“I’m sure if it were up to you, she’d be sleeping all day if it kept me out.”
I wasn’t about to take his word for it. Peeking through the glass, I could see he wasn’t making it up, though. Amber looked like an angel as she lay there with her eyes closed, an IV connected to her arm. She was wearing a light blue hospital gown, and her hair was disheveled
An incredible sadness came over me. It felt like I was breaking inside with each second that I watched her lying there helpless. Look at how much I missed because of my ego. This was a lesson to never, ever part with someone angry—never assume you’ll have all the time in the world to work things out. Amber was probably going to be fine, but what if that weren’t the case? Pneumonia is no joke.
Rory and I were now both side by side, silently competing for space to look through the narrow window on the door. If testosterone in the air could have cured her illness, Amber’s lungs would have cleared in no time
He spoke first. “I’ve never seen her this sick.”
My anger was rising. “We fucking did this to her.”
He abruptly faced me. “You’re blaming me?”
“I said we. Not you. This whole situation. She’s been under so much stress that it wore down her immune system.”
“I never meant to cause her pain by coming back,” he said.
“I know that.”
Rory seemed surprised that I’d agreed with him and seemed to calm down a little. “When did you get in?”
“Just now. I came here straight from the airport. Have you been here the whole time with her?”
“She’s been here for a couple of days. I’ve been here the majority of the time.”
Still looking through the window at her, I asked, “Is she gonna be alright?”
“Yeah. At this point, they’re just monitoring her. This is the first time she’s really fallen asleep. She needed it badly.”
As much as we were making an attempt to be cordial, you could cut the tension in the air with a knife. It felt like it was only a matter of time before one of us lost it on the other.
“Why did you even come here, Channing?”
And with that, it would seem my losing it would be happening sooner rather than later.
I whipped my head toward him. “Excuse me?”
“She told me you weren’t even speaking to her. She didn’t even do anything wrong.”
I was ready to punch him. “Well, forgive me if I got upset because my girlfriend kissed her ex-boyfriend.”
He angrily laughed at me. “Your girlfriend? She’s not your girlfriend.”
“The fuck, she isn’t. She became mine long before you came back from the dead and fucked everything up.”
“Sorry to ruin your plan of fucking me over the first chance you got. You mean to tell me that Boston job was a coincidence? You heard we broke up and wasted no time pouncing on her.”
I bent my head back in laughter. “Are you kidding me? You have some nerve to accuse me of that when you’re the one who fucking pounced on her the second I went away to college. You knew how I—”
“Excuse me, gentlemen!” A nurse interrupted our sparring. “You’re going to need to take this outside. A hospital floor is no place for a fight between two grown men.”
Rory and I just death stared at each other for a few seconds. Huffing and puffing, we stalked over to the elevators and down to the lobby.
Exiting the building in silence, I wasn’t sure if we were about to roll up our sleeves and go at it outside or what. All I knew was, whatever was about to happen between us had been a long time coming, a decade in the making.
We ended up in a grassy area off to the side of the building that was adjacent to a parking lot. There was no one else in sight, which was probably a good thing.
He held his hands out. “What are we even doing out here? What do you want from me, Channing? It’s not enough that you stole the only woman I’ve ever loved out from under me, fucked her, and manipulated her into falling for you?”
I got in his face. “Is that what you really think? You think what she and I have isn’t real? I feel sorry for you if that’s the case, because you’re gravely misinformed with a false sense of confidence. You weren’t there. You have no idea what’s developed between us.”
“You wouldn’t know a mature relationship if it hit you in the face, Lord. Have you ever told her exactly how many women you slept with before her?”
“She knows everything about me. And I’m not the guy you think you know. But I don’t owe you an explanation of how or why I might have changed. I’m not looking for your opinion.”