Off Her Rockers (Loving All Wrong #3.5) (27 page)

“I started touching him, feeling him up…and stuff. He kept swatting me away, told me to stop. Told me he was back with you. I said something nasty about you and he got angry and began yelling at me to stop touching him.

“I got angry, too. Rejected by both men in one night all because of you. So no, I
didn’t
stop touching him. I fought him. I fought his jeans open, I forced my hand inside. All the while he was both trying to fight me back and steer the vehicle.

“Next thing I knew there was a deafening blare of a horn, blinding lights and…I woke up here.”

With a single blink, I stood as still as a statue. Words, coherency, cognition was remote. Unheard of by my brain. Shock besieged me for a different reason than the most obvious one. Jessica and Xavier had
lied
to me.
Lied
.

I blinked again when Xena shot up from the armchair, leaned over and slapped Jessica right across the face, so hard it echoed around the room.

I winced. It was on the swollen side of her face, so that had to have hurt like a bitch. Tears instantly sprang to Jessica’s already puffy eyes, an automatic reaction to the stinging pain.

Xena glowered down at her, mouth opening and closing like a fish. As if lost for words as I was, she turned and stormed out of the room.

Fat tears barreled down Jessica’s face, and it seemed as if wiping them away would need energy she didn’t have.

“You can hit me, too, if you want,” she murmured, blinking up at the ceiling. “I deserve it. Xavi might die and it’s all my fault.”

Rounding to the side of the bed, I perched on the edge beside her, then leaned over and gently did what she was too weak to do herself. Wipe her tears.

Eying me warily, she asked, “Who are you and what have you done with Alina?”

“You told me you were never together,” I whispered, because whispering was all I could manage at that moment. “He said the same. So, how might the baby have been his? And wouldn’t it more be Xavi’s kid than Davi’s, seeing as Davi left you months ago?”

Jessica drew in a shaky breath and shifted her gaze to the ceiling. “I was eighteen weeks pregnant, Alina.”

I stared at her. “Then how—are you saying he…when we were still together?”

She swallowed. “Kind of.”

Scream. Scream.
No, I won’t.
Scream. Screaaam!

“It was after he returned from France and was waiting for you to ‘choose’ or whatever. Davian had broken off the engagement and moved out a week before, so Xavi was spending time with me at Eye Spy, helping me get through it. He said you weren’t going to choose him. I told him he needed to believe in himself a little more.

“But the more the days passed on with no word from you, the more he was convinced you’d chosen Davian, seeing as you were both MIA. It wasn’t long before we began messing around again, as some sort of consolation to each other. Until one night, he got that text message from you…”

More than anything else, this revelation sliced into the deepest, most vulnerable part of my heart. This truth, this pain, it stole my will to live.

Scream. Scream.
No, I will not.

“So…” I cleared my throat. “So all this time, when I thought he’d been waiting for me, he was, in fact, screwing around with you?”

“No. He waited for you,” she defended. “But after not hearin—”

“No. No!” I jerked to my feet and pointed at her like she was the offender. “He did
not
wait. He promised me he would wait no matter how long it takes! He gave me a frickin’ waiting ring. He
told
me to take all the time I needed to make my decision. And yet he just gave up after a few days of silence? That’s not waiting!
He did not wait
!”

Jessica stared, as though shocked I was more upset about Xavier cheating on me months ago than I was about her causing the accident. “He really didn’t believe you would choose him, Alina. And we’re so accustomed to burying our affairs that we didn’t even have to talk about pretending it never happened. We just did. He wanted you, and I wanted Davi.”

Her tone was unapologetic. She didn’t regret it.

Without a glower or a glare, but with a gentle understanding in my voice, I sought the truth. “Feel good now, don’t you? That you have one up on me? Feels good to be breaking this to me, doesn’t it?”

She opened her mouth, closed it, then defiantly jutted her chin out as she admitted, “Actually, it does. It feels
darn good
, Alina, because you hav—”

“Alina!” Xena’s head popped in the doorway, tears streaming down her face as she beckoned me with a wave.

At once, my heart began thumping in my chest and rushed toward her. “What it is?”

Wrapping her fingers around my wrist, she tugged me out of the room. “There’s news on Xavi. I want you to be there. You’re family now.”

We all but ran back to the waiting room, where everyone was now standing and shifting impatiently, wearing anxiety like it was the new trend.

A stocky, salt and pepper haired doctor was waiting patiently with a clipboard under his arm.

“You may continue now,” Xena told him.

The doctor eyed us with skepticism. “And you are sure everyone here is…family?”

“Yes,” Xena clipped. “Now give me the status on my brother.”

The doctor opened his mouth as if to object, obviously uncomfortable, but as Tex moved forward and daggered him with a glare, he pressed his lips together and made an annoyed shake of his head.

“Mr. Xander is stable, finally, but in very critical condition. He’s suffered a traumatic brain injury. We had to do a craniotomy to repair the damages. There’s still swelling on his brain, but we’ve done the best we can and are hoping this will resolve in a couple of weeks. He is currently on a ventilator, a machine that’s helping him breathe, and he is on seizure and EEG monitoring—”

“He could have a seizure?” Tex interrupted, looking horrified.

“Seizures are common in patients who suffer TBI. Especially non-convulsive seizures—that is seizures that are not visible to the human eye. For this reason, Mr. Xander has to be monitored with EEG for at least the next 72 hours.”

“Oh my God,” Xena whispered ghostly, leaning onto me as if she could no longer hold her own weight.

Chest expanding and deflating with a sigh, the doctor looked at Xena sympathetically and suggested, “I think it is best to be seated for what I have to tell you next.”

Her eyes went wide. “There’s
more
?”

Tex came over and pried Xena from my arms. Whispering something in her ear, he led her to the nearest chair, sat down beside her, and held her tight in his arms.

Feeling it safe to continue, the doctor dropped the anchor on us, “As you might already know, Mr. Xander was pinned and had to be cut out of the wreck. His left leg was crushed. Beyond repair.” Pausing, he swept over all of us with his stare, as if to make sure we
got
it. “Mr. Xander’s left leg has been amputated.”

C
HAPTER
F
OURTEEN

S
ILENCE.

A sound of the world being swallowed whole.

A sound of a bomb diving into the ocean.

Everyone stared. Too shocked to speak.

Mr. Xander’s left leg has been amputated
.

I moved first. Finding a wall to lend my weight. Needing its support.

Samson. My king. My man. My powerful, deep-voiced, macho man. Of great height and great strength. Of great looks and great talents.

Mr. Xander’s left leg has been amputated
.

What did we do with that? How did we react to that?

Leo spoke first, hoarse and scratchy, “But he’ll live, right?”

Sounding
and
looking exhausted, the doctor replied, “Right now that is up to Mr. Xander. He is in a coma. He will wake up whenever he is ready.” He looked at us one by one. “But be prepared. If he does wake up, amnesia and mental disorder is a sixty percent possibility.”

“Jesus,” someone muttered.

Xena tried to stand, but Tex kept her tight to him as if his life depended on hers. “Can we see him?”

“You may, but I suggest no more than two people at a time in the room. And…prepare yourself for what you will see.”

Xena glanced at me and started to say something, but Tex spoke over her, giving me a direct look. “
I
wanna go with her. Please.”

He made it seem as though he needed my permission to start making big moves with Xena. I nodded, because that was all I could manage at that moment. Once again, I was numb. So numb I couldn’t feel my heartbeat. My feet gave out, failed me, and I slid down the wall to the ground and buried my face between my knees, focusing on my breathing to keep conscious, to keep from passing out.

I felt a warm breath at my ear, Xena’s pain-filled voice as she whispered, “It’s like you said, they gouged Samson’s eyes and cut his hair, but he was still the strongest man alive. Still the best.”

I raised my head. She gave me a forced smile. “He lost a leg. So what? He’s still Xavier Xander. Still the best.”

“Still the best,” I agreed in a hoarse whisper.

Squeezing my shoulder, she gave me another struggling smile and straightened. Tex tucked her in his side and I watched them follow the doctor down the hall.

Jake walked over, sat down on the floor beside me, and wrapped an arm around my shoulder. He didn’t speak. Just held me. I was certain no one knew what to say even if they wanted to say something. We needed to digest it all first.

Jake sat there with me for the 13 minutes and forty-seven seconds it took Xena and Tex to return. She was bawling audibly now, her face buried in the crook of Tex’s neck.

My stomach felt like I’d swallowed a cement block. Up until now, Xena had been strong through it all. Xavier had to be a sight to make her break down like that. She couldn’t even raise her head to speak when I asked directions. Tex did the speaking.

With cold, trembling hands, I declined Jake’s offer to accompany me. I had only one thing to say to Samson, and it was for his ears only.

I moved slow, steady, one-step at a time, dreading reaching his room. Preparing, steeling myself…

But no matter how slow I’d walked, how much I’d tried to “prepare”, I couldn’t have prepared myself enough for what I saw when I walked in that room.

Xavier was unrecognizable.

Hooked up to a plethora of wires and tubes, his face, or at least what I could see of it through all the paraphernalia, was so swollen he almost seemed plastic. There was some kind of brace around his neck that looked like it was keeping his head attached to his body. And all his bountiful golden waves, gone. Shaved off in a patchy, horrible mess. A long, bizarre stapled scar snaked down the left side of his head. I guess that’s where they did the surgery.

I held it together, proud of myself for not breaking at the sight of him, until my eyes drifted down his battered body and saw the outline of his amputated leg under the white sheets. Cropped below the knee.

It was too much.

I doubled over and held my stomach as a sob launched from the deepest part of me and exploded from my mouth. Knees buckling, I grabbed for the nearest thing to me to steady myself—the metal railings of his bed.

I cried, and I cried, and I cried. Like I’ve never cried before. Not even when my parents died. Pain I’ve never felt before. Not even when Davian broke my heart.

I cried for him. Because until that moment, I didn’t realize how much of me he owned. He was a colossal part of me. He ran through my veins evenly with my blood. Seeing him like that was excruciating. It slaughtered my soul and tortured my heart. I was in
pain
from head to toe and I hadn’t been in an accident.

For him to go from being in my bed, in all his six-foot-five, blond hair and amazingly perfect lips glory, to being in a hospital bed looking like…this. I didn’t even know what I was looking at. He was mangled. This wasn’t my Xavier. A strong, fierce, heart-stopping man reduced to tubes and wires.

I sobbed for who knows how long before an African American nurse walked in and asked if I was okay. I stammered that I just needed a few more minutes with him. With an empathetic nod, she checked on the machines and adjusted some of the tubes before leaving me to Xavier again.

My feet felt like lead as I forced them to move to the side of the bed. Looking down at a dead-to-the-world Xavier, I had a brief flashback of him unconscious in my elevator. That time, he’d been unconscious but still whole. Still in control of his life. The peace of that unconsciousness was knowing for a fact that by morning he’d be back in the world. Back to being a sensation. Back to being Xavier Xander.