It's Always Complicated (Her Billionaires Book 4) (30 page)

Lydia turned toward the sound. “Grandma? What are you doing here?”

Madge stood at the doorway to the ICU, holding a duff
el
bag. “Your mom sent me. Meribeth’s back at the campground with Ed, who is sleeping. Sandy asked me to come check on you two, and we invaded your cabin and found some clothes for Jeremy. Nice sex toy collection in your top drawer,” she added, giving Jeremy a conspirator’s wink.

Alex happened to end his conversation with the doctor at that exact moment and walk over. He paled at Madge’s words.

“Don’t worry,” she cracked, looking up at him. “I’m not talking about your grandpa’s sex toy collection.” She thumbed toward Jeremy. “I’m talking about his.”

“Small comfort,” Alex replied.

Jeremy snorted and took the duf
fel
bag from Madge, leaning way down to plant a kiss on her desiccated cheek. “Thank you.”

“Thank
you
. You’re the hero.”

Hearing Lydia’s words echoed by her grandmother made Jeremy’s face turn a furious red. Lydia cocked an eyebrow and sent a silent message.

See? You really are.

He turned away and loped down the hall toward the men’s room.

“Any news?” Madge asked Alex, quietly pulling Lydia in for a side hug. She smelled like Grandma. There was no way to describe it. It was just the scent of Madge.

“He’s increasingly stable, which is good. The real concern is whether he has more seizures. There’s swelling in the brain.”

Madge frowned. “Could there be brain damage?”

She always was a realist. Lydia’s body began to buzz at the words. Brain damage. Brain damage. Oh, God, no.

Alex gave Lydia the side-eye and answered tightly, “There’s no way to know at this point.”

A sound of torture came from Lydia’s throat, completely unexpected, and she couldn’t stop it. Brain damage. Seizures. ICU. This was not her life. This just wasn’t.

And that wasn’t Mike in there.

It couldn’t be.

“But—wha—how—what do you mean, brain damage?” She felt the hysteria in her words, the sentence itself vibrating as it passed between her lips, setting the rest of her body into a tremor she couldn’t control.

“No one knows,” Alex said in a soothing voice. He looked at Madge. “Let’s not borrow trouble.”

Lydia nodded. “He’s going to be fine.”

“Better than fine,” Madge added, but Lydia could hear the doubt in her voice.

Grandma was the biggest realist out there.

And while normally Lydia could join her in Realityland, right now she wanted to live in the Denial Province. She needed to think that there was no other possible outcome than full recovery. Desperation made her block out any thought of Mike not coming back to her, whole and complete.

Completely Mike.

“It’s a game of time,” Alex said as Jeremy came back, wearing old jeans with holes in the knees, a long-sleeved red t-shirt, and a blue fleece jacket. His hair was still wet but he looked infinitely more at ease.

“What’s a game of time?” Jeremy asked.

“Waiting for results on Mike.”

“Something new?”

“No.”

“Well, that’s good,” Jeremy said with a relieved sigh. “At this point, no news is good news, right?”

Lydia hadn’t thought of it that way.

“Shouldn’t you be back at the campground, getting ready for your wedding tomorrow? Josie must be a mess,” Madge said kindly to Alex.

“Wedding?” Alex’s face went blank, then he made a sound of of recognition. “That’s right. The wedding.” He put his hand on Madge’s shoulder and looked at her. “I think the wedding needs to be postponed.”

“No!” Lydia cried. “You can still get married!”

“One of the grooms is in the hospital, and your Mike is in ICU. No one feels like celebrating right now.”

His words stung. “But my mom! And all the work she’s put into this!”

“It’s fine,” Madge said. “In the morning, we’ll know so much more.”

“I wouldn’t feel right having a big party in the middle of all this,” Alex said softly.

“And Mike would be horrified to think that his injury ruined the most important day of your life!” Lydia shouted, her volume making nurses shush her. “You can’t do that to him!”

Alex reached for her shoulders and gently turned her away from the ICU door, Jeremy on her other side, the two of them ushering her away. The hysteria that tinged everything was at full throttle now, and Lydia didn’t recognize herself. Where was her cool, rational mind?

It was injured, just like Mike’s, except she didn’t have a brain bleed.

It was her heart that bled.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, as Jeremy pulled her
to
his chest, the fleece’s zipper scraping against her cheek. He made her walk, slowly, away from ICU, down a small hall and into a room with a few chairs and an ancient coffee pot.

“No need. You love him. I love him. We’re all freaked out.”

A warmth infused her. Jeremy had never said those words about Mike before. She knew he loved him, but this was different.

“Do you want to go back and talk to him?” she asked, the thought striking her suddenly.

Jeremy just blinked rapidly, with no expression.

“Yeah,” he said slowly. “I do.”

“I’ll stay with her,” Alex said, looking at the coffee pot with a miserable expression. It looked like molasses at the bottom. “I’ll make a fresh pot.”

Jeremy gave Lydia an extra squeeze and left. Madge took his spot against Lydia, holding her.

“He can’t die,” Lydia whispered into Madge’s shoulder, finally able to say the words to someone with Jeremy out of the room. “I love him too much. We love him too much.”

“Oh, honey. He knows. He knows.” Madge’s dry, wrinkled palms smoothed Lydia’s hair, caressing her cheek. “And he’ll be fine,” she declared.

“How do you know?”

“I don’t.”

“Then how can you say that?”

“Because it’s what you say when you don’t know.”

“Grandma,” Lydia groaned. “I don’t want to be shined on.”

“Yes, you do.”

Lydia startled. Grandma was right.

“And Alex,” Madge added. “That is one shitass coffee machine. We need to run to WalMart and get a new one as a donation. You drive here?”

“No. Rode in the ambulance.”

Madge reached inside her pocket and tossed him a set of keys. “Go to the store.” She barked out the address while reaching into her purse to take cash. “Buy a new coffee maker. Get some decent coffee and snacks. It’s going to be a long night.”

Alex gave Madge a perplexed look, but obeyed her orders. A corner of Lydia’s mouth turned up. She knew exactly what Alex felt like. Grandma had that effect on people. You just did what you were told, even if you weren’t sure why you were doing it.

And Grandma’s orders always made any situation better.

“Will do,” he said, giving Lydia a sympathetic smile as he left, leaving her in Grandma’s arms, Jeremy with Mike.

She wondered what he was saying right now.

Jeremy

“You can’t fucking die, okay? That’s off the table, you asshole.”

Jeremy was glad he was alone with Mike, because he knew anyone who overheard him would think he was
a
sick, twisted, soulless person.

And they’d only be half wrong.

“You hear me, Mike? I know you do. You’re just playing possum. You’re doing this to get Lydia’s attention. You were complaining the other day that she spent more time with me last week. This is one hell of a way to get her to focus on you.”

Nothing. Mike’s steady breath was reassuring, but Jeremy didn’t see eye movement under the closed eyelids.
Wake up, damn it.
 

Wake up and be Mike.

He hadn’t said a word to Lydia about his biggest fear, aside from death: brain damage. What if Mike woke up and wasn’t Mike? What if he came through all of this significantly altered? Their threesome relationship was a steady balance of personalities. The years together had forged an alliance between the three of them, checks and balances, strengths and weaknesses all carefully calibrated.

Change one person and...what? What would the future look like?

He reached for Mike’s hand, splaying his other palm against Mike’s chest, feeling a wire under the sheets and blanket. When Madge had her heart attack a few years ago, he’d been loath to come to the hospital, the reminder of his own mother’s death too much.

Now he was sitting with his best friend, his intimate partner of so many years, and it wasn’t fair.

It wasn’t fucking fair.

Jeremy had taken more than his share of risks in all his years of traveling around the world. He’
d
been in a bus that slid off a treacherous maintain road in Guatemala. Been jailed a few too many times in Thailand for sexual...indiscretions. He’d been mugged too many times to count in
S
outheast Asia and
C
entral America, and had even been in a taxi crash that ended with chickens shitting all over his back in Peru.

He’d take every one of those moments in triplicate if he could save Mike.

“We’re reducing the sedative,” a nurse said quietly from behind him, the sound making him jump. Deep in his own thoughts—which involve
d
curious mental images of people he’d slept with on his travels—he didn’t hear her approach.

She fiddled with some machines, a process Jeremy couldn’t even begin to understand. He’d never been good with things. He was great with code, though, and that’s how he’d made his first millions, happily stuck behind a computer screen for eighteen-hour days, writing feverishly to produce the next great tech invention.

And he’d cashed out from the dot-com boom for a life of cheap luxury.

The nurse finished up and he flashed her a grateful, tired smile, his stomach growling ferociously.

As he turned to look back at Mike, his swore he saw movement under the eyelids.

And then...nothing.

The machines whirred and hummed with precision. Mike was resting and stable. Jeremy looked at him. In repose, Mike looked so grave. So serious. Without those bright blue eyes boring into him, Jeremy couldn’t get a read on Mike. Was he in pain? Was he inside this prone body, stuck between life and death?

Or was there enough brain activity for Mike to even be able to deliberate?

Taking Alex at his word was hard. Time really was their friend now, but time had a funny way of being a little bit of a bastard.

Especially in emergencies like this.

“Wake up, damn it. I mean it. You did a good thing out there tonight. A great thing. Mike Pine is fine, thanks to you. People keep calling me a hero. I hate it. You’re the hero, Mike. You. You found him, you got him most the way up the mountain, you sacrificed yourself for him. I just bumbled along and did what you said. That’s who we are, right? You lead. I follow.”

Jeremy’s throat tightened. Fuck. He couldn’t cry. Crying was not an option.

Did Mike’s eyes flutter? He couldn’t tell as his vision blurred.

Someone behind him cleared her throat. He turned to find Lydia there, her eyes bouncing between Mike and Jeremy.

“Need company?”

“I have company,” Jeremy said pointedly, looking at Mike.

“I didn’t mean...”

“I know.” He sighed and realized his eyes were perilously close to spilling over.

Lydia’s brow lowered, then her eyes widened with surprise. “Jeremy, are you...”

“Crying?” Might as well admit to it. “Yeah.”

“Wow.”

“Just a little.”

“You don’t have to defend it.”

“If I were defending it, I wouldn’t have owned up to it.”

She peered at him. “Good point.”

“Mike is an ass,” he blurted out.

“Is that what you said to him?”

God, she knew him so well. Too well.

Creepily
well.

“Something like that.”

“Bet it was worse than that.”

Shit. Caught.

“He needs to be told what an idiot he was, going all hero on everyone.”

“If you’re yelling at him, shouldn’t you yell at yourself?”

“What? Why?”

“Because you’re a hero, too.”

“QUIT SAYING THAT!” he rasped, sounding like a demon answering. “I can’t stand it. Why does everyone keep
saying
that?”

She recoiled with shock. “Why?”

“Because it’s not true! If I were a hero, none of this would have happened! He’s here with his fucking head bandaged and his brain swollen from bashing against more than one rock and he’s having seizures! Jesus, Lydia, how can people run around calling me a hero when this is the result?” He pointed at Mike, his arm outstretched, the ache in his heart bubbling up through his throat to become an angry lashing out. “What the hell?”

“Mike’s condition doesn’t make you less of a hero for acting the way you did.”

Mike’s condition makes me less of a human being, Lydia!” he groaned, letting his emotions overflow. “He’s in that bed and I couldn’t stop him from slipping and now I’m fine—fine!—and he’s a prisoner in his swollen brain and I’m here on the outside, looking at him and wondering if he’s going to leave me, too.”

“Leave you?” Her words rang in the air like a gong.

He closed his eyes, the fight in him gone, the words like a blade to the soul.

So that’s what this was about.

He was terrified of being left behind.

Again.

“Oh!” Her little exclamation made it clear she got it. “This is about your parents, isn’t it?”

She really did get him.

“I guess so,” he muttered. “I don’t really understand it.”

“Mike’s your best friend. You don’t want him to leave.”

“I don’t want him to die, Lydia. When people die, they just go. They’re gone. And you’re left alone. Completely alone. All that work—poof! Gone.”

“Work?”

“The relationship. The back-and-forth. The finding of people who are worth your time, and who think you’re worth their time, too. The tiny little disclosures that become a dance of trust. is this person worth showing the real me to? Are they going to hurt me if I reveal myself? And then the pain of rejection or the relief of understanding.”

“What does that have to do with—”