I was doing a math equation in my fifth period biology class at the whiteboard when dizziness slammed into me like a hand to the back of the head. I stumbled then steadied myself against the wall.
“Louise?” Reece’s voice came at me through my sudden fog.
I tried to lift the red dry erase pen to the white surface, but my hand wouldn’t lift. Frowning, I looked down at it where it lay limply by my side.
“Louise?” Reece’s voice was closer to me then. “Mr. Warren, call the hospital.”
“Don’t need the…” I tried to say with my heavy tongue then gave up because I was falling then crashing into blackness.
When I woke up, I didn’t open my eyes because I could hear the familiar beeps of whirs of the hospital all around me and I hated the hospital.
My first thought was of Zeus.
I didn’t know what time it was, and I’d had plans to meet him after a few hours with Sammy at the Autism Centre that day. If he didn’t know where I was, he’d flip.
My eyes shot open as I sat up and then closed again when the dizziness hit.
When I was orientated again, I looked around the room and gasped because Zeus Garro was sitting beside my bed.
He stared at me angrier than I’d ever seen him, his harshly constructed face gone granite with wrath.
“Zeus,” I tried but he cut me off immediately by lifting a hand in the air.
He leaned forward, his lips pulled back over his teeth like a wolf about to snap. “Didn’t know where you were for hours. No one did. Mute went fuckin’ crazy, tore up the inside of Hephaestus Auto in one of his rages when he realized we didn’t know where the fuck you were. I sent boys out to every fuckin’ place I could think of to find you.”
He paused and his eyes sharpened to the colour of shrapnel. “Didn’t think to look at the hospital ’til H.R. told me she’d heard you’d left school in a fuckin’ ambulance.”
I flinched but he wasn’t done.
“Not once since I took you as my woman have I regretted it or had to face how young you still are. This is the first time I’m hit and hit hard with both’a those things.”
Fuck.
“Z, please let me explain. I know I waited too long to tell you but if I’d told you right away then you wouldn’t have wanted me.” Tears came and they did it like a tropical storm, tearing up mucus and heavy sobs, whipping my chest into a painful frenzy. “If you’d known that you were attracted to a seventeen-year-old girl with cancer and then that you were fucking and fucking hard a woman with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, we wouldn’t have what we have now.”
Zeus blinked at my crying face and for a brief second, I thought I might have gotten through to him.
Wishful thinking.
He stood up with a rough shriek of his plastic chair across the floor.
“Not sure what it is we have, the love of my life doesn’t tell me shit about her health.”
With that final punch to my gut, Zeus shook his head, turned on his booted heel and stormed out of the room.
I hit my head back against the mattress and let the sob that had been bubbling up in my throat free.
I didn’t want to die for a lot of reasons, but none seemed so essential as my desire to stay with Zeus.
There were too many things we still had to do.
Too many rides to take on the back of his bike with his big body between my thighs and the dual rumble of the bike and his laughter vibrating through my core.
Too many nights spent at The Wet Lotus, eye-fucking across velvet booths and scantily clad dancers.
Too many battles to win. Too many people to kill. The Nightstalkers most of all.
I wanted time with him, I needed it more than I needed my next breath and even those were limited.
There wasn’t time and there wasn’t much of a choice but whatever was left of both, I wanted to use to be with Zeus Garro.
It had never occurred to me that he might not want to spend that time with me.
