Sloth (Sinful Secrets #1) (55 page)

I nod, trying not to let her see that it bothers me to talk about him. “She would hold his hands while someone pushed a catheter into his cock. She would let him vomit all over them both. She’s a freak. She’s a med student now.”

“Maybe I’m a freak.”

My stomach twists. “I don’t know why you would be.”

“Because I love you.”

He swallows carefully and looks back at me. “Cleo, it’s a burden. If you don’t feel that way... you haven’t been here long enough.”

“It’s not a burden. How could helping you get better be a burden?”

He clutches his forehead, his fingertips digging into his blond hair. “You gave me love...” he rasps, “and all I can give you is pain.”

I close the gap between us and wrap both arms around his narrow waist. I lay my cheek against his chest. “That’s not true.” I look up at him. “You give me you, and that’s a gift. You can give you talking to me. I want to know everything there is to know about you, Kellan.”

“I don’t know why.”

“Lie down with me. C’mon... Pretty please?”

I take his right hand, tugging him along with me, and hold his IV lines while he lies on his side. I watch him shift his left shoulder a few times, then—when I think he seems comfortable—I climb beside him and urge him onto his back.

I lean over him, dragging my fingers down his cheeks. “Close your eyes. Focus on my fingers.” I kiss his chin, but keep on tickling his cheek. “Is your father your only living family?”

“No.” He works his jaw. “I have a brother. Barrett. He’s a Ranger, special forces. Just retired.”

“You don’t like your father much, do you? I remember that from R.’s letters.”

His eyes come, hard, to mine. “Lyon had a heart attack because the chemo was too harsh. He wanted to withdraw from the trial we did but my dad pushed him to stay in. Bullied him.”

“I’m so sorry.” I hug him and wrap my arm around his hips. “That sounds like an awful time.”

“I got treatments out of this hotel, The Carlyle, and after hours I would go to bars, and drink and smoke. Fuck. I had a girlfriend, sort of. But I started... needing sex. I had a central line like this—” his hand hovers above his chest—“so I would tie them up and fuck them from behind. Some of them knew me from the televised games. They would do whatever I asked.”

I bite the inside of my cheek and try to picture this—my Kellan younger, and so lost. “That must have been hard.”

His forehead furrows.

“I mean clearly you were in denial, right?”

He quirks one brow. “It was definitely hard.”

“Where was Lyon during that time?”

“He was inpatient. He had a bad reaction to the chemo from day one. It made his heart fuck up.”

I think on that. I try to picture younger Kellan out at bars, while his twin was sick. I think of Kellan holding the counter in his kitchen, chewing a Xanax because he missed his brother so much. I meet his gaze. It seems to shove at me.

“I could have stayed with him.” He grits his teeth. “I didn’t. He was by himself. Whit had no idea. After the night on the yacht—after we found out he had it—he broke things off with Whitney and he left the team. People found out about both things, but no one knew why or what happened. Some fuckhead made a crack about him, how he wasn’t good enough to hold his spot on the team, and I kicked his ass outside a bar one night. So when I got my diagnosis, coach used me as an example.” Kellan’s teeth come down atop his lower lip. “It was different with me than with Ly. The whole thing became more of a secret.”

“Why is that?”

“I wanted football for a career. We thought I would do the treatment, then come back. If no one knew, I’d still get scouted just the same. Now they would find out—they look at your medical records—but I’d still be in the running. I could still move forward.”

It didn’t happen that way. I don’t know the whole story, but Kellan’s chemo consent forms say that this will be his seventh cycle. My stomach aches.

“Anyway, that didn’t happen, did it? I was fucking bitter after he died. I was here for a while. So that’s when I asked for your info. I was going to write you and say ‘fuck off, he died anyway,’ but I don’t know…” He shrugs. “I guess I couldn’t.”

I smile softly. “No. You couldn’t.”

“I wrote you more letters.”

“What do you mean?” My head goes cold.

He rubs his eyes, looks into mine. “I wrote to you all the time from my family’s cabin. I was so fucked up. My head was fucked. I was up there by myself, until they brought me Truman. I started telling you things, talking to you like some kind of fucking freak. That’s how I ended up in Georgia. Figured at least one good person was there.”

“Wow.” My eyes water. “I didn’t know that. Can I…sometime can I see the letters?”

“I brought them for you.”

Wow. That really…makes me feel good. And more secure. As if he really does care for me. Love me, even.

“I’m surprised we met.”

He nods. “The you being a dealer part of things—that was just some crazy shit. Coincidence.”

“I wouldn’t call it that...”

“WHAT MAKES THE DESERT
beautiful,” said the Little Prince,
“is that somewhere it hides a well...”

–Antoine de Saint-Exup
é
ry, The Little Prince

Today is Kellan’s last day of chemo. Yesterday after we talked, we had our best evening here so far. Arethea gave us a chess board, and Kellan was a total shark, acting like he felt really shitty and then checkmate-ing my poor, sad self in no time flat.

We played three more times before bed, and every time, he kicked my ass. And then the lights went out and we had the best night. So much better than I ever would have thought would be possible in a hospital.

It wasn’t just what we did—although that was pretty damn good too—it was the time after. Kellan stretched out on his back and pulled me to his chest, and wrapped his arms and leg around me and played with my hair. And as we fell asleep, he made the ASL sign for “I love you” with his hand... and followed it with the sign for “I’m sorry.”

“Kellan—no. You’re not sorry. No sorry.”

He sighed, but I got him to agree. We fell asleep with him more in my arms than me in his. Arethea and Dr. Willard lowered the dose of steroids he got through an IV overnight, so he slept better.

He woke me up with a cinnamon roll he ordered for me from a nearby bakery. Unlike back at his house, I noticed when he didn’t have any breakfast besides a few sips of the TwoCal.

All morning, he talked to me and touched me and looked at the quotes I wrote inside another batch of origami sparrows. When the PT person came and made him do a leg workout, he didn’t complain. When Dr. Willard came in with a bowl of rice and awful gravy, Kellan downed most of it—and then lounged on the bed with a can of Dr. Pepper.

We watched the first episode of
Orphan Black
sitting side by side, shoulder-to-shoulder, and then Kellan fell asleep against my shoulder.

Nice, right?

But not nice. Because about this time, the room phone rings. The transplant unit’s mail person tells me I have a package.

Gotta get it fast. It’s marijuana tincture from Manning.

I slip my Ugg mocs on, strap on a face mask, shimmy my hands into gloves, and hunt down Arethea. Then I walk to the opposite end of the BMT ward, get my package, and notice a homey little sitting room, where I decide to stop off and call my mom.

She knows nothing about my situation. Just that I came to New York about a week ago. Now that Kellan and I have talked more, I’m feeling braver, so I drop into a leather wing-backed chair and dial her number.

And, surprisingly, I get her.

More surprisingly, instead of telling her a half truth, I tell her the whole damn story. It takes almost an hour and a half, and just as I get up to go—eager to see Kellan again—the phone rings. It’s Cindy from Be The Match, telling me what I already know: my recipient is at Sloan-Kettering Memorial. I guess some of the stress is definitely starting to ease up now that Kellan’s talking to me some, because I chat with Cindy for a few minutes, telling her how he and I met each other.

I hustle down the hall, worried about how long I was away, and telling myself I should obviously chill out. The first few days were bad, yes—apparently Kellan had radiation before I arrived the day I got here—but it’s going better now.

So of course, as I open the door to our room, I can hear the awful sound of retching. I race to the blue-tiled bathroom and find him lying on the tile, unable to even lift his head as spasms wrack him.

“Kell... oh shit, baby. Come with me. Let’s get you to the bed.”

I try to help him up off the bathroom floor, and have to page Arethea because he’s so damn big. The two of us help him toward the bed, but we’re not even out of the bathroom before he stops to curl over the sink.

The retching is relentless. There’s nothing in his stomach now but bile, which hurts his throat. Arethea starts another anti-nausea drug and gives more Zofran, too, and brings wet rags and stickers we put on his wrists.

But nothing really helps. I find myself holding poor, exhausted Kellan by the shoulders, bracing his head against the bed rail as he gets sick so many times, he actually starts to drop off to sleep between dry-heaves.

I clean his face and throat and hair. Arethea brings another bag of the offending chemo—“The last one,” she offers sadly.

Kellan rouses around midnight. When he tries to talk, his eyes spill tears.

“I’m so sorry, baby...”

I’ve spoon a tiny slip of ice into his mouth, then drop the spoon in my lap.

“Holy shit. I’m such an idiot.”

The package I originally left the room to get is the marijuana tincture, one Manning told me Kellan made himself, for chemo patients.

I call Arethea in, propose a plan, and when she doesn’t come back for an hour, I know I’ve been given my signal. She asked Dr. Willard, who felt bad would come of it. It’s permission, if not an actual endorsement.

I give Kellan two droppers full and after that, he sleeps.

He wakes up early afternoon on the official “rest day,” and blinks at the ceiling. I can tell he’s high, and not from Morphine or one of its derivatives, but from good ole fashioned reefer.