Vixen in Vegas (Sinful Novellas) (16 page)

He had tamed me all right. Look at me now. I was completely broken…if it was true. “Who is she?” I asked as I slowly back away, keeping the distance between us. I didn’t trust myself to make the right choices in his arms.

“This is my twin sister, Brenda,” he said evenly. He took a step forward and I stepped back. He paused as he continued. “I told you about her. I told you we work together. It’s a family business. Remember?”

Backing up another step, I responded with a nod. “Yes, I remember.”

Ben was trying to close in, taking steps larger than mine. “I wouldn’t cheat on you, Sin. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you,” he said in a pleading tone.

This time, I didn’t take a step. Inside, I remembered my promise to Jolie. I was not going to take another step until I had the answer to that burning question. I was trying so hard. It hurt. I hurt.

“Are you dying?” I asked not much more loudly than a whisper. My hands were clasped in front of my chest as I awaited his response.

His head dropped. I watched and waited as he took a deep breath. “I don’t know how to answer that,” he said slowly. “I mean, we’re all dying.” He shrugged.

Suddenly, I was so very cold. I no longer needed his answer, but I
wanted
it. I wanted to make him say it, make him see how selfish he was for making me fall in love with him. I wanted him to understand how mean he was to lead me on and let me believe we could have a future. I needed him to know that he had done something no one ever had, something no one else had ever had the power to do, since he was the only one who had ever had my heart.

It was too much. I started blinking rapidly. “Do you never dust in here?” I complained loudly as I began wiping away at my eyes. I even took one step closer to him. “Yes, we are all dying,” I agreed. “But are you dying more quickly and definitively than others?” My mouth was dry. My heart was beating so rapidly I thought it would just rupture. How long could it possibly keep up that pace while I heard my pulse pounding in my ears?

He reached out to me then, a teary look in his own eyes. “Yes,” he said simply. He shrugged.

“How could you?” I managed to ask through chattering teeth. “How could you let me love you?” I stepped back once, twice, then turned and ran.

By the time I reached the SUV, he was right behind me. He wasn’t able to stop my vehicle, so instead he hopped in the golf cart. It wasn’t much of a race: SUV versus golf cart. I made it to the house long before he did.

Choking back sobs, I burst through the door, raced up the steps to the bedroom, and hauled out my suitcase. I made short work of packing. I’d only been here twenty-four hours. I gathered my toiletries from the bathroom. I collected my dirty clothes in their neat pile on a chair in his room. As I walked around from the bathroom tile to the bedroom hardwoods, the clatter of the boots annoyed me. They were a reminder of a man I would need to forget, a life I lost the opportunity to have, and a place I never should have visited. Tugging them off my feet, I left them on the floor of the bedroom, grabbed my flip-flops, and slid them on my feet instead.

Grabbing my bags, I headed back down the stairs and began to load them into the back of the car. That was when Ben pulled up on the golf cart. He looked as broken as I felt.

“Sin,” he said as he came towards me with arms outstretched.

I stepped back. “Don’t. Just…don’t,” I pleaded.

“I never meant to hurt you,” he managed. “When we met…it was just supposed to be a week. It was the perfect last hurrah. No names. No contact information. Only, you are so incredible, how could I not fall in love?”

There were rivers suddenly streaming down my face. I opened my mouth to explain, but he interrupted me.

“I know baby, I get it. It’s the sun.” He reached out to brush them away. And I forgot to stop him. I needed his touch like flowers need the sun. “See, I had Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, ALA,” he explained.

“Had? That’s good, right?” I wanted that glimmer of hope so badly.

He nodded, but there was no hope on his face. “I was sick for years…many many years. I didn’t get to do what most kids did. I was fragile. No horseback riding. I didn’t vacation…too many foreign germs. I didn’t do much of anything.” He sighed at his memories.

“Had!” I reminded him.

“Yes. So, I fought it for years. I fought it at first because my parents wanted me to make it. Then I fought because after my parents died, my sister would be left alone. Eventually I won. The ALA is in remission.” He tucked my hair behind my ear.

“Remission is good.” I still was looking for that chance.

“Years of chemo and radiation left me sterile,” he admitted.

My eyes widened as I remembered. “This is why you said we didn’t need protection? This is why you said I wouldn’t be the one to kill you?” I rubbed my temples to ease the pounding.

“Yes. It appears my heart is going to get me first,” Ben said sadly. “It’s another side effect of the treatment.”

“There must be something that can be done. Some new drug to try?” I buried my face in his chest. I listened, but to my untrained ear, his heart seemed just fine. At the moment, I was more concerned with mine.

“I’m worn out, Sin. I don’t have any fight left in me. You heard the discussion with my sister. I just can’t…” His voice trailed off.

That’s when I backed away again. I reached up and shut the big cargo door of the SUV. I walked over to the driver’s side and opened the driver’s side. That foreign liquid was spilling down my face again.

“Where are you going?” He asked.

I shook my head. “You can’t ask me to stay here and watch you die. How can you ask me to do that?”

“But Sin…I love you,” he moaned.

A sob escaped the strict confines of my throat. Oh how I hurt, ached. Hopping in the SUV, I shut the door and drove away. I loved him, too, but I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t. I wasn’t strong enough. I never had been. There had never been anything in my life worth staying for, worth risking pain and rejection, worth being suddenly alone not on my terms.

I couldn’t see to drive. My eyes were so messed up. I pulled over. I jumped out of the vehicle. I had made it all of fifty feet from the end of that ridiculously long driveway. I paced. I screamed. I shook my fist at the sky. Finally, I was worn out and completely broken.

That’s when I called Jolie. To my surprise, she answered.

“Hey, bitch!” She yelled. “How are you?” She sounded more happy and at ease than I had heard her sound in quite some time. That was what I needed.

“Where are you? I need an address for the GPS,” I said, doing my best to sound perky and hide the fact that I had a nose full of snot that needed to be blown.

“I’m in San Francisco. I told you!” She said with a laugh.

“Well, it’s a mighty big city. How will I find you?” I asked with a chuckle.

There was a pause before she responded. “You won’t,” she said seriously. “You have a life to build with Ben.” She was quiet a moment. “Where is Ben? What happened, Sin?” Then her voice turned more accusing. “You said you’d try!” She shouted into the phone.

Immediately, I was on the defensive. “I did, dammit. I tried my best. I tried and now he’s dying. I’m not built for this. I can’t stay. He lied to me!” I tried to rally her to my side, sway her opinion. I felt like an ass at the moment.

“Turn the car around, Sin. I told you. I’m not moving.” She sounded determined. I could picture her standing with her arms crossed over her chest like I had seen her do so many times before.

“I’m not asking you to move,” I said smoothly. “You want to stay, we’ll stay. We’re working on your terms now. You can be our compass. It will be the Jolie show. Promise.”

“No, Sin.” She sounded serious, firm. Then her voice softened. “I know you are scared. You love this man. I know you do.”

That’s when my tears started again. “No, I don’t. How can I love someone who lied to me, who withheld important information? How can I trust him?”

“Oh. My. GOD!” She yelled into the phone. “This isn’t about trust. This is because you don’t want him to leave you.” She sighed. “This is what you’ve worked so hard to evade your entire adult life!” She took a deep breath. “Your father left. All of your mom’s boyfriends through the years left. I get that you don’t want to get attached to someone and just lose them.” I could hear her pacing now, her pumps clicking on the floor. “You have very neatly avoided that, always choosing losers who you could just run from. That isn’t Ben! He isn’t a loser! He isn’t someone to run from; he’s someone worth sticking around for.” She cried out for a moment in sheer frustration.

“Sin,” she said, seriously. “If you desert Ben when he needs you most, you are going to regret it. You will never recover from this. And I will never forgive you for being such a selfish little bitch.”

“What?” Her words shocked me. “How am I being a selfish bitch in this scenario?”

“Life is scary and uncomfortable and messy. Get over it. You will hurt. It happens.” She took a breath. “The reality is that this man is
made
for you. We don’t know how long we have. You could die tomorrow. Wouldn’t you want Ben to be there?” She asked in a low soothing voice. “Wouldn’t you want to share every possible minute with the one you love?”

Now it was my turn to be silent. The chick made some valid points. “So, I need to turn around,” I said slowly, still trying to process what I was in for.

“Yes, dammit. Turn around.” She was ready to yell at me, I could feel it.

“Okay.” I said. “I’ll turn.” I laughed, but I was scared as hell. Jolie had convinced me to go back, but what if it was too late? What if he couldn’t forgive me?

It was getting more and more difficult to hear Jolie while standing outside the vehicle. The traffic sounds had increased. More cars were flying by on this main road. And there was the sound of an approaching siren. It was bordering on the ridiculous. So, I hopped back in my vehicle to create at least a little buffer from all that noise and I started the engine because it was absolutely stifling without the air conditioning running.

“Great. My little girl is growing up!” Jolie exclaimed. “I’m thrilled for you. Now, I have a meeting to go to. Hang in there. Drop me a text,” she mumbled. Then the call ended.

Jolie was clearly frustrated with me. I was frustrated with me. I just needed a minute to think, a few minutes to plan what I would say. This was going to be the most important discussion of my life.

As soon as the siren passed, I’d make that U-turn. I smiled. Not everyone had a chance to turn their life around, to make better choices. It was true that I hadn’t looked back when I left, but it was also true that I barely made it past the driveway. Hell, I could see it from where I was sitting.

From my vantage point, it looked like there was an ambulance heading down the driveway. Suddenly, my fear over finding the right words had passed only to be replaced by my fear that I wouldn’t get a chance to speak to him ever again. My heart hurt even more. In my head I could hear a voice screaming
not Ben. Not BEN. Please, anything but Ben.

I threw the car in gear and made a rapid U-turn, narrowly missing a car headed my way. None of that mattered now…not what I was going to say, not the fear of saying the wrong thing. All that mattered was getting back to Ben.

The driveway seemed even longer than normal. The sky seemed unnaturally bright and pretty at a moment when my life was surely falling apart. Sure enough, when I reached the house, the ambulance had pulled up where my SUV used to be and though the siren was off, the lights were on. As I slammed the vehicle into park, I realized that Ben was on the ground, completely motionless, right where I left him. Just when I thought I couldn’t hurt any more than I already did, I discovered yet again how wrong I was.

Brenda was there, glaring me down and sobbing uncontrollably. George and Lucy were clinging to each other, unsure of how to behave towards me. And Ben just lay there on the concrete while the medics worked on him. His eyes were closed. I could tell that his breathing was shallow.

I listened as the medics spoke to one another, shouting all the necessary numbers, his BP, which was low, his pulse, also low. They turned to me for information on his condition and I was shamed once more, having to admit I didn’t have any. His sister gave me a smug look as she expertly responded to the questions.

They prepared to load him into the ambulance. “I’m riding with him,” she insisted. She moved to try to block me and climb in.

Tapping her on the shoulder, I held up my hand. “Well, I’m his wife. I’m pretty sure wife trumps sister every time.”

I held out my right hand so the medic could help me up into the ambulance. When I was seated on the bench, I turned to her. “Brenda, I’ll see you at the hospital.” I took a deep breath. “Ben is lucky to have a sister who loves him so much. I’m an only child.”

“Ladies, we have to go,” the driver said as he waited to close the doors.