Jackson: A Sexy Bastard Novel (17 page)

S
omething’s not right
.

“We will now combine Trikosana and Virabhadrasana.”

It’s my normal Monday yoga class, and I am speaking and moving on autopilot, but something feels off. I’m unsteady. Unbalanced.

“Inhale and lift both arms into Tadasana.”

My arms feel heavy. My head feels heavy.

“Lower both arms to shoulder height. Now exhale, step forward, and bend your right knee to Virabhadrasana II. Warrior Two.”

I step forward, following my own instructions, and my leg literally shakes. What the fuck?

Continuing to talk the class through the pose, I weave my way toward the water cooler at the back of the room. Occasionally, I pause to fix someone’s posture, but every time I bend toward a student, the floor starts to swim in front of my eyes. I straighten quickly, reminding myself to breathe.

From across the room, Shelby catches my eye.
Are you ok?
she mouths. I nod, but even that movement makes me dizzy.

Water. A drink of water will help.

It has to.

I’m almost through the last row of students, when the whole room starts to tilt. In an effort to keep my balance, I throw out an arm, whacking a student in the back. The impact makes me stagger onto another student’s mat, and all I see is her surprised, flushed face as I pitch forward.

No
, I think, as my body hurtles through space.
No. Not again
.

Then everything goes black.

* * *

B
eep
.

Beep.

Beep.

I’m praying for the sound to vanish, but I know it won’t.

Carefully, I slit my eyes open. Everything around me is blindingly, painfully white, yet I know I’m not dead; I wouldn’t be that lucky. I quickly shut my eyes again against the light, but there’s no shutting out that steady, mechanical sound. A machine monitoring human life. Or, perhaps more accurately, monitoring human death.

Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

I know where I am. It’s the same place I ended up the last time I passed out. This is where I end up when life strips me of everything I love. First, I lost dance. Then, I lost Corey. Now? Maybe, I’ll lose my whole life altogether. Bad things come in threes, after all.

I open my eyes again, gradually, so they can adjust to the stark white walls and florescent lighting that is my hospital room. I’m in a twin bed, covered with a stiff white sheet and a thin, scratchy blanket. When I move, paper crinkles against my skin—the hospital gown. I try to quell the panic swelling inside me.

Peering around the room, I look for anything to latch onto. A tiny, hidden piece of me hopes that I’ll see Jackson, his brow wrinkled with worry, ready to leap to my side and tell me everything will be okay. But my rational self knows that’s impossible. Of course he’s not here. He wants nothing to do with me, and I can’t blame him.

Instead, I find Shelby and Ruby, still in their yoga gear, huddled in the corner of the room.

“Hey, lady.” Ruby approaches the bed first, attempting a smile. “Way to fast forward straight to Shavasana. How did you know we all just wanted to get to the nap part?”

“Ruby thinks she’s funny,” Shelby says, rolling her eyes but unable to erase the worry lines around her mouth.

“Hey, I am funny,” Ruby retorts.

I know she’s just trying to make me feel better, but Shavasana actually means “corpse pose.” Merely hearing the word gives me a chill all over. I might die. I might actually die this time.

“What happened?” I ask.

“Well….” Shelby looks uncertain. “You were weaving through the class and then just kind of toppled over onto one of the girls. Were you trying to get water?”

I nod. “I was feeling weird, so I thought water would help.”

“When you didn’t wake up right away, we called an ambulance,” Shelby continues. “We didn’t know what else to do.”

Ruby makes a face. “They wouldn’t let us ride with you, though. Jerks.”

Suddenly, it occurs to me: they don’t know about the first hospitalization, the cancer, the chemo—any of it. They didn’t call an ambulance because they thought I was having a relapse, they called it because they literally didn’t know what else to do.

“Excuse me, ladies.”

We all look up to find a tall man with silver-streaked hair and a long white coat standing in the doorway.

“May I please speak with my patient?”

Shelby and Ruby shuffle out of the room, casting uncertain glances back at me. I try to look confident, but the truth is, I’m terrified. It’s happening just like last time: passing out, waking up in the hospital. Next will be chemo and missing chunks of hair, sores that never go away, vomiting until all I’m spitting up is bile . . . .

The doctor checks my vitals, and then we review my medical history. Ironically, this is the same hospital where I was treated when I came back from Mexico, so the information they have is all up-to-date. As I describe my symptoms, it strikes me how foreseeable this all was: I lost my appetite, just like before, and then I passed out and woke in the hospital. It’s all the same.

The doctor touches my neck and feels under my arms. No lumps, he says, but he’ll order a few tests just to be sure. I don’t need lumps, and I don’t need tests; I feel it in my bones: the cancer is back. And this time it’s going to win. Because last time I had someone to fight for—at least until he left me. Now who do I have? I might as well just give in to the inevitable.

The moment the doctor is out the door, Shelby and Ruby hustle back to my side.

“So what did he say?” Ruby asks. “Can you go home now?

I look at both of their eager, hopeful faces, and I realize that I have to tell them. No sense in hiding anything now.

“I—um, this isn’t the first time this has happened to me . . . .”

I launch into the story, similar to the way I’d told Jackson, and both of their mouths are gaping in shock.

“Oh my god, Skylar,” Shelby finally says. “I had no idea.”

“That’s insane.” Ruby pushes her hair back, mouth pinched with worry. “Does Jackson know about the cancer?”

I cut my eyes back toward Shelby and let out a bark of a laugh. “Yeah, he knows.”

“Well then, we should call him.” Shelby whips out her phone. “He’ll want to be here, so he can—”

“No. Don’t.”

She pauses, her fingers hovering over the screen of her phone. “Why not?”

“Because . . . .” I grit my teeth and swallow down the tears. “Because he doesn’t owe me anything. I’m the one who insisted we stay casual, who avoided any talk of a relationship. It was my choice.”

“Yeah, okay, I get that Skylar. But don’t you think he’d still want to know that you’re in the
hospital
?”

“Please, Shelby.” My vision blurs with tears. “He doesn’t deserve this. I’m not his responsibility.”

Shelby studies me for a full minute before finally returning her phone to her jacket pocket.

“Fine. But is there anyone else we can call?”

When I don’t answer right away, Ruby jumps in. “Like your mom or something.”

“No.” I shake my head slowly. “There’s no one. Just me.”

“Well then, we’re staying.” Ruby plops down in a chair and crosses her legs.

“Yeah,” Shelby adds. “We’re staying. But we’re going to need sustenance. It’s dinnertime.” She looks at me curiously. “Do they bring you food?”

I shrug. It doesn’t matter, because I don’t want to eat anything, anyway.

“We’ll get you a snack, at least.” Ruby stands and joins Shelby by the door. “Do you want sweet or salty?”

I shrug again.

“We’ll get you both,” Shelby decides, and both women head through the doorway. At the last moment, Shelby pauses a beat. “You sure you don’t want me to call Jackson?”

“I’m sure.”

“Okay.” She sighs. “We’ll be back.”

And with that, they’re gone.

T
his board meeting
has gone on for way too long. The hospital wing designs have been officially signed off, we’ve shaken hands five times apiece, and yet the board members are still lingering, making small talk.

We’re in a freaking hospital!
I want to shout.
With sick people! Go to a bar! Or a diner! Or the cafeteria, for crying out loud.

Somewhere that’s not here, so I can finally get out of this place, so full of horrific memories, and go home to my Dalmore single malt and the brainlessness that is Sports Center.

I try not to start tapping my foot as the last old, stooped board member painstakingly gathers his belongings and tucks them into his briefcase one by one. Finally, he straightens his jacket and comes around for one last handshake. “Real glad to have you on board, Jackson. Not often we get to work with someone who has such a passion for their craft. Don’t lose that fire, my son—nurture wherever it comes from.” He pats my shoulder and then starts his long, slow trek down the hallway.

I swallow back a lump of guilt as I watch him retreat. Fire, huh? I feel like I’ve been walking around underwater for the past three weeks. Of course, that might be due to the mass quantities of whiskey I’ve been consuming, but how else am I supposed to sleep? If I don’t drink, I just lie there, awake, feeling the empty space in my bed that should be filled with Skylar: her feathery hair, her lavender scent, her warm, luscious body.

Closing the conference room door, I turn to make my way toward the elevator bank when a pair of girls turns the corner.

“Shelby?” Even if I didn’t recognize my own sister, the mass quantity of junk food in her arms would have been a dead giveaway.

“Jackson!” Her face slackens in relief at the sight of me, and she breaks into a dead sprint, chips crinkling and soda cans clanking. Ruby follows at a distance, balancing her own assortment of junk food.

“Whoa,” I exclaim as Shelby throws her arms around my neck. Tentatively, I hug her back. “Is everything okay?”

After a long moment, Shelby finally releases me and steps back. “What are you doing here?”

“Board meeting for the hospital wing. Lasted
way
longer than it needed to.” Glancing at all the snacks she’s clutching, I raise my eyebrows. “What are you doing here? I’d expect CVS to have better snacks, but—”

“You need to come with us.” Shelby’s face is dead serious. I look from her to Ruby, whose expression is equally grave.

“Guys, for real, what is wrong?”

Wordlessly, they take me by the arms and drag me down the hallway. As we weave through several corridors at breakneck pace, my heart starts to hammer. It feels so familiar: the scrubbed floors, the ammonia smell, the urgency. But my sister is right here beside me, safe, intact. So what else could possibly have happened?

Finally, we arrive at an open door, number 521.

“What—”

Before I can complete the question, Shelby shoves me forward.

From the doorway, I see that the room is stark, austere, exactly the way I remember it: white walls, white ceiling, white blinds over a small window at the far end of the room. But then beneath the bed sheets—which are, of course, white, as well—I spy a figure I recognize. I’d know that body anywhere: its curves, its sinews, every dip and rise of flesh. My eyes travel up her body to her face, which is drawn, eyes squeezed shut, cheeks streaked with dried tears.

Skylar.

As if I’ve called her name, her eyes pop open and stare straight at me. They are wide and shining, and I see in them something that I’ve never seen before: true fear.

“Jackson,” she whispers, and in the next instant, I’m at her side, reaching for every part of her body that my hands can grasp.

“Skylar,” I say her name, breathing in her scent, which is laced with a harsh chemical smell of starch and chlorine. “Skylar what happened? What are you doing here?”

Her body remains stiff beneath my fingers. After a moment, when she doesn’t answer, I pull back to see her face. She’s clearly fighting back tears.

“I passed out in yoga.”

“Okay . . . .” That doesn’t sound so bad.

“Shelby and Ruby were there. They didn’t know what to do, so they called 911.”

I still don’t understand. So she passed out. Shelby and Ruby panicked. Why is she so upset?

Reaching out, I touch her face, trailing my fingers along her jawline. She immediately tilts her head out of my grasp. Tears bloom at the corners of her eyes.

“I’m sick, Jackson,” she whispers. “The cancer is back.”

“No.”

That’s impossible.

We were just rock climbing and playing on a swing set and making love.

A person with cancer couldn’t do those things.

Could they?

“It’s all happening exactly the way it did last time,” she tells me. “The weight loss, the fainting spell.”

I lean in and run a thumb along her cheek, collecting the tears that pool there and brushing them away.

“I thought I was just . . . sad.” She looks at me. “It all seemed like it started that day outside the police station.”

My heart sinks. “Skylar, about that. I need to apologize—”

“No,” she interrupts me. “I’m the one who needs to apologize. Everything that happened, everything that didn’t happen—it’s all my fault.” She swallows. “I thought a lot about it over the last few weeks, and you were right. I was scared of committing, scared of feeling anything real. So, I made everything between us seem insignificant. But it wasn’t, Jackson. It wasn’t.”

Her voice catches, and I want to tell her no, it’s not all her fault. It never was. I knew her past, and still I kept pushing for her to take a step she wasn’t ready for.

And then, even worse, I started taking her for granted—assuming she’d still want to be with me when I was constantly prioritizing the rest of my life over her, making no effort to show her how important she was.

I reach out to smooth her hair, but before I can speak, she grabs my hand and grips it fiercely.

“You gave me real happiness, Jackson. I haven’t felt that for a long time. So I just want to thank you for that. I want to thank you for every moment you spent with me—”

“Skylar, stop,” I cut her off. “This good-bye speech is ludicrous. I thought I could let you go—that it would be better for both of us. I was wrong. I was so wrong.”

I lean down and kiss her on her soft lips, drinking in every taste, every smell, every sensation.

“I don’t want to be without you. I can’t. After you walked away . . . I didn’t know what to do. But letting you go—that won’t work.”

I pull back and look into her bright green eyes. Where they were empty before, there’s a flicker of something, an ember being stoked. I kiss the back of her hand.

“And yeah, life is short, but I’ll be damned if your life is
this
short.” My jaw stiffens. “If this cancer really is back, then it had better get ready, because we’re going to fight it every step of the way.”

At the word “we,” her eyes light up, and she grips my hand even tighter.

“Excuse me?”

We both look up to find a man in a stiff white coat standing in the doorway.

“Ms. North? I have your results.”

Skylar immediately stiffens. I swallow back my own apprehension and put a hand on her leg. “It’s okay, Skylar. I’m here.”

“Sir,” the doctor addresses me, “I’m going to have to ask you to leave. I need to speak to my patient privately.”

I can feel Skylar’s body starting to tremble, and I lock my jaw, squaring off against the doctor.

“I’m staying. She needs me here for this.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but—”

“Please, can he stay?”

We both turn to look at Skylar. She’s so small on the hospital bed, so delicate, and yet so strong inside. She’s been through injury, illness, abandonment—all things that would have made a lesser person give up—and yet here she is, ready to fight again. And I know she’s capable of going this alone, but I also know that she shouldn’t have to.

We face off in silence, Skylar and me holding hands, the doctor mulling over the situation from the doorway.

“Only family is supposed to be permitted in here,” the doctor finally grumbles, stepping inside. “But fine. Anyway, it’s good news. The tests were clear.”

Skylar’s body sags against me. It’s as though with his words, the doctor just turned a valve, and every ounce of energy has emptied out of her body. Me, I feel like I could run a marathon. Lift a truck. Every cell in my body is buzzing.

The doctor is still talking—something about blood sugar, dehydration, stress—but neither of us is really listening. We’re just looking at one another, drinking each other in. We’re together. And she’s healthy. That’s all that matters.

Finally, it becomes apparent that the doctor has stopped talking, and I look over to find him studying us.

“Honestly,” he says, directing his comment at Skylar, “you’ve already gained more color in your face.”

It’s true: Skylar’s cheeks, which were pale, almost gray before, now shine with a pink glow.

“Perhaps,” the doctor speculates, rubbing his chin and glancing at me, “whatever stressor was affecting you before has been relieved?”

We look at one another and smile.

“Just to be on the safe side,” the doctor continues, flipping through a clipboard at the end of the bed, “we’ll keep you overnight for observation. That way we can double-check everything before we release you. But if the blood tests came back negative, it’s ninety-nine percent certain that the other tests will, too.”

Skylar isn’t even looking at him; she just beams at me with the brightest, fullest eyes and that smile that I missed so much.

Realizing he’s not going to get anything more out of her, the doctor gives a sigh. Muttering something about “couples,” he finally backs out of the room and shuts the door behind him.

“So.” I raise Skylar’s knuckles to my lips and slowly kiss each one. “Sounds like you’re in the clear.”

She continues to smile, watching my lips move over her knuckles. When I’ve finished, I take her hands in both of mine and swallow. Time for the truth.

“Listen to me, Sky. I said hurtful things that day, things that are false. You deserve an apology.”

She opens her mouth to respond, but I rush ahead.

“You aren’t wasting your life. Not at all. Who am I to say what makes you happy? If waitressing and yoga are what you love, then you should do those things. You don’t deserve any judgment from me—or from anyone.”

“But Jackson,” she breaks in. “I don’t love waitressing. Or even yoga.”

I look at her carefully. “You love dancing.”

She nods, eyes both bright and sad at the same time.

“I love the motion, the feel of my body extending in arabesque. I love the blur of a pirouette.” Her eyes retreat into the distance as she relives these sensations. Her muscles ripple beneath my hands, as though she’s about to leap out of bed and begin executing the visions in her head.

“We’ll find a way for you to dance.” I say it almost as a reflex, but as soon as the words are out, I know I want to make them true. Meanwhile, Skylar jerks, as if yanked back to reality. The dreamy look that had been on her face just a second ago is quickly replaced with tired resignation.

“My dancing days are over Jackson.”

“You don’t know that.”

Yes I do
, says her look. I grab her hand.

“Hey, you don’t have a future vision right? I’m the one who kept pushing that.”

She’s about to say something, but I barrel on.

“And for that, I owe you an apology. Sure, I’m all about looking ahead. Being prepared. But you were right: things don’t always go according to plan.” I press my thumb into the palm of her hand. “Hell, I thought I was going to find a wife using a checklist.”

Skylar grins.

“But here’s the thing. I’m still going to try and plan for the future. I can’t help it. It’s how I’ve always lived my life. But now I know that there’s no point in making any plan if you’re not part of it.” I glance at the floor and then back at her wide, expectant eyes. This next part is so hard to get out. But I have to do it. “So if you want to keep things casual, I’ll try to live within those boundaries—”

“I don’t want to keep things casual.” Her statement is direct, her voice unwavering. “We tried casual. Casual was stupid. It didn’t work. I have real feelings for you, Jackson. And I know you have real feelings or me.”

The rest of my speech evaporates as she leans into me, and I instinctively wrap my arm around her. She’s so soft, so warm. So alive.

“Plus, I don’t want to share you with anyone.” Her voice is filled with determination. “The thought of you going on dates with other women, touching them, kissing them . . . .” She shudders. “It makes me sick.”

“Perhaps whatever stressor was affecting you before has been relieved?”
The doctor’s words echo through my mind.

“Skylar they didn’t mean anything. Not one of them.” I suddenly feel frantic to make her believe me. “I ditched every single one at Altitude—just ask Cash. In fact, I started meeting them at Altitude just to expedite the process of getting rid of them.”

I watch her closely as she processes this, trying to judge her reaction. Is she mad? Sad? I deserve it. How could I have been so stupid, when all I wanted was her?

Then, to my amazement, Skylar’s lip twitches and she suddenly starts laughing.

“So you took them to Altitude . . . to ditch them faster?”

“Yeah.” I duck my head in embarrassment—and relief. “Sad, huh?”

“Not at all. I think I got asked out by every last loser at my office, and by the end I was using excuses like ‘needing to wash my hair.’”

Now it’s my turn to laugh. I lean in to kiss her, when I suddenly process what she’s just said.

“Wait, did you say guys at your
office
?”

“Yeah.” She rolls her eyes. “Total losers.”

“But you were in an office, Skylar. What office?”

“Oh.” She glances away. “You said I should be more responsible, so I took a job at Lockhart Fidelity. It seemed like a responsible thing to do, especially after I quit serving at The Library.” She pauses and looks back at me. “But I hated it.”