“Oh, Calum,” she says, tearing up. She speaks English heavily inflected with a Spanish accent. “Thank god you’re here. I keep telling everybody to wait until you get here to make my medical decisions.”
My mouth thins. “I’m not interested in having any say in what happens to you, Anita. I think I’ve made that clear as a bell.”
Lucas gives me an alarmed look, but I’m not worried about that. Anita does exactly what I expect of her, which is that she bursts into full-fledged tears.
“Why do you treat me as if I was some street trash, Cal? After I raised you, after I fed and clothed and sheltered you out of my own pocket?!”
She starts sobbing brokenly. I check my watch; it took her less than two minutes to start guilt tripping me about having basic needs as a child.
Lucas shoves me. I roll my eyes up at him, scowling. “What?”
“Be nice to her,” he mutters. “Jesus, Calum. She’s in the fucking hospital.”
I glare at him. He glares right back.
“You shouldn’t have called me here,” I say simply. “You know better.”
The nurse coughs gently behind us to alert us to her presence. “Excuse me, but could I please borrow you, Mr. Fordham?”
Lucas stiffens. “Yeah, of course. Coming.”
I scowl at him as he leaves the room, stalking down the hallway. Anita has progressed to full blown howling by now; I blow out a breath as I cast a glance her way.
“You treat me so terrible!” she wails.
I lean against the closest wall, tilting my head. “What happened to Manuelo, Anita? Hmm? Lucas said that he changed his phone number.”
Her thin shoulders shake with the force of her sobs. “Se ha ido! Como tu. Ya no es especial para mi!!”
“Yeah, I still don’t speak any Spanish.” I glance behind me, wondering when Lucas is coming back.
She cries for a minute. When she yells again, it’s accentuated with hiccups. “I. Don’t. Know. Why. You. Don’t. CARE about me!”
“Yes, you do.” I look at my fingernails, pursing my lips.
“No!” she shrieks.
“Well, the second my mother died, you offered to take care of me and Lucas.” My lips twitch. “And before she was even buried, you came onto me. I was fifteen. My mom had just died.” I smile at her, the expression turning mean. “And if I’m remembering correctly, you made me fuck you in a closet at her funeral.”
“What!?” she cries. “No, you were older than that when we made love! You said you were in love with me, mijo.”
I exhale a long breath. “No, I didn’t. And I wasn’t. Should we call a few of the nurses in here and ask them if they think that was an okay thing to do to a boy who’s mom had just died?” I narrow my eyes. “Or how about I finally tell Lucas that the whole time we were with you, the whole time we were enrolled in ballet school and living a life of luxury… you were fucking me every single chance you got. Hmm?”
She suddenly stops crying, her sniffles making her sound even more pathetic. “I don’t think other people can understand, mi amor. What we had was a soul connection.”
Anita grips the blankets, pulling them closer.
I snort. “Whatever you have to tell yourself, Anita. Just remember that I can tell everyone that little bit of gossip anytime I feel like it.”
She sniffs, wiping at her nose. “You’re hateful. You always have been. Ever since you were little, you always would cause a problem.”
“Let me ask you something. How old was I when you first looked at me and thought, I want to fuck him. Fourteen? Thirteen?”
She glares at me. “You were born like this, mijo. You were born ruined like trash in the summertime.”
Her words don’t even prick me. I just laugh. “So younger than thirteen, then. That’s disgusting.”
“You are a pig of a man,” she fires back.
I put my hands to my heart, playing as if she’d wounded me. “Tough words, coming from a pedophile.”
I’m not sure how she even reached over and flung her water bottle at me so fast, but it sprays the entire lower half of the wall near me. I look down at the few drips of moisture that hit my shins.
“Is that all you’ve got?” I goad her. Laughing, I point a finger at her. “Take me off your contact list. I don’t want to be called back here for you.”
Lucas pops his head back in the room. He takes a breath, sensing the tension in the air between us. Anita is glaring at me; I still wear a half smile.
“O…kay. Calum, can I talk to you for a minute out here?”
I shoot Anita one last cold smile. “Gladly.”
Walking out of her room is heavenly. Closing the door on her sniveling face is just the cherry on top of my fucking sundae. I turn to my brother, squinting.
“If you’re about to ask me a favor, the answer is no,” I tell him. “I’m not helping you help her.”
He takes a step toward me, his face twisting into a sneer, and pushes me so that my back hits the wall. “What the hell is your problem, Calum? Can’t you have a little compassion? That woman in there was basically our second mother.”
That sick feeling washes through my stomach once again. “Don’t say that, Lucas. I know our mom had her problems—“
He pushes me again. “Mom was a drug addict. Okay? And a prostitute. And Anita stepped in, though she didn’t have to, and took really good care of us. She spent like a hundred thousand dollars to make sure we were accepted at the best ballet school and we would both go on to have our own careers in ballet. And she’s nice, on top of all that.”
My lips twist in a grimace. “There are things you don’t know,” I warn.
He shakes his head in disbelief. “Tell me! If she really did something that terrible and I somehow missed it, tell me right now! Come on, we’ll go to the police together, since it is obviously a terrible crime that must be punished…”
I glare at him. My hands ball into fists. As much as I want to tell him, want to rub it in his smug face, I won’t.
I can’t tell him that I slept with Anita to keep a roof over our heads and food in our mouths. Part of me is too proud and another part of me just… doesn’t want him to live with that kind of guilt.
So I stonewall him. “It’s none of your business.”
He laughs. “That’s what I fucking thought.”
I lean in close to his face. “You don’t know her like I do, Lucas.”
“Can you stop? I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry I called you to come help me handle this situation.”
That gives me pause. I would do anything for Lucas. He’s the one person in the world that I would walk through fire and crawl on my belly over shards of glass to help.
I compose myself, shutting down the emotions I’m feeling. “Just tell me what you need, Lucas.”
He blows out a breath, taking a step back. He tilts his head to the side. “All I need is the names and phone numbers of some replacements for Manuelo. And maybe some second opinions, just to check Anita out and make sure that she’s really okay.”
My lips twitch. He could’ve asked one of our personal assistants for those numbers. But I won’t get into that right now.