Within These Walls (18 page)

My self-imposed exile had stripped me of everything I once was. I’d left my family, friends, and home.

Isn’t that enough?

I am still here. I am still alive.

Thirty minutes after giving up on sleep, I was showered, dressed, and driving my piece-of-shit car back to the hospital.

When I’d said I left my old life behind, I wasn’t kidding.

My parents had figured out fairly quickly that I had an affinity for numbers. I wasn’t like the guy in
Rain Man
or anything. I couldn’t solve equations in my sleep. I was more like the guy in the casino who gets accused of cheating at the slots, but they can’t prove anything because he was just really damn good. I was one of those. I saw patterns and simplicity while others saw chaos. I was always two steps ahead of the market, seeing trends and pitfalls before anyone else did. Ever since this little discovery, all my father could see were dollar signs. There was no soccer or swim team for Jude. Instead, I’d gotten to sit in on board meetings and listen to hour-long conference calls.

It’s good training
, my father would say.

He hadn’t seemed to realize that I was also smart enough to see through his shit. I’d known exactly what he was planning. I’d managed to get away for college, but he’d still had his claws digging into my back, blowing up my phone whenever he’d needed something or flying me home when it had been too important.

I’d managed to keep most of it from Megan, but she’d known that life after we graduated would be different. I would be different. I’d spent every night of our last vacation awake, watching her sleep while worrying about what would happen when my father took over again.

Leave
, a voice in my head had said.
Just run away with her
, it had pleaded.

But I hadn’t done that because I’d felt obligated to my family. They were my blood, and I’d thought I owed it to the company and the people who worked for us to ensure the survival of the business.

That all had ended the night Roman visited, begging me to come back. He hadn’t given a fuck about Megan or what I was going through.

Dollar signs—that’s all I was
but not anymore.

I’d resisted every inclination to invest any extra change I had leftover month to month. Instead, I’d put some away, managing to save a meager couple hundred to cover a month of rent if needed. I was poor, dirt fucking poor.

If only Daddy could see me now…

My clunker of a car pulled into the parking lot behind the hospital, and I looked up at the building that had served as my refuge since moving to California. This was where I worked, but it was also where I could feel Megan—in the hallways, walking through the ER, in the tears of the mourning families.

It was my living monument to her, and I was the groundskeeper.

I moved across the parking lot and looked up to Lailah’s window on the cardiology floor as if it were a bright white beacon steering me to shore.

The hospital couldn’t just be a memorial anymore. It had to be more.

I had to be more—for her.

As soon as I approached the nurses’ station, I knew there was something amiss. Nurses on this floor moved at a slower pace than the ER. They would normally chat about their lives and gossip in the hallway.

Today, they were in hyper mode.

The nurses on duty were buzzing around, agitated and on alert, like they’d been spooked. Something had happened, and they were still working their way down from the adrenaline high. I’d seen it before a dozen times in the ER. Each and every person on this floor—hell, in this hospital—was trained for an emergency, but it didn’t mean that it wouldn’t scare the shit out of someone when the time finally came.

And in a place like this, it always did.

I looked around, trying to find someone I recognized. Day-shift people were mostly unknown to me as we would only see each other in passing, and since I wasn’t the most social person on the staff, I knew even less people.

But I did know one person.

Snow White.

Where is she?

I scanned the floor and finally saw her appearing from Lailah’s room. A mask was covering her face as she briskly walked to the nurses’ station. She glanced up at me from across the counter, and that was all it took. Her eyes told me everything I didn’t want to know.

I took off running down the short distance of the hall toward Lailah’s room, but I was stopped short when I was grabbed from behind. My fist came up, and I turned to swing at whoever was keeping me from entering that room.

“What the fuck, Marcus?” I growled.

“She’s sleeping and stable now.”

“Now? Now! What the hell does that mean?”

The grip he had on my arm lessened.

“The virus she’d caught got worse. Her fever skyrocketed in a short time, and her body went into distress. We were able to stabilize her and bring down the fever. Now, she’s resting.”

While he was talking, all I could think of was that I wasn’t here. She could have died, and I wasn’t here. She could have slipped away from this earth, and I would have never seen her smile again, never felt the joy of her tenderness. I’d known this girl for only a short time.

How did she come to matter so much to me?

“Can I see her?” I swallowed down the lump of emotions I felt welling up in my throat.

“Yeah, but first, I think we need to talk.”

I should have known this was coming. After my demanding display last night and the fact that her mother knew, it was only a matter of time before this happened.

But why does it have to happen now?

I glanced at Lailah’s closed door. The need to break through it and crawl up next to her was burning inside me.

“Okay,” I agreed.

By the look Marcus was giving me, I knew that there was no way I would get out of this.

He started toward the elevator, and I followed, hating that every footfall was one step further away from her.

She could have died.

The thought replayed in my head while we silently slipped into the elevator and rode it down to the cafeteria. I already knew where we were headed. This had been our tradition long before Lailah. We’d have crappy coffee and conversation where he’d do most of the talking, and I’d listen.

Taking a look at his rigid gait and tight expression, I guessed our roles would be reversed tonight.

We stood in line, ordered, and took a seat toward the back of the cafeteria. It was around eleven in the morning, so the traffic from lunch was just starting to filter in, but it was still relatively quiet.

Marcus leaned back in his chair and set his steely gaze on me. “Anything you want to tell me, Jude?”

No J-Man today. Just Jude.

“What do you want to know?” I took a long gulp of coffee that tasted like mud.

“I want to know why you lied to me.”

“I didn’t lie to you, Marcus—” I started.

He cut in, “No? You didn’t say that you’d stay away from Lailah? That you’d be a friend and nothing more?” His eyes were blazing.

During our conversation regarding Lailah, I’d never made any promises to Marcus and I couldn’t help but wonder where all this was coming from. “Look, I didn’t plan for this. I didn’t go into this expecting for any of this to happen.”

“You said you weren’t capable of loving anyone else, Jude. I trusted you,” he spit.

His use of the word
love
felt like a blow to my knees, spiraling me back to the night I’d proposed to Megan when I’d sworn I would love only her for the rest of my life.

“But I do love her,” my voice croaked out in disbelief as I stared down at the table, lost in my own head. Knowing something and acknowledging it were two entirely different things.

“You don’t sound so sure.”

“No, I’m sure. Just surprised. I didn’t think I was capable of it either.”

I finally looked up at him and found him watching me. Those punishing blue eyes worked and processed me like he was dismantling a clock or contemplating the space-time continuum.

“What changed?”

“Lailah. She changed everything. She makes me feel human again. I don’t dread living anymore.”

“But what are you doing for her?”

“What?” I asked.

“You just said how she makes you feel. What are you doing for her? What do you make her feel? I care about her far more than I care about you, buddy. If you want my blessing on this, tell me what you’re doing for my girl?”

My gaze narrowed as I looked at him, really looked at him. “What’s your connection to Lailah and Ms. Buchanan?”

“I’m Lailah’s doctor,” he answered in a clipped tone.

“Okay,” I relented, letting it go for now.

Eager to return to Lailah’s bedside, we rose from the table and threw our shitty coffee into the trash before heading for the elevator. As the doors slid closed and we made our way skyward, I felt Lailah’s presence growing as the gap between us lessened.

“You never answered my question,” Marcus said, cutting the silence like a knife.

“What question?”

“What are you going to do for Lailah?”

The elevator dinged, and the door opened. Both of us stepped off onto the worn laminate floor, and I gazed down the hall toward my sleeping angel.

“Everything. I’ll give her everything.”

SHAPES SLOWLY TOOK form as my eyelids hesitantly lifted for what felt like the first time in centuries. I moved to rub the sleep from my eyes, but my hand was restrained, encased in a warm tenderness I instantly recognized. I turned my head and found Jude’s soft green eyes staring back at me.

“Morning,” he whispered, bringing my hand he was holding up to his lips.

The touch instantly sent shivers running up my spine, and it had nothing to do with my fever or sickness.

“Morning? What time is it? How long have I been asleep?” I asked, my voice still groggy and tired.

I moved around and noticed the absence of the aches and nausea I’d had previously. I actually felt a great deal better. I wasn’t at one hundred percent, but I definitely felt an improvement.

“Just over two days. Marcus purposely kept you asleep the first day, hoping you’d fight off the illness quicker that way. It seemed to help because your fever finally broke, so he was able to pull back on the meds. You’ve been asleep ever since.”

I’ve been asleep for two days?

Looking up at him, I noticed the deep dark circles under his eyes and the redness that rimmed his pupils. His shoulders sagged under the weight of his exhaustion, and his clothes were rumpled and worn.

“And you? How long have you been without sleep, Jude?” I asked.

He ran a tired hand through his messy hair. “I’m okay,” he replied.

When I gave him a pointed look, he amended, “I’ve had a few hours of sleep here and there. I didn’t want to leave. I couldn’t leave you, Lailah.”

I wanted to argue. I wanted to tell him that he was being ridiculous. He needed to always take care of himself first. But as I watched him, tired and exhausted while speaking with such conviction at my bedside, I thought of everything he’d gone through in his past, and I knew that I couldn’t.

He was scared of losing someone else.

What sick, twisted sort of fate did I pull him into?

“I’m not going anywhere,” I tried to assure him, knowing I had no grounds to make such promises.

Like second nature, my fingers met the unshaven rough skin of his cheek, and he immediately leaned into my touch.

“I know,” he answered.

The elephant had officially landed in the room.

There were no more candid talks of dying and no more what-if conversations. The stakes had been raised. We’d gone from casual friends to so much more, more than I even had words to describe, and death had no place with the type of feelings we now shared.

How could we grow something from ashes? How could we expect a rose to blossom in the shadows?

Whatever this was, whatever I was feeling for Jude, I wanted it to grow. I wanted to see where it would take us, and neither of us could allow that with death looming over us.

That little bastard I liked to call
hope
came wiggling back into my mind. I couldn’t help but wonder if Jude was my sign that everything would work itself out.

Why else would I have been given a chance at love so late in the game if I weren’t going to be saved in the end?

“What are you thinking about?” He leaned forward to rest his elbows on the edge of the bed.

It brought his head inches from mine, and I could smell the lingering scent of his shampoo in his hair.

“How do you know I was thinking at all?”

He lifted his hand and brushed his fingers over my forehead. “You get these cute little lines and creases up here when you’re deep in thought.”

“I do not!”

“Do so. I’m a master in all things, Lailah. You can’t argue with the master.”

“You couldn’t possibly be a master yet. I’m not that easy to crack,” I debated.

“No, you’re not, but I’ve been paying attention. It’s been hard not to,” he said.