Maybe kissing her would make for an interesting experiment. Perhaps there is something to be learned here. I’m just as amused as I am irritated as I cross the room and stand beside her, next to the bed. After my disastrous run-in with Meredith, I’m not in the mood to hang around and waste too much time on this, though.
She visibly flinches as I duck down, but the brief flicker of hesitation disappears when I pause, three inches away from her mouth. “Change your mind?” I drawl.
“No. I just wasn’t ready. I am now.”
I bite back cold laughter. “Whatever, Chase. Stay still.” I brace one hand against the wall behind her head and I lower my mouth down quickly to meet hers. Unlike last night when I gave her two recovery breaths during CPR, her lips are firm this time. They have a little pressure behind them, as, surprisingly, she kisses me back.
She smells strange, like cheap hospital soap and bleach. Beneath the astringent smell of cleaning fluids and detergent, she still smells faintly of the same perfume she was wearing last night, though. Something fresh and floral.
Cupping the back of her head in my hand, I apply more pressure, deepening the kiss. Chase melts, her weight settling, her head becoming very heavy in my hand. She doesn’t resist when I urge her lips apart and slide my tongue past her teeth. I do it mostly to shock her, catch her off guard, sure that she won’t be expecting me to take this weird experiment so far, but she only whimpers slightly, opening wider to give me better access.
Well, well, well.
The girl’s got some balls, I’ll give her that. Her mouth is so sweet—a burst of citrus across my taste buds courtesy of the lemon gelato I was tricked into bringing her. And that little whimper? I’ll be damned if that little whimper hasn’t caused my dick to twitch in my pants; I can feel myself getting hard. The whole experience is way more enjoyable than I anticipated—the very reason I cut the whole thing off and straighten, pulling away from her.
She doesn’t look so half-dead anymore. Her cheeks are pink, and her eyes have come alive. “Well.” She clears her throat, fidgeting against her pillows, definitely a little flustered.
“Happy now?” I rumble. “Did you get what you needed out of that?”
She nods. “I did actually.” She looks a little surprised.
“Goodbye, Presley.”
This time, I mean it.
14
PAX
* * *
I’m a match.
I don’t get tested because Chase baited me into it. My strings aren’t that easily pulled. Christ. But she did raise a very good point. Meredith wants to die, because dying makes her a martyr. Oh, poor woman. She languished away in that hospital for months on end, and that wretched son of hers didn’t even go and visit. She knew he was probably a match, but she couldn’t bear him to suffer any pain, so she just let herself die. That’s the love a mother bears her son right there. So beautiful. So sad.
I’ll be damned all the way to hades and back again three times over if I let her get away with that shit. And yes. It’ll be a nice bonus that she will never, ever be able to give me shit for anything ever a-freaking-gain. I will be the benevolent champion who enabled her to carry on drawing breath, and I won’t ever let her forget it.
I refrain from visiting my mother again. The nurses tell her an anonymous donor has been found, and she still tells them she needs to think about accepting the donation. Think about it, like it’s not the most relieving news she’s ever fucking received. There are people out there, clinging to life, waiting to get news that a donor has been found for them. They’d sell everything they own for one more week, one day, one more second with their families. But Meredith has to consider if she even wants a second shot at life. As if the very idea of it is tedious to her.
Two days later, I check myself into the hospital, snapping and snarling at all of the nurses who all come to tell me how brave and amazing they think I am. Some of them are hot. A couple of them are tens. I thought modeling would always be the one thing that scored me the most pussy but turns out providing a certain amount of the goop from inside your bones will have women dropping their panties left, right and center. As I lie in the lumpy hospital bed, waiting for the surgeon to come down and tell me exactly what will happen and then take me into the operating room, I’m presented with at least four opportunities to fuck. I deflect them all. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. The idea that I might get my cock sucked by a hot nurse while Chase is still recovering from her injuries two floors below me is somehow unacceptable. I don’t care about the girl. I really fucking don’t. But every time one of these smoke shows hits on me, my dick stays resolutely soft.
My doctor is professional, cold, and confident. She goes over the procedure, and I pretend to pay attention. I can’t focus on anything other than my desperate need to get this over with so I can get the fuck out of here and back to Riot House.
“Do you understand, Mr. Davis?” She looks sternly down the bridge of her nose at me.
“Yeah, sure.”
“Repeat back to me what I just told you.”
“No swimming during recovery. No alcohol. No sex. No strenuous activities of any kind. I’m gonna be in pain. I’ll be bruised. If I notice any weird swelling or blood in my urine, I have to get to a hospital at my earliest convenience—”
“Not at your earliest convenience.” The doctor shakes her head. “Immediately. If there’s blood in your urine or you have a fever, something could be very wrong. Depending on the cause, you could wind up dead. You do appreciate that this isn’t going to be a walk in the park, Mr. Davis? There will be pain and discomfort involved. It’s going to take some time before you’re back up and running and feeling entirely yourself.”
I admit, I thought they were going to be able to syphon off a load of blood and take what they needed from me that way. It’s very common for people to donate peripheral blood stem cells these days, but Dr. London thought that the traditional, more invasive donation would be more effective in my mother’s case, so here I am, about to get a hole drilled into the back of my fucking pelvis.
I look her dead in the eye. “I read all the dumb pamphlets. I did my research online. I’ve spoken to eight of you guys about this. I know how fucked it’s gonna be. Can we please just get on with it?”
She’s wearing the ‘I-don’t-appreciate-your-attitude-kid’ look on her face. It’s amazing how many people I’ve seen wearing it over the years. She exhales slowly down her nose, eyes boring into me, then scribbles on the clipboard she’s holding; she hands it off to the cowering resident behind her.
In the operating room, a grumpy motherfucker with breath that reeks of stale coffee tells me to count backwards from ten while he puts me under. I stare at him stubbornly, glowering at him as the edges of my vision blur.
Then, all is black.
When I wake up, I have a second pulse in my left hip and it’s beating way too fast. It fucking hurts. I’m in a hospital room now, and it’s dark outside. Mountain Lakes is silent on the other side of the large, bare window in the room, but there’s a weird electric hum in the air. Maybe the irritating buzz has something to do with the fact that someone just drilled a hole into my fucking hip. Who can tell at this point?