Resonance (Marauders #4) (11 page)

“She says that every day. I know!”

I watched the two kids on the bed. Travis was explaining something that had happened at school, and Felix was watching him with wide eyes.

We didn’t have any other family in Phoenix. It was just Felix, my parents, and me. So that was who was usually around him when he was at the hospital. Now he had
at least
two visits, with two people each time, every day, and I knew he was thrilled. They brought little gifts or food, sat around for an hour or two, and talked to him or watched a movie with him. When they noticed him getting tired, they told him to get some sleep and that someone would come later that day or the next morning. And the grownups weren’t sitting there talking to Tommy and me; they were there for Felix, too.

“Is it always like this?” I asked Tommy when we were taking one of our breathers at the cafeteria later that day.

“Like what?”

“That they keep visiting when someone is at the hospital.”

“Yeah,” he shrugged. “Not that we’re in the hospital that often, but they support however they can.”

“Think they’ll keep it up even if this happens every second month?”

“Absolutely. They’ll always do that.”

“It’s really helping him, so could you let them know that I really appreciate it? He usually nags about going home, but it’s been really easy for him this time. They’ve made a big difference.”

“I’ll tell them.”

On our way back to the room, we ran into Brick and Melanie. Brick gave Tommy a very manly hug, despite it not being that long ago since they’d seen each other, he’d been there that morning, and Melanie turned to me.

“I made him some cookies. I checked the list and called Leah, but I couldn’t get hold of her.”

I took the paper that I assumed was the recipe, and eyed through it. “This is fine,” I concluded. “Thank you. He’ll love them.”

She gave me a hug, and I wasn’t much for physical contact with people I didn’t really know, so I did a strange, stiff, half-assed clap on her back. She definitely noticed, because she gave me a smile and patted my cheek. Patted my cheek! Like I was a little kid. I didn’t really understand these people, but if they kept Felix happy that was all I gave a shit about. I could deal with them, and the hostility I’d felt the first time I met them all seemed to be mostly gone.

They stayed for about an hour, and Melanie gave me another odd hug when they left. Tommy noticed it and gave me a smile, but he didn’t comment on it. He knew I wasn’t much for random hugs.

*

Along with Dr. Gardner, Dr. Matthews was in charge of Felix’s care, and when he walked through the door later that night, I knew he had bad news.

He was in his early forties, quite handsome and unmarried—that was my mom’s assessment of him.

To me, he was a good doctor that Felix liked. I had some other opinions that I kept to myself, like how he was surprisingly bad at the female physiology for being a doctor. We’d dated for a short while, and since then we both pretended it had never happened. We were not compatible, in or out of bed.

“Miss Jensen, do you think we could have a word outside?”

I nodded and turned to Tommy. “You should come, too.”

He stood up, and when Dr. Matthews gave him a strange look, I explained.

“He’s Felix’s dad.”

“Ah.” Dr. Matthews took his hand and introduced himself, “Dr. Matthews.”

“Tommy Miles.”

We followed him outside, and I was already dreading what he would tell us. I wasn’t sure if it was a good or a bad thing that I’d learned to interpret every one of Felix’s doctors’ facial expressions. I always knew when bad news was coming, and this was one of those times.

“Give it to me,” I said when we stopped a little farther down the hallway.

“The infection seems to be stabilized for now, and the pain is already better, as you know. He can leave tomorrow, but you need to let us know if the pain returns.”

“And the bad news?” I asked.

“His kidneys are getting big. To the point where he’s going to start experiencing pain from that alone.”

“What?” Tommy asked.

“They’ll start pressing against other organs,” I explained. I’d known it was coming, but I’d been hoping he’d have a new kidney before it became acute. “And his liver?”

“There’s some scarring, but it’s not beyond repair yet.”

“How long?” Tommy asked.

“From what I understand, you’re a match, so it won’t be a problem. It’s not so far gone that he’ll need the liver before we can do the transplant from you, but the size of the kidneys means there will be pain. I’m actually surprised it hasn’t already been more of an issue. We’ll do the surgery as soon as possible.”

“If, for some reason, I can’t donate, then what?” Tommy asked.

“Then we need to rely on the transplant list,” I answered. “That could mean years, since he’s not critical and won’t be until his liver fails, too.”

“It won’t get to that,” Tommy tried to assure me, but I still had a hard time breathing when I thought about it. “How long until he can go home for now?”

“Like I said, he’s out of the woods, so you can take him home tomorrow. In a few days, we’ll do an assessment of any other pain, and what we’ll do about it,” Dr. Matthews said, and I nodded. He put a hand on my shoulder. “He’ll get through this, too.”

He left us in the hallway, and all the oxygen disappeared. I couldn’t breathe. There was simply no air around me, and I tried to take deep breaths to find some. Then Tommy was next to me, pushing me down to sit on the floor.

“Calm. Put your head between your knees and take deep, calm breaths.” His hand was stroking slow circles between my shoulders.

“I can’t. I’m wearing a skirt.”

That always happened when I was at the hospital for a few of days. Mom brought me clothes, and she picked clothes she found appropriate, which weren’t clothes I usually wore. I never argued, because I didn’t care. The skirt I was wearing, a long floral hippie thing, was something I couldn’t even remember buying.

“Keep talking to me,” Tommy said. “It’ll ground you. What’s up with you wearing a skirt? You used to hate them, especially long ones like this. You said you couldn’t climb trees when you had a skirt.”

“I don’t climb trees anymore.”

“You should. You were good at it. When you didn’t fall down.”

“Just once.”

“I know.” He kept rubbing my back, and along with hearing his deep, rumbling voice, it was helping. “He’s gonna get through this. I’m almost done with the tests and preparations. He’ll have a new kidney soon.”

That’s when the oxygen came back and hit my lungs with full force, and I started crying. I couldn’t even remember the last time I had lost it as completely as I did. It felt okay when he was with me, though.

“Hey,” Tommy said and sat down next to me to pull me onto his lap. “Come here.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry about crying. Be sorry about the cunt move of not telling me I had a kid instead. The best kid ever.”

I dried the tears while still sniveling and looked at him. “Are you trying to piss me off?”

“Yup. Better than being sad,” he smiled, and I leaned against him with a laugh. “Nothing wrong with crying a little, though, but I know you hate it. And frankly, you get all puffy when you do. You look like shit.”

That made me laugh again because he was right. I always looked like shit when I’d been crying, and I could never hide it. We sat there until I managed to calm down. After a couple of deep breaths to make sure I felt okay, I turned to Tommy.

“Does it show that I’ve been crying?” I asked, and he started laughing. “I take it that’s a yes. I need to wash my face.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“In case I’m planning on sneaking away and falling apart alone?”

“Exactly,” he said and stood up. “
And
because I don’t wanna give the news to them alone, and I have no idea how to explain where you are.”

“Just tell them I’m taking a dump.”

“Really? You used to have the worst language. You basically taught Zach and me how to curse, and now you’re using words like
darn
and
dump.
”

“I had a kid.”

He actually followed me inside the bathroom and sat down on the toilet seat while I started washing my face. A look in the mirror confirmed that he’d been right to laugh when I asked him if it showed that I’d been crying. It showed, and I looked like shit.

“Something you said the other day,” Tommy started. “Was it to protect me from this that made you not tell me about Felix?”

I shook my head. “I wish I was that noble.” I kept washing my face. “I was at a really bad place when I found out I was pregnant. It had lost Zach and you—which was my own fault—and things that had happened in the Navy. I sort of hated everything and everyone at the time, and you got included in all of the hatred. By the time I was out of it, Felix was sick, we’d moved here, and… I don’t know. I honestly didn’t know you lived this close, and… I was scared.”

“He knew something was wrong. Zach,” Tommy explained when I looked at him. “He said he knew you well enough to know you were lying even if it was in writing.”

That felt like a stab in the chest. I remembered those letters to Zach, how I felt when I wrote them. I should’ve known he knew. I’d never been able to keep anything from him. But it hurt to know he’d died knowing I wasn’t well. More than I’d expected.

“I miss him. Every day,” I mumbled, and I hoped I’d be able to talk about him without crying. “I had so much to talk to him about, and it felt like he let me down by dying before I could. Then I feel bad for thinking like that.”

“It’s natural. Felt like he let me down by dying, too.” Tommy stood up, and given the size of the bathroom, that meant he was right in front of me. “I miss him, too, all the fucking time. My gut reaction when something happens is still, ‘I gotta tell Zach.’ Kinda silly six years later, I guess.”

He was really close, and I couldn’t take my eyes off him. I knew how he felt, and I knew that feeling of, for a second, forgetting that Zach was gone. Tommy’s mouth had turned into a small smile, like it really was silly of him.

“I do it all the time,” I admitted. Somehow my right hand had ended up on his cheek. I had no idea how, but when Tommy closed his eyes and leaned into it, I got up on my toes and kissed him. He froze, and I backed up as much as I could in the narrow space. “Sorry.”

“Stop being so fucking sorry,” he growled and pulled me back towards him again.

His mouth was on mine, hard, and I liked it. I loved proper, determined kisses. Tommy didn’t hesitate, he knew what he wanted, and it turned me on. He backed up, bringing me with him, and when he sat back down on the toilet, I straddled him.

I didn’t want to think about what this meant. For a little while, I just wanted to be closer to him, to not think ahead, or at anything else than the moment we were in.

His hands were tracing the outside of my thighs underneath my skirt. He leaned his head back, and I knew what he was going to ask. He’d asked me the same thing the first time we did this—six years ago—’Are you sure about this?’ I didn’t want him to say it out loud, because I didn’t want to think about what we were doing. I wanted to be in the moment, and nothing else. I wanted to feel his hands on me, feel him against me, inside of me, and I wanted…
him.
So I pulled him closer and kept kissing him while grinding my hips against him to shut him up. He groaned into my mouth, and I felt him grab my underwear and rip them off.

I reached down between us to open his jeans.

“Condom?” I asked.

“Got one,” he mumbled and searched his pockets.

There were a few things I remembered clearly about our one and only night together. One was how safe I’d felt. I’d known I would, which was why I had started it to begin with. I’d needed someone who made me feel safe—whom I completely trusted.

Another thing I remembered was how good it had been, and that was despite my fumbling and his leg in a cast. I’d never before—or after—felt so close to someone.

And finally: how big he was. It had scared me at the time, but now I was looking forward to it.

I kept kissing him while he hoisted up my skirt, grabbed my hips, and lifted me up. I reached between us again to grab hold of him to steer him right, and he moaned into my mouth when I circled his dick with my fingers. It was even bigger than I remembered, and I couldn’t hold back a smile. He’d already put on the condom, so I moved to slowly take him inside.

His hand grabbed my jaw. “Open your eyes, Billie. Look at me.”

I did as he’d asked and looked into his brown eyes as I started riding him hard. He was smiling.

“Keep it down,” he whispered, and I really tried, but not long after he chuckled. “Fuck, you’re loud. I like it, but since we’re in a public place...”

He moved his hand to my neck and pulled me in for a kiss. When his other arm went around my hips, and he started to buck against me, it got even better. I gasped into his mouth, and I was doing my best to keep it down, but eventually my own frantic movements in combination with his thrusts became too much.