Level Hands: Bend or Break, Book 4 (26 page)

“I know you think we waved a magic wand and made this happen for you, but that’s not how it works. The board was already talking about this scholarship for the last couple of years. And yeah, we talked them into a test case with someone who came with a personal recommendation. From Cash. An alumni who’d worked with you for two years. Who could speak to your character. My recommendation wouldn’t count for shit with those guys, Rafi. Jesus, I was a freshman who’d just joined the team. Even if we had been fucking, which we weren’t, that wouldn’t have done a thing for you.”

The words kept coming and Rafi knew that Denny meant them. He meant well and believed everything he was saying. But it didn’t matter, none of it. Because Rafi had known what he was walking into, taking this scholarship he’d gotten through rigged connections, which they absolutely were. He’d known there would be people who wouldn’t like him because he was brown or gay or simply didn’t know how to fit in at an elite East Coast school.

But he’d planned on keeping his head down and keeping some distance from Denny, determined not to be visibly relying on the guy who’d helped him get in the door in the first place.

He’d had a fucking plan, damn it. Because he’d known exactly what the risks were.

“Fuck.” He dug the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. A piercing pain had taken up stabbing at the back of his right eye. “Did I even wait a week? Two? How long was it before we were fucking studying together and working out together and going to goddamn parties together?”

“What does that matter? We weren’t doing anything wrong.” For the first time, Denny’s voice sounded young again.

And Rafi tried to explain it, because there was no way he could let Denny’s naïve worldview continue without puncturing it with the truth. “It matters because I live in the real world, Denny, where people don’t give a shit about right or wrong. But they sure do care about what things look like.”

Denny’s frustration was damn near a visible cloud between them. “And I don’t. I don’t give a damn what it looks like. And you shouldn’t either.”

“You don’t give a damn that he obviously heard you take PrEP from that asshole I outed you to in the dorm?”

Denny flinched. That one struck home. “Of course I do. But I can’t fix that. All I can do is get through. You can too. I can
help
you.”

Rafi shook his head. His head was pounding now, his vision blurring. “You keep saying that, but it isn’t true. I need you to stay away from me.” He choked the words out. “I’m the one who screwed up, not you. I know that. But I can’t be around you right now.”

“How long?” Denny asked, swallowing audibly.

“How long what?” He knew what Denny was asking.

“How long are you going to stay away from me this time?”

Forever.
“I don’t know.” They were most of the way through the third month of the school year and he hadn’t made any impression on his teammates other than the one he’d most wanted to avoid.

How long would it take to fix this? To make himself his own man again?

At the end of the school year, would he be Rafi Castro, rower and Carlisle student, or would he be Rafi Castro, Denny Winslow’s piece of island ass and token minority on the rowing team?

“I don’t know,” he repeated. He pulled on his heavy fleece jacket and hat.

Denny blocked him at the end of the aisle, standing on widespread feet between the bench and the wall of lockers.

“So you’re ditching me? What happened to wanting to do anything you could to help during my rehab?”

That one burned. Because he’d absolutely promised, over and over again, to do everything Denny needed. Rafi pictured Boomer and what it would be like to sink the edge of an oar blade into his thick neck. The violence of his anger made him shudder. He took a deep breath and banished the image.

“I’m going back to my room,” Rafi told him. “I’m going to talk to the guys. We’ll work out a schedule to make sure you have help around the clock.”

Denny slammed a locker door shut in his face. The sound rang like a rifle shot through the room. Anyone who hadn’t known they were there certainly did now. “Fuck you for a coward, Rafael Castro. I don’t need your help.”

But he did. Denny needed him, and Rafi was walking away. It was unforgivable. It was almost the worst thing he could imagine. Staying, and never being able to look anyone on campus in the eye again, was the only thing that was worse than this. But he didn’t expect Denny to get it. As much as Denny had said that he understood, he never really had. He’d simply been more patient than Rafi. Had been willing to sit on the sidelines until he could wear Rafi down and get him to break his own rules. But Rafi could still be swept under by the heart behind that naïveté. So he said the only thing he’d never admitted before now. The one thing he’d known since pressing Denny up against the railing and kissing him senseless by the lake in Chicago.

“I love you.” He couldn’t look him in the eye, though. Rafi stepped over the low bench in the middle of the aisle and walked past Denny, keeping his eyes on the floor. “I love you, Denny. But I can’t… I can’t let them be right about me.”

He left the locker room to the sound of a fist punching metal and an animal howl of rage and frustration.

Chapter Twelve

Disaster struck five minutes before Rafi headed out the door for the informal indoor rowing regatta with three other local schools that was the last event before everyone headed out for Thanksgiving next week. Indoor racing on the ergs sounded weird, and this wasn’t even an official event, just a race for bragging rights. But Rafi had expected to shine so hard under Coach Lawson’s watchful eye, and it stung hard to miss it. He hadn’t hesitated to send the group text to Lawson, Ted and Austin, though.

Family emergency. Going home. Don’t know when I’ll be back. Will call when I know more.

He was shoving clothes in a backpack when Denny pounded through the open door of the suite and into his room. Gossip traveled like wildfire in the boathouse.

They hadn’t spoken since Tuesday night at the gym. Avoiding each other entirely was impossible. But Rafi had been almost glad, guiltily, for the injury that kept Denny in the launch boat while the eights were on the water, doing their drills. And he’d taken to doing the rest of his indoor workouts, ergs and weights, at odd times over the rest of the week. Three days of tiptoeing around campus with his shoulders hunched and his eyes down, earbuds in to block everyone out as the cold wind swept down from Canada and scoured the campus. Rafi had been looking forward to pouring his unhappiness into the Saturday morning races.

“What’s going on?” Denny demanded, hair sticking out crazily. Still having a hard time with the one-handed styling. Rafi stared at him hungrily for a moment before pulling his gaze away with effort. “Austin said you were going home.”

“Yup.” He returned to his haphazard packing. No time.

“What? You can’t.” The words ripped out of Denny’s mouth before he even asked what was wrong, which pissed Rafi off. Of course, he was already practically vibrating with pissed-offness right now, so some of that wasn’t Denny.

“Lola is in the hospital.” Denny knew she was Rafi’s favorite, the sister he was closest to in both age and temperament.

“Shit.” Denny’s voice softened immediately. Rafi heard him take a step. “Is she okay? What happened?”

“She’s…” He couldn’t say them. The words Mari had spoken to him over the phone. The things that were torn and broken and bleeding on his youngest older sister made him sick to his stomach. He couldn’t get the picture out of his head of her battered body. Skin had never seemed such a pathetically weak thing to hold all of someone’s insides together. What kind of ridiculous evolutionary fuck-up was that? People should be made of plate armor or turtle shells. Anything that would bounce off pavement with barely a scratch, instead of peel away like butter under a hot knife when skidding across tarmac. “She was in a motorcycle accident.”

“With José? Is he okay? Is she?” Rafi looked up then. Denny had taken a step back, his good hand raised as if to brace himself for another hit.

He’d met Rafi’s sisters and Lola’s boyfriend during his months in Chicago, and had developed a visible affection for the loud, noisy family that was so unlike his own. Rafi was pretty sure their living room couch still bore the outline of Denny’s long frame from all the nights he had slept there during his last weeks in the city, when even Rafi couldn’t ignore the rising sexual tension between the two of them. He’d never been so glad in his life as the day Denny turned eighteen and Rafi could stop worrying his resolve was going to slip and he’d find himself on his knees before an underage kid.

He zipped up one pocket and shoved his laptop into the remaining open section. Who knew if he’d even be able to concentrate enough in the hospital to finish the paper he had due before Thanksgiving break. “José’s got broken bones. He’ll be okay. He was wearing leathers.”

Which his stupid sister would never wear.
Too hot in the summer, and I’m not gonna go riding when it’s cold enough to freeze my ass off anyways.
Her voice in his head was loud and sassy. Unhurt.

He supposed he should be grateful that José steadfastly refused to let Lola on the bike without a helmet, no matter how much she swore she wanted to ride with the wind in her hair.

“I could fucking kill her,” he grunted out, punching a spare pair of jeans into the bottom of his bag, then shoving some clean T-shirts from the pile on his dresser on top of the jeans.

“You’re mad, though. Does that mean she’s okay?”

“I don’t know. The docs have her. They think it’s mostly broken bones, and a shitload of whatever you call road rash when your skin is pretty much gone. But they’re not sure yet if she’s bleeding internally.”

“Oh shit.” He could feel Denny hovering behind him. Imagined him reaching out with a hand, wanting to touch Rafi, to reassure. All the muscles in Rafi’s back tensed, frozen. He didn’t know what he hoped for. To be touched or to be left alone.

“They think probably not,” he said reluctantly, because every instinct in him screamed this could be bad, really, really bad, even though Mari had told him that the doctors were reassuring them. “But they want to be careful in case they’ve missed something.”

“But they think she’s going to be okay.” Denny fumbled his way over to Rafi’s desk chair and sat on it heavily. Rafi let out a breath. “Jesus, thank God.”

Thank God, indeed. Rafi had spent more time praying in his head since getting off the phone with Mari than he had since before he’d gotten confirmed and stopped going to church.

“When’s your flight?” Denny asked.

“Don’t know. Mari’s gonna text me when she finds one.”

“Okay, I have a stupid question. Don’t get mad.” Denny stood up again. “If they’re pretty sure she’s going to be okay, then can you go straight to the airport from the race?”

Rafi imagined the look on his face could have stopped a champion boat in its tracks on the water. “Don’t.”

“Look, I get it. This is important.” The look on Denny’s face begged for Rafi to understand, but he never, ever would. “But so is your rowing, and you’ve worked fucking hard for this. You can start the indoor season by killing it in this race. You know it.”

“No, you don’t get it.”

“But you won’t even be able to see her right away, right?”

“Jesus, Denny, what’s wrong with you?” Rafi snapped. This was ridiculous. “I’m not going there just for Lola. I’m going for all of them, so I can be with my sisters when they need me. And because I need them right now. Because we’re scared as shit and I don’t want to be a thousand miles away while we’re waiting to find out if anything else, if anything worse, is going to go wrong.”

“I’m not saying don’t go. I’m just…” Denny pulled out his phone, punching up a search engine probably. “I can check for direct flights while you make your race, and then take you straight there. Your race is practically first. You’ll be done in, what? Two hours? You don’t even have to stay for the rest of the regatta.” He looked up from his phone.

Rafi stared at him. “Seriously, what is wrong with you? Is this because your family is all fucked up? Because your parents want to control everything you do, but don’t actually want to talk to you?”

“Hey.” Denny stepped back, one hand out, the other opening and closing in the sling on his chest. “That’s not fair.”

Rafi knew it wasn’t, but he didn’t have time to spend on explaining this shit to someone who clearly didn’t get it. All he wanted to do was get out of there. To go home.

So he didn’t say another word. Just pushed past Denny, pausing only to scrape his keys off his desk as he headed to the door and left without a backward glance.

The taxi from the airport to the hospital cleared out Rafi’s bank account when he slid his debit card through the reader as the cabbie pulled over in front of the hospital. He’d need to borrow money from his sisters to get back home.

To campus. The mental slip startled him as he got out of the cab.

Assuming he was going back at all. Mari was texting him every half hour, updating him on the surgeries as they were scheduled. She kept telling him that everything was going to be okay. Lola was stable.

Fucking stupid word.
Stable
. Didn’t tell him anything about anything. Was she awake? Was she hurting? What could still go wrong?

He didn’t blame Mari. Was amazed she was holding it together, able to send him coherent words when he knew she had to be freaking out. She was their mama cat, damn near licking them upside the head to make sure they were clean before bed every night, growing up. To wait and be unable to help would be devastating for her.

The sliding glass doors into the main atrium opened without a sound at his approach. At the reception desk, waiting behind an elderly couple to get the cardboard square he needed to clip to his collar for access took forty-seven years. By the time he made it up to the floor where Lola was waiting for her next surgery, he was ready to stab someone in the eye with a hypodermic needle if they couldn’t help him find his sister faster.

The door to his sister’s room was shut. He didn’t know what that meant. Should he go in? Should he wait in the hall? He scanned the immediate area, hoping for a helpful nurse or anyone with enough authority to tell him what to do.

Before he realized it, he was cataloguing the differences between this hospital and the one they’d taken Denny to in Vermont. He couldn’t help noticing the worn spots on the tiles, the psychedelic artwork from the seventies no one had bothered to update, the crappy laminate of the countertops at the nurses’ station. No fake hardwood floors like in the hospital rooms in Vermont. He’d thought that was the weirdest touch of all, until he’d realized the floors weren’t really wood, made instead of some material that could be molded to look like hardwood but could no doubt be hosed down by disinfectant and come up shining.

And that hadn’t even been the fancy hospital. Rafi had offered to take the bus into Boston to visit Denny at the hospital there during his forty-eight hour stay, only to be told that there would be a waiting list at Denny’s hospital door, no doubt, of family lined up to see him. To take care of him. Denny’s family might not be good at the day-to-day love stuff, but they made a point of showing up for the public crises.

Rafi had bitten down on his tongue to keep the words in.

But I’m the one who’s supposed to take care of you.

He’d had to wait until Denny was back on campus to find out what he needed and make it easier for him to get it. To read up on the physical therapy program Denny was following, information he hoped would come in handy once Lola was on the road to recovery too.

By the time a nurse left Lola’s room and told him that yes, he could go in, Rafi was braced for the worst.

The gasp from Mari and the full-body slam of her hug let him take his first deep breath since hanging up the phone with her earlier that morning.

Lola wasn’t conscious, but she was only sleeping, his sisters told him, and the docs had said there was no internal bleeding. A miracle. The girls whispered as they gathered in the farthest corner from the bed and hugged him. Nita and Sofi and then Mari again. He was so much taller than all of them, except for Lola, that it always felt like children crowding around him when they gathered close. They let him go over to the hospital bed where Lola slept. Bandages, some of them visibly bloody, seemed to cover every inch of her arms and legs. He could see that her chest was wrapped too, and electrodes and IVs were attached absolutely everywhere. About the only part of her that didn’t look damaged was her head, and he damn near dropped to his knees again in gratitude for that fucking helmet José made her wear.

The entire time, he couldn’t stop seeing how faded the paint on the walls was. How the corners of the room were dingy, as if maybe they didn’t get cleaned perfectly.

He heard his sisters talking about who was making the dinner run and interrupted to drag Mari out into the hall with him, dragging her by the simple expedient of clamping a hand around her arm and pulling. She was the family decision maker. He needed her for this.

“Stop it. Ow.” She twisted out of his grip.

“I’m sorry.” He meant it, but he couldn’t think straight right now. This was too important. He needed to know. “Should we move her?”

“Lola? What do you mean?” Mari wrinkled her forehead.

“To another hospital.” When Mari didn’t say anything, he repeated himself. “A better hospital.”

“This hospital is perfectly fine.” She shook her head as if he were being silly and took a step toward re-entering the room. He blocked her without thinking.

“Perfectly fine isn’t as good as it gets.” He didn’t know how to explain what he’d seen. How much better things could be for people with money. How full of burning frustration it left him to see his sister in a hospital with fucking linoleum tile peeling up in the corner of the hallway, damn it.

“Yeah, and as good as it gets is what I want for cancer. Or if I get breast implants.” Mari snorted at the look on his face, before softening and putting her hand on his arm. “Rafi. I’m kidding. The humor’s been a little dark around here today. She’s gonna be all right. Really. You can take a breath and relax, okay?”

“But what if there are other things they should be doing for her?” Nothing in this place was cutting-edge. Everything looked second-class.

“There aren’t.” He opened his mouth to argue. Mari’s sharp look shut him up in a hurry. “I’ve talked to ten different doctors in the past twenty-four hours and spent every free minute researching every word they said to us online. I’m not an idiot, Rafaelito.”

“I know, but—”

“No buts.” Mari slapped a hand against his chest. “Everything she needs is old school. Surgeries they’ve done a thousand times. She got the shit banged out of her, but none of it’s anything they haven’t seen before.”

“There are better hospitals.” He couldn’t stop saying that.

“Yeah, and who’s gonna pay for that?” Mari sighed, wrapping a hand around the back of her neck. “When she can get the exact same care right here?”

Shit. He hadn’t even thought to ask. “She’s got insurance, right?” He turned his back to the nurses’ station as he said it, in case the answer was no.

Mari glared at him. “Of course. It’s the law, isn’t it? But her deductible is high as hell. She’s looking at medical bankruptcy either way, maybe. I’ve been talking to a lady in billing about getting her into the hospital’s aid program.”