I managed to wriggle my toes to remind myself that all hope wasn’t lost, in spite of it feeling like they were buried in six feet of wet beach sand.
It was still progress.
The door opened, and I blinked across the room. For a moment, I thought maybe they’d given me too much morphine. I had to be hallucinating because there was not a chance infucking hell that Raleigh was swaggering into my hospital room, holding up a phone and wearing a face of absolute pity.
“Oh, fuck no. Tell me you’re not on live,” I rasped.
He clicked his tongue. “Baby?—”
“I will sue the absolute fuck out of you,” I warned. “I’m not even joking.”
His eyes narrowed, but eventually, he put the phone down to his side. When I lifted a brow, Raleigh rolled his eyes and shoved it into his pocket. “It wasn’t on live anyway. This was for my Instagram, but I’ll delete it. Happy?”
“Not really. What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I heard about the accident, baby,” he simpered. He walked over to the bed and tried to take my hand, but I wrenched it back from him, wishing I could get up and shove him out the door. But all my legs did was give a feeble twitch. This was not going to be some movie miracle where rage healed me, apparently. His eyes flickered to my legs, then back up to my face. “How bad is it?”
“You caught me just as I was about to do a fucking Irish jig.” I swallowed heavily. “Seriously, Raleigh, what do you want?”
“There are things we need to talk about, babe. And I just?—”
“Don’t call me that, okay?” God, I was so tired. “The last conversation we had face-to-face was you telling me about the tight twink ass you were fucking. We’re not going to pretend like all of that never happened.”
“Of course not.” He stroked a hand up my arm, and I fought the urge to punch him. It would have been weak and worthless though, and I wasn’t in the mood to embarrass myself further. All he had to do was tug the blanket down to see all the scars on my body, and the tube up my dick, and yeah…
Hard pass on all that.
“Look,” he said, his voice losing some of the sugar-sweet bullshit he usually used to get his way. He sank into the chairTollin had left beside the bed. “Things were rotten before you left.”
“And?”
“And I think we both know that this is probably a sign.”
The room looked tinged with red suddenly. My blood pressure was skyrocketing. I took several breaths until my machine stopped dinging at me. “A sign of what?”
“That it’s time to move on. I have some papers being sent your way. No financial cost to you,” he said, holding up his hands in surrender. “But while we were in New York, we met this amazing man who fits the new sound we’re going for perfectly.”
It took my brain a moment to catch up, what with the painkiller haze and the lingering shock of nearly dying. “You’re…you’re here to kick me out of the band?”
He laughed softly. “Darling, please don’t be upset. I mean, this was a very dramatic way to do it, but you and I both know you were looking for an out. Of course, you didn’t have to get into a car crash to get my attention, but?—”
I managed to sit up a little, grasping the railing with my one good limb. “Did you just imply that I paralyzed myself as a way of getting out of my fucking contract?”
“Para—oh.” He froze. Shit. He didn’t know. When he spoke again, his voice was very small. “I didn’t know it was that bad. I thought…they said broken bones.” He lifted a hand to his mouth, and I noticed it was shaking. “They said something about a lung puncture, and—” His breath left his chest in a tremble. “Is it permanent?”
I swallowed, trying not to take my tongue down with the mouthful of spit I had, and my rage settled into a quiet simmer. I couldn’t hate him for the information he didn’t have. Not that it changed things. “I’ve regained some movement in my feet, but I don’t know if I’ll walk again. But this isn’t me acting out, youabsolute fuck-stick. This isn’t a tantrum I threw because I finally got tired of you cheating.”
“Open relationship, darling?—”
“That was you,” I snapped. Fuck, my heart was beating too hard, and my hurt lung was struggling to take in a full breath. “You opened it up without my consent so you could do whatever the fuck you wanted and absolve yourself of any wrongdoing. But I don’t care. Live with those sins, die with them, whatever makes you happy. I’m not sad we’re over, and I’m more than willing to leave the band so you can follow your new sound.”
He stood up and looked down at me. “So. Whatever happens with…this”—he waved his hand up and down my body—“I guess my decision is for the best. Just tell me you’ll sign the papers and maybe consider a quiet retirement. You’ll still get plenty of residuals, and if I remember right, you did invest.”
I blinked at him. “Retire?”
“I’m only saying that I’m not sure the stage is fit for, you know”—he dropped his voice to a whisper—“wheelchairs.”
I knew what he was doing. He was uncomfortable. He felt a level of guilt his shriveled heart was incapable of coping with, so he was lashing out. He was trying to hurt my insides as much as I was hurt on the outside so I would focus on that and not on him being, well.
