Within These Walls (17 page)

Adulthood—Zero.

“Are we going to talk about this?” my mother asked moments after Jude had left my room.

She paced several steps toward the bathroom and then pivoted back, retracing her steps, only to do the same thing all over again. She looked a bit agitated.

“Talk about what?” I asked, sinking further into my blankets. A chill traveled up my spine, and I buried my hands under the sheets, trying to cover as much skin as possible.

“Why haven’t you told me about your secret visitor?”

“Jude isn’t a secret. I wasn’t trying to hide anything from you. You were just never here when he visited.”

“And you never thought to tell me that you were…
befriending
a man who worked in the hospital?”

She’d said the word
befriend
as if it were dripping in gasoline and would likely light on fire at any given moment. It pissed me off, and it was a problem that needed to be taken care of quickly.

“Listen, Mom, I wasn’t trying to deceive you. Jude has been a friend to me. He’s kept me company on lonely nights.”

Her eyebrows rose.

I quickly pulled my hand out from under the blankets and lifted it to silence her rebuttal. “I know what you’re going to say. He was a friend. That’s it. I know you think because I’ve been in this bed and behind these walls for the majority of my life that I am innocent about the ways of the world, and to some extent, you’re probably right but not about this. Friends, I swear.”

She made a garbled humph sound in her throat and pulled her arms to her chest. “And now? That parting display of affection I saw on his way out? That wasn’t how you say good-bye to a friend, Lailah. I might be a little out of practice, but I do remember that.”

That stung a little. I knew she didn’t mean it to be harsh. My mother was direct, demanding, and straightforward, but she was never vicious or vindictive. Her personality came from necessity. I didn’t know much about her past, but I knew she’d been abandoned by the one person she thought she could trust—my father. I didn’t think she’d ever gotten over it. Since then, she’d fought for everything in life, and I knew my illness had only made that ten times harder. She’d spent her life caring for me, so she could never fit in a love life.

“And now, we’re more,” I simply answered, not knowing exactly what to call Jude and me.

The word
boyfriend
did sound nice, but he hadn’t said it, and I certainly wasn’t going to go around calling him that without audible proof from him. Friends with benefits just sounded dirty, and we definitely weren’t there yet. Flashes of his lips on mine while his hand had moved up the back of my shirt danced around in my head, and I felt my cheeks redden. While I was hoping for more than friends, I was looking forward to the benefits part.

My mother shook her head in frustration before leaving the room. I was sure she was going to find Dr. Marcus to have another one of her secret meetings that I wouldn’t be privy to. We wouldn’t want to talk about my own health in front of me.

I let the annoyance melt away, and I snuggled back down in my bed, allowing my thoughts to drift back to Jude. Whatever our label was—friends or something else—I wanted it to continue even though I knew that I shouldn’t. I was selfish for not pushing him away. My life was at a crossroads. Who knew which path I would end up traveling on? Was it fair to ask him to walk either of those roads with me? Even if I were lucky enough to get a transplant, there would be no guarantees it would be successful.

But were there ever any guarantees in life?

I’d told Jude that I believed a normal life was about the good and the bad. The ups and downs, not knowing where our lives would eventually end up—that’s what made us human.

Isn’t that what I want—a normal life with no guarantees?

If I’ve been living from one bad moment to the next with very little good in the middle, couldn’t I just take Jude as my wild card? Couldn’t he be my savior from all the bad I’ve had to endure?

But a normal relationship was about give and take.

If Jude were my replacement for all the bad in my life, could I be his?

But what if I were the opposite?

That one single question kept repeating through my thoughts as I tried to catch a few quiet moments of rest before my mom returned. I tossed all the blankets off of me and then promptly tugged them back around me several minutes later when I became ice cold. When I gave up on the notion of sleep, I instead pulled out my laptop and entered the one name doing laps in my head.

Thousands of search results popped up on Google. Many weren’t specifically related to Jude but rather the family as a whole. I found financial reports and glamorous photos of who I assumed were his parents at charity events and other elite social gatherings. I scrolled down further and found an old article entitled “The Cavanaughs Find Gold Mine in Youngest Son.”

Looking around the room, I felt like I was betraying some sort of secret trust between Jude and me.
Why do I feel the need to do this? Shouldn’t I just ask him?

But my finger pushed down on the touchpad, and I pulled up the article.

I scanned the text, pulling out the bits of information I found relevant, and my mind skidded to a halt about a third of the way down after the introduction where the journalist had written about the vast accolades and accomplishments of the Cavanaugh family.

Jude was smart, like really freaking smart.

He’d also been groomed from nearly infancy to take over the family business.

According to this article, after showing a love for math at an early age, his parents had sent him to the best schools money could buy. From the time he was in kindergarten, he was privately tutored. The journalist commented that the money had been wasted because all the tutors in the world couldn’t teach Jude the one thing he’d possessed since birth—instinct. From the age of thirteen, rather than partaking in after-school activities, Jude had helped his father make major business decisions.

A knock at my door startled me from my reading, and I quickly slammed my laptop shut in shame.

Grace breezed through my door like a breath of fresh air in autumn. “Good morning, sweets. Heard you had a rough evening. You’re not trying to leave me again, are you?” she asked with a wink.

“Ugh, not anymore.”

The mask over her face hid her smile from me, but I could see the crinkles around her eyes, so I knew it was there, buried under that ugly disposable covering.

“Well, no matter. We’ll get you out of here soon enough.”

Unlike times in the past, I wasn’t as eager to get home. I still wanted to, especially knowing I’d still see Jude, but when I was here, I could see him practically every day.
Would that be the case outside the confines of the hospital? Or would it be different?

I had so many unanswered questions.

“Hey, Grace. Do you know anything about the Cavanaugh family?” I blurted out.

“Like,
the
Cavanaugh family?” She moved around the room as she began checking my vitals and replacing my fluids.

“Yeah, I was, um…watching the news the other day and something about them popped up,” I lied. It was a white lie, so it didn’t count.

“Well, if they weren’t in a movie or on a TV show, I don’t pay much attention, but I do know a few things about the son.”

My heart sped up, but I tried not to appear the slightest bit affected. “Oh?” I asked.

“Yeah, he’s gorgeous—not as gorgeous as my Brian, of course.” She took a seat on the edge of my bed next to my feet to finish our chat.

“I thought he hasn’t been seen in a long time,” I offered.

“Oh, not him. I’m talking about Roman Cavanaugh, the oldest one. He’s been in the gossip magazines since he was in high school. He’s one of those men who are hard to tame. Everyone always wants to know whom he is dating or where he was last seen. He’s like the George Clooney of the business world.”

“And the other brother?” I asked, adjusting my blankets so that I didn’t have to look her in the eye.

“Oh, right. What’s his name? Jude! Oh, hey, like our Jude. They do kind of look alike, except ours has all the tattoos and muscles. I don’t know honestly. He really never became much of a public figure. It’s always been Roman. The press speculated that Jude became extremely introverted after his fiancée died.”

Fiancée?

Died?

“Really?” I croaked out.

“Yeah, the family didn’t release many details until months after the fact. No one even knew he was engaged. Of course, the only Cavanaugh anyone ever paid attention to was Roman,” she said with dreamy eyes and a shrug.

Jude was engaged? And he lost her?

I felt pain and sadness for him. All of it boiled up like an inferno until I felt dizzy from it.

My heart began an erratic rhythm that had nothing to do with my sudden education of Jude’s past.

Grace rose from her spot at the end of my bed and resumed her routine. She turned her back to me as she disconnected the empty fluid bag from the IV stand. “Speaking of Judes, what’s going on with you and our Jude? I heard he caused quite a commotion around here last night.”

The room started to spin, and beads of sweat trickled down my forehead while I tried to vocalize an answer. All that came out was a bunch of useless syllables. Grace’s head sharply whipped around, and I saw her surprised expression through the haze of movements before she reached out to grab my call button.

I heard her shout the words, “Code Blue,” right before I passed out.

I WAS IN turmoil, utter fucking turmoil.

I felt it churning within me, boiling up through my veins like a poison I couldn’t get rid of.

There was no chance of sleeping. The sun streamed through the flimsy curtains of my bedroom, and I sat up in bed. Running my hands through my hair, I looked around my modest bedroom.

Jumping out of bed, I gave up on any chance of catching shut-eye, and I did what I’d wanted to do since walking through the front door of my apartment two hours earlier. I started to get ready to go back to her.

When I was with Lailah, pure air would fill my lungs, healing me throughout, for what seemed like the first time in years. She gave me purpose and made me want to see the sunrise again. The moment I left her side, the guilt would come rushing back like a punishing ocean current.

I don’t deserve any of this.

Nothing I’d done in my life up to this point afforded me the luxury of enjoying a single minute of happiness with Lailah.

I’d caused the death of my fiancée. I hadn’t driven us into oncoming traffic, but I’d looked into her tired, droopy eyes, smelled the lingering alcohol on her breath, and still handed her the keys, knowing I shouldn’t have.

Because I had been selfish.

When she had been beyond repair, needing to be put to rest so that her family could mourn, I’d prolonged everyone’s suffering by trying to prove our love could survive anything—even brain damage. I’d listened to her parents sobbing behind me as I’d held her hands in mine. With tears pouring down my cheeks, I’d begged her to come back to me, but she hadn’t.

I’d hurt so many lives when I lost Megan, including the one person I’d never expected.

I didn’t deserve Lailah.

But I would take her. I’d take everything she gave me because I was selfish and tired of being alone. And I’d offer her everything I had left to give.

Surely, life wouldn’t be so cruel.

It was ironic that I was taking advice from the one person I despised.

My brother hadn’t suffered a day in his entire privileged life. He knew nothing about loss or pain. As his words echoed in my head, I couldn’t help but wonder if they held a bit of truth.

A twinge of guilt shot through my gut at the mere thought of anyone replacing Megan, but my brother was right. She was gone. I thought my world had ended when she died three years ago. Yet, here I was with air filling my lungs and blood pumping through my heart, and I felt everything because I was alive. I was still here.