We don’t get another chance to talk after we reach the hospital, but Zack doesn’t leave my side. After I check in, we wait most of the night in the crowded waiting room, making small talk, mostly about MMA. Zack is still very much a part of the world, and although he doesn’t fight, he still stays up-to-date on all the new developments and trains every day.
Finally, I see the doctor. After running a few tests, he diagnoses a mild concussion.
“Ease up on the training for the next four days,” he says, handing me a prescription for painkillers. “Very light exercise only. And since you’re in a high-risk occupation, book that time off work. I didn’t see anything serious on the CT scan, but come back if it gets worse.”
Zack preens as we leave the hospital in the soft early-morning light, chest puffed out, a swagger to his stride. I can’t bear to look at him for the smug smile on his face. Finally, I can’t take anymore. When we reach his vehicle, I turn and glare.
“Say it. I know you’re desperate. So spit it out.”
He lifts a mock quizzical eyebrow as he opens the door. “Say what?”
“Don’t even pretend you don’t want to say it, or you’ll force me to go against medical advice. I’ll run around the parking lot, jump up and down, and grapple with the next person who walks out the door.”
His smile fades. “You wouldn’t dare.”
He’s right. I won’t take the risk. But once upon a time, I would have.
“Just say it and put me out of my misery.”
“Told you so,” he says, unable to hide his smirk. “I knew it was a concussion when I held you at Redemption.”
“Did that feel good?”
“Yes, it did.” He holds my door open while I climb into his vehicle and leans over to clip my seat belt. His shoulder brushes against my breasts, and we both freeze.
Zack’s gaze holds mine. He tips his head so our foreheads touch. His eyes close for the briefest moment, and he draws in a shuddering breath. It is the first time he has shown anything but a calm determination to ensure I get proper medical care, and I realize this has taken a toll on him, too.
“Thank you.” Unable to stop myself, I cup his jaw in my hand. His face is bristly with a five-o’clock shadow, but it is the same beautiful face that has haunted my dreams.
“Pleasure.” He draws my hand to his lips and kisses my palm.
My heart flutters in my chest. Zack was a master kisser. We used to take a blanket to the field near his trailer, and he would kiss my fingers one by one, working his way up my arms so slowly, I would feel drugged with pleasure and anticipation by the time he reached my lips. Then he would roll on top of me, blanketing me with his warmth as he plundered my mouth while I ground against the only thing he wouldn’t give me.
I hear the sound of footsteps, voices heading toward us. Zack moves back, leaving me bereft.
“Where to?” he asks after he climbs into the car beside me.
“222 Foster Street in the Lower Haight. You can just drop me off. I’ll be at the gym later today, so I’ll probably see you there. I’m going to watch the tapes of my old fights to see what I’ve been doing wrong.”
“You’re not going to the gym.” He starts the engine, and the quiet parking lot is suddenly filled with sound. “I’m taking you home to rest. That’s what the doctor said.” His voice drops to a low rumble. “Do I need to come inside and tie you to the bed to make sure it happens?”
All my blood rushes down to where blood shouldn’t rush when you’re sitting in a car beside a sexy hunk of male perfection who has just spent all night beside you in the hospital.
“Um…no. That’s okay.” I shift uneasily in my seat, wondering why someone invented panties and how much cooler things would be down below without them. “And actually, he didn’t say I had to rest. He just said ease up on the training.”
“He meant rest.” Zack peels out of the parking lot like we’ve just robbed a bank, tires screeching around the corner. Then he blasts down the road.
“I’m curious.” I gasp when he narrowly misses a woman with a baby stroller. “I was going to ask this question on the way to the hospital, but I was busy holding on for dear life. Why did you settle for the Acura if you wanted to drive like you’re in the Indy 500?”
“They were out of Indy cars.”
“Hate it when that happens.” I rub my hand over my forehead as we weave through traffic at the speed of light.
“You okay?” He drops one hand to my thigh, his warmth seeping through my jeans.
“Yeah. Mostly tired.” We drive in silence for a few blocks and narrowly miss cars, pedestrians, motorcycles, and almost run a red light. I can tell from the way he nibbles on his bottom lip that something is bothering him, simmering under the surface. He’s distracted, and I am almost about to tell him to put both hands on the steering wheel when he squeezes my thigh.
“Does it hurt?”
“Not much since I took the painkillers the doctor gave me.”
He pats my thigh. “I meant your leg. I saw the scars.”
My body tenses even though I should have known the question was coming. Although I asked him to step outside when the triage nurse asked me about past injuries, he would have seen the scars at the gym and again when I was walking around in my hospital gown.
“Sometimes,” I say honestly. “I still have the pins in it. I’ve been afraid to go through the surgery to get them out. The specialist said they could stay in, so I just live with it.”
He shifts in his seat, and his hand tightens on my thigh. “What happened?”
“I fell down a flight of stairs,” I say, giving him the half-truth that I’ve repeated so many times, I almost believe it. “I broke my leg and a couple of other bones, too.”
“Is that why you don’t dance anymore?”
“Yes.”
He draws in a ragged breath. “I can’t imagine how hard it must have been to give up your dream.”
Hard doesn’t even begin to describe waking up in the hospital alone and being told that the life you have known since you were three years old is over, that you will never dance again or feel the music lift you and carry you across the stage. All the blood, sweat, and tears I shed were for nothing because I trusted another man, and I was betrayed again.
“It led me out here, so I guess it turned out okay in the end. I love fighting and training at Redemption, and I enjoy my job. I have a new dream now. I’m going to be a professional fighter, like you were.”
He reaches for my hand, threads his fingers through mine. “I should have been there for you.”
If Zack had been there, Damian wouldn’t have found me crying in the changing room after rehearsal one night. He wouldn’t have held me and soothed me and said all the kind words I needed to hear. He wouldn’t have insisted on taking me out for coffee, making me laugh, showing me the beauty of New York. I wouldn’t have fallen for him and married him. If Zack had been there, I would still be dancing.
“Did he look after you?” he says into the silence.
“Who?”
“Your husband.”
“Mom and Matt were there. Mom stayed in the hospital with me, because I had casts on my arms—”
“Jesus Christ.” Zack yanks the steering wheel to the side, and moments later, we are parked behind a gas station. At this early hour, there is no one at the pump, and the cashier is inside watching TV.
“What the hell kind of fall was it?” He scrubs his hands through his hair. “How high were the stairs? Were they concrete?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Shay.” His voice cracks, breaks. “Please. Tell me. I need to know.”
With a sigh, I unclip my seat belt and turn toward him. If this is what it takes to get me home, I’ll give him the details I gave Torment when I first joined the gym. “I broke my right arm, some bones in my left hand…”
You won’t be calling him now, will you?
“And a few ribs…”
Did you think I wouldn’t find out? Kick. You’re still in love with him. Kick. All those fucking years and you couldn’t let him go. Kick.
“My left shin…”
I’ve been practicing my swing.
“I had a few bruises, a concussion, broken nose, black eyes…”
I made you what you are, and I can take it away. No one wants a broken, ugly ballerina. If I can’t be part of this world, neither can you.
“And, of course, my leg…”
You want to go, bitch? I’ll let you go. I’ll let you go to fucking hell. Forever.
I lean back in my seat. “Can we go home now?”
Silence. And then, “Your husband. Where was he?”
Your husband has been arrested. He is in jail and faces multiple charges in connection with the assault. If he makes bail, you may wish to get a restraining order…
“Away.”
Zack shouts a string of expletives and pounds on the dash. This isn’t just about me, I realize. It’s about him. He protected me from the first day we met, and it’s killing him that he wasn’t there to protect me when I needed him the most.
“Stop it,” I shout over the noise. “Enough. It’s over. It doesn’t matter.”
“Why the fuck did you marry him?” He runs a hand through his hair. “Why didn’t you wait for me? It was one year. You acted like what we had was nothing, like what we had never mattered.”
Now it’s my turn to get angry. “Of course it mattered. You were everything to me. But what did you expect me to do? We had made a plan for the future, and you just threw it away without even talking to me. Did you think I’d go to San Diego and sit around alone, waiting for you to achieve your dreams and forget about mine?”
“I left because I loved you,” Zack says. “I found out about New York and I knew it was the only way to make you go. I thought you’d forgive me when you realized it was the right choice, and we’d pick up where we left off. But that clearly wasn’t the case, because you didn’t just jump into another man’s bed right away; you got married. We never had a chance.”
How can he be so clueless? I feel like my sweet Dr. Jekyll who took me to the hospital has suddenly turned into the evil Mr. Hyde. Pushing open my door, I step out of the car. “I can’t even believe this conversation. I’m calling a cab.”
“Don’t run away from me.” Zack exits the vehicle and grabs my hand. “I want to know. What was it about him that made it so easy for you to move on? Was it that he had money? Or a college degree? Or was it his family? I’m pretty damn sure he wasn’t a high school dropout who grew up in a trailer park with a drug addict for a mother and an abusive alcoholic for a dad.”
“Don’t.” My hand flies to my throat where my dragonfly necklace is tucked under my shirt. “I missed you so much, I couldn’t breathe. Everything reminded me of you. Every dance. Every song. I saw you on every corner. I kept hearing your voice on the street. My heart shattered the day you left me, and it has never been the same. I just wanted the pain to end.”
“It never ended for me.”
Zack cups my face between his hands and kisses me. His lips are soft and sweet and painfully familiar. My heart beats wildly in my chest, and I melt against him. I don’t want to kiss him, but I do. I move my mouth against his, explore the painfully familiar seam of his lips with my tongue. He tastes of coffee, bitter and sweet, and I am lost in a sea of emotion so deep, I don’t know if I’ll find my way home. His hands wrap around me, pulling me in, and the risk of getting swallowed in his embrace wakes me up. I step back, tear myself away, my chest heaving.
“You can’t do that.” A wave of anger surges through me, disappointment that I have been so weak when I have spent years learning how to be strong. I force myself to remember how I felt the night he left me, the hollowness that consumed me in the weeks and months that followed, and the vulnerability that left me open to a relationship that almost killed me. “I can’t do that. We can’t go back, Zack. Things can’t be the way they were.”
His face smooths to an unreadable mask. “It won’t happen again.”
“No. It won’t.”
He draws in a ragged breath and holds open my door. “I’ll take you home.”
I get in the car only because I don’t want to stand in a parking lot at six in the morning trying to find a cab. Zack settles in his seat, and a few minutes later, we are back on the road. But something has changed. I am aware of him now in a way I wasn’t before. I can feel the tension in his body as if it were my own. I can taste him on my lips. His warmth lingers on my skin.
“You hate me, don’t you?” he asks, the tension in his voice belying his calm demeanor.
“I could never hate you. You’re still a part of me. But you hurt me so badly, I don’t think I’ll ever get over it.”
“You recovered from your accident.” He drops his hand to my thigh, tentatively this time, but I don’t push him away. After what happened between us, I need this connection even though it might be the last time we’re together. He left me once. No doubt he’ll leave me again.
“That’s different. I had Redemption.”
He pulls up in front of my apartment, his face thoughtful. “Maybe I need Redemption, too.”