Nothing about this is simple,” I growl.
“I didn’t mean… I’m sorry… just an expression.”
“So all your interest in me, the time we’ve spent together, your questions about MMA, all of it was to feed back to him? None of… us… none of it was real… none of it mattered except to continue to service Nico?”
“That’s not true,” she rushes to my side and tries to take my hand but I jerk it away from her. “Everything I said and did with you I did and said because I wanted to. I didn’t fall in love with you - I rose in it. I found myself again, felt beautiful and like I mattered again. I can be the real me when I’m with you.”
I begin laughing, I can’t help it. She has to be kidding. Is she still playing me, even now?
Frantically she continues, “Ever since we left each other five years ago I’ve thought about you. Every. Single. Day. It was a dream of mine that we’d see each other again and I could tell you the truth – that the three of us could be a family.”
“You’re delusional. How can you say you love me, that you can be the real you? You’ve been lying to me for weeks. You kept the fact I have a son from me. You used me for information. I don’t believe a fucking word you say.”
“Every time we were together I wanted to tell you the truth. It’s killed me. You have to believe me.”
“I don’t believe a word you say. And let me guess, like a good little girl you reported in to Nico. Gave him the information he wanted.” The look on her face is enough to confirm the answer to that question. “Let me ask you, did it ever occur to you to fucking ask me for help? To tell me what was going on so we could figure out a solution together?”
“He threatened Ryan and my kids, Zane. I was also afraid of what he could do to you. And I was right, look where you are.”
That makes my blood run cold. “What does he have to do with where I am?”
Her eyes widen, “He, uh, he came to my house and brought me to his casino. He said he wanted me to see his new employers. Two of them are kids that used to live at the house as orphans. He’s got them under this thumb. He can hurt them. He told me if I didn’t want anything to happen to them that I had to slip a drug into your water. He said it would make you woozy and unable to fight well.”
Fighting Greed Page 20