Go, Robby. Yay

“Does Amanda know?”

Parker hesitated again.

“Have you told her, doc?”

“No.”

The heavy weight crushing me to the ground grew heavier. I leaned against the metal rail, for a moment incapable of supporting myself. Around me, people continued to go on as if nothing was wrong in the world – laughing, smiling, enjoying life. In the distance, the rollercoaster screamed down its main drop, the passengers wailing with delight. I gripped my phone and stared at the structure, the rises and falls and abrupt turns …

“Is she at the hospital?” I asked Parker. The afternoon sun beat down on me, drying the sweat on my skin until I felt like I was wrapped in taut plastic.

“I was in Tanner’s room five minutes ago,” he answered, his tone apologetic, “and she wasn’t there. Her sister was. She and Tanner were playing Transformers. Chase does a very good Megatron.”

A weak chuckle escaped from me. Nothing like any sound I’d made before.

“Chase told me she sent Amanda back to her apartment,” Parker went on. “To get some rest, eat some food that wasn’t from the hospital cafeteria.”

“Okay.” I pushed myself from the rail, the ocean to my back, and began walking. “Thanks, doc.”

“He’s a fighter, Brendon,” Parker said, the apology in his voice replaced with determination. “One of the toughest kids I’ve met. We will find a match. I promise.”

I nodded. A strange sense of being detached from everything rolled through me. “I have to go.”

“I’m calling Amanda now. Normally I’d ask her to come into the hospital for this kind of news, but if you’re going where I think you’re going—”

“I am.” Yes, I was going to Amanda’s place. I wanted to be there for her. To give her my strength … if she wanted it. The reason she’d called me, the reason she’d wanted me here was to save our son. To be a bone marrow match. And I wasn’t a match. I couldn’t save him.

I stopped walking. Crippled by the cruel blow life had delivered. I couldn’t save our son. What was the point of me, if I couldn’t save our—

“Brendon?” Parker’s sharp voice sounded in my ear. “Come on, dude. You’re stronger than this. I know you are. I wouldn’t have told you over the phone if I didn’t know that.”

I made some kind of noise. I don’t know what it was, or what it was trying to say. What was my fucking reason for being if I couldn’t save Tanner?

“Brendon, do me a favor,” Parker said. “Right now, standing out there on the sidewalk, do me a solid, okay?”

“What’s that?”

“Take whatever hand isn’t holding the phone and put it on your shoulder. Are you doing that?”

I blinked.

“C’mon, dude, put your hand on your shoulder for me,” Parker ordered.

I did as he asked, reaching up with my left hand to cup my bunched deltoid. It was hard and hot beneath my palm. Dense. How many shoulder presses and delt raises had I done in my life to get it that way? How many days of carb denial when all I was hanging for was a loaf of Vegemite-on-toast? How many protein shakes that tasted like chalk? How many reps of military presses until I couldn’t lift the weight any more?

“Are you doing it?” Parker repeated, a soft steel in his voice.

“I am,” I answered.

“Those shoulders of yours are the biggest shoulders I’ve ever seen in my life,” he said. “And I’d bet my year’s salary – and that’s a lot, Brendon, a lot – they’re the strongest. Definitely strong enough for two people. Strong enough for three. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

I swallowed, holding my deltoid. I understood.

“Call me when you get to Amanda’s,” Parker instructed, a gentle compassion in his voice. “I’ll hold off calling until then.”

“Okay. Thanks, doc.”

He gave me a wry laugh. “Don’t thank me, big guy. I just shattered your world and made you feel yourself up in public.”

Believe it or not, I actually managed a chuckle.

“He’s a fighter, Brendon. Remember that.”

He ended the call, leaving me standing alone in the stretching shadows of the afternoon. It didn’t take me long to wave down a taxi. I gave the driver Amanda’s address, settled into the backseat and closed my eyes. What felt like a few seconds later, I felt a soft prod on my shoulder.

“Hey, guy, we’re here.”

I opened my eyes, squinting against the red light of the sunset streaming through the door. Man, I was out of whack. Had I been asleep?

“Forty-two fifty,” the driver said.

I caught a glimpse of Amanda’s apartment building behind him. Mrs. Garcia was in her window, watching us. Still foggy from my unexpected nap, I handed over some notes – who the hell knew how much I’d given him – and told him to keep the change.

At his grunted “Gee, thanks” I assumed I’d failed at tipping again. Given the notion of failing had never been one I’d contemplated or acknowledged before, I seemed to be doing quite a bit of it now. Failing at tipping. Failing at love. Failing at saving my son.

Climbing out of the taxi, I waved at Mrs. Garcia. She narrowed her eyes at me from her perch and then turned back into the deep shadows of her apartment.

“And a cheery hello to you, too,” I muttered, making my way up the path to the building. Heart pounding in my chest like a sledgehammer wielded by a maniac, I opened the door and made my way to Amanda’s apartment.

I knocked on her door. “It’s me, Mandy.”

Why had I called her that? The name I’d only ever used the first time we had sex, and the day she ended us. Why had I called her that now?

At the sound of the lock releasing, my gut knotted. And then the door swung open and I could barely breathe. She’d changed her clothes since returning from the hospital. She was now wearing a pair of pink and grey striped PJ shorts and a loose pink T-shirt with a cartoon skiing wombat on its front I remembered her buying at Thredbo. She looked vulnerable. Fragile. And so beautiful my heart ached and my breath caught in my throat.

“Hi Bren,” she whispered.

I couldn’t say anything. Words wouldn’t come. None.

A hesitant smile played on her lips. “I’m glad you changed your mind. Did you want to come in?”

“Yeah,” I murmured. “I do. I need to.”

A frown knitted her eyebrows. “Do you … have you spoken to Dr. … to Parker?”

A vice wrapped around my chest. Every hair on my body prickled upright. My head roared. I met her eyes, and still, words failed me. One more thing to add to my list of failures.

“You’ve spoken to Parker, haven’t you?”

I nodded. “Mandy …” I reached for her hand. “I’m not—”

“Don’t say it,” she burst out, yanking her fingers from mine and shaking her head. “Please don’t say it, Bren. Please?” She staggered back a step, her face, her eyes filling with utter misery.

I closed the space between us, caught her hand again and gently pulled her to my body. I wrapped her in the strength of my arms and pressed my cheek to the top of her head. “I’m sorry, Mandy. I’m so sorry.”

“Oh God, Bren,” she sobbed against my chest, shaking, trembling. “Oh God, Bren, I can’t lose him. I can’t … I can’t …”

I held her, tried to absorb her pain, tried to take it all away with just my arms. It was all I could do. I wish I could tell you I knew what to say to take away her pain, but I can’t. Like tipping and saving Tanner’s life, I’d come up short.

“I’m sorry,” I repeated against the top of her head. I was being torn apart. I felt like life had lied to me all these years. I felt like my optimism was just one big cosmic joke and Amanda, Tanner and I were bearing the brunt of it.

I was angry. I was miserable. I was … lost.

“It’s not your fault,” Amanda mumbled into my chest. “It’s no one’s fault. It’s just … just the way it is.”

I pulled away from her a little, hooked my finger under her chin and raised her face to mine. “We’ll find a donor, babe,” I assured her. I didn’t question that, nor the term of affection I’d used. I was beyond that. The only way we could move forward now was together. Tanner was going to need our strength, our combined strength.

She looked up at me, eyes red with tears, misery eating her. “I don’t … we’ve looked …”

I shook my head, pulling her closer to me still. “I do. And we will. I can’t believe life would give you both to me, and then take Tanner from us. I can’t believe that.”

“The eternal optimist,” she declared, the words little more than a husky rasp.

I shrugged, even as inside I wondered if my days of optimism were long gone. “Yeah. It’s what makes me so awesome. Bet Tanner will be the same.”

Amanda closed her eyes and pressed her forehead to my chest. Her fingers fisted in the front of my shirt. Her body trembled. “I know you’ll never be able to trust me again, Bren,” she said, returning her gaze to mine, “but—”

I cut her off with a kiss. A soft brushing of my lips over hers. And then it wasn’t so soft. Then I was kissing her with everything I had. And she was kissing me back.

Her hands tangled in my hair, her body pressed to mine and she was kissing me back. It was a visceral passion. It came from our souls, from the place deep inside us, raw from grief and hope and want.

There was comfort in it as well, the comfort of two people who knew each other beyond the physical, who’d shared life together and created life together. We kissed, needing to feel something more than gnawing emptiness and grief and hopelessness. We let the elemental connection of flesh take us over, control us. Sear away the pain.

At some point the door was closed and we removed each other’s clothes. I don’t know who started it first. Nor do I know when we moved to the sofa. Or even how we moved to the sofa. I don’t remember not kissing Amanda, but suddenly we were naked and on the sofa, moving against each other.

Nothing existed for me in that moment except her. Yes, my son had leukemia. Yes, I wasn’t a match. Yes, Amanda had lied to me … But for that one brief moment, I needed nothing else but to feel her, feel the velvet friction of her skin sliding against mine. Feel the pounding of my heart, the quickening of my pulse because of it, not because of fear or terror.

I needed to experience passion, life, energy, and I did in Amanda’s arms, in her body. I understood it now, the emotion that had overwhelmed her when she’d first seen me at the airport. I understood how we’d ended up in the shower together when our world was so horribly wrong. I understood it, because I felt it now. That raw, elemental need for connection, for life … We lost each other to the ferocity of our need, there on the sofa.

It didn’t take long. But it was so powerful. So absolute. I buried my face into the side of her neck, breathed her in, breathed us in. I kissed her, over and over, the sensation of her tongue against mine, in my mouth, like a drug I couldn’t resist. I cupped her breasts, squeezed them, pinched them, her flesh branding my palm, my belly, my thighs … everywhere our bodies touched, her flesh branded mine.

When I entered her, when the tight muscles of her sex engulfed my length, I forgot everything, everything, but the pure rapture of being with her. She wrapped her legs around mine and held me to her, locked us together, and that too was what I needed. She called my name, clawed at my back, and we moved together. Perfect harmony, perfect synergy. Finding life and heat when so much had been taken away. Burning up in it, even as a part of our souls grew cold with hopeless despair.

Amanda came first, screaming my name, and then it was tears in her voice as she whimpered it again. Tears and an emotion I ached to accept, ached to acknowledge in myself.

“Oh, Bren,” she moaned, as I drove into her, over and over, “Oh God, Bren, I love you, I love …”

My orgasm shattered not just my sanity, but my rage. The hate for her I’d clung to shattered, splintered into a million pieces. I raised my head and cupped her face and emptied myself into her in every way as I watched her face contort with pleasure.

“Mandy …” I panted. “Mandy …”

No other words came. I buried my face into the side of her neck again and drove into her, and she held me. I was sweaty and stinky from my run, but she held me. She kissed me.

And then, we were still. Wrapped in each other’s arms and legs, our hearts pounding as one, our ragged breaths the only sound in the room. I couldn’t move. I was too drained. Not just physically, but emotionally. I couldn’t move and I didn’t want to. I wanted to hold her to me, I wanted to stay inside her. Yes, we needed to call Parker. Yes, we needed get to the hospital. Yes, we needed to be with Tanner … but for now I needed this.

Was I being selfish? Probably. I’ll own it if you think I was. But nothing could have moved me away from Amanda at that moment in time.

Finally, with more willpower than I’ve ever exerted, I rose from the sofa. “I’m going to have a quick shower,” I murmured.

She nodded up at me, eyes half closed, face soft. “Okay.”

When I returned a few minutes later, she held her arms out to me and, wordlessly, I went to her and curled up beside her on the sofa. We held each other, connected on every imaginable level, and at some point, we fell asleep.

A loud knocking on the door woke me. I struggled to sit up, disorientated and sore. Jesus, my body, particularly my legs, were aching. The fact I’d run for almost two hours earlier may have had something to do with it. How long had I been asleep for?

Mouth dry, eyes scratchy and blurry, I peered at the door, and then around the room. Where was Amanda?

Whoever was at the door knocked again. There was still no sign of Amanda, but now I was more awake, I could hear the shower running. Spying my shorts on the floor a few feet away, I got up and pulled them on.

Jetlag is a thing, and it was hitting me hard.

For someone who spent the majority of his life in peak physical condition, I was feeling less than stellar. It was like I’d never done any kind of serious exercise at all before today. My glutes and quads burned like taut rope with every step I took toward the door. Was I limping? Crap, I was limping. Shuffling like an old man. What the hell?

By the time I made it to the door, the person on the other side was knocking again. Scraping the fingers of my left hand through my hair – God knows what it looked like – I flicked the lock and opened the door.

“Man …dy.” A guy a little shorter than me stood in the corridor; a confused frown completely replaced the smile that had initially been on his lips.

He gave me a quick once over, his frown turning to a scowl, his hands smoothing over his shirtfront. It dawned on me as I watched his hands travel past the letters SDSU, that I’d opened the door shirtless – and that was kind of intimidating at the best of times, let alone to a stranger. Shit.

His glare narrowed on my face. “Who the hell are you?”

I blinked at the venom in the question. “G’day. I’m Brendon Osmond. Amanda’s friend.”

Like the delayed realization I was half dressed, it took a second for me to register that whoever this guy was, he’d called Amanda Mandy. A twist of something primitive tightened in my gut. And my chest. The one bare of shirt and university letters.

I raised a curious eyebrow. “And you are?”

He squared his shoulders and straightened his spine. “Robby Aames. Amanda’s boyfriend.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

What the hell fucked-up nightmare was I having? I had to still be asleep, right? This guy wasn’t Amanda’s boyfriend. He wasn’t her anything.

“Robby?”

I jumped at the brushing of Amanda’s fingertips over my spine. At her voice behind me. At the confusion in it. This nightmare was taking a surreal turn. I didn’t like it.

Robby stepped past me, like I wasn’t there. I didn’t like that either. Not at all.

“Mandy.” He smoothed a hand up her arm and placed a kiss on her cheek.

Was this happening? How completely fucked up had my life become? Was this really happening?

I folded my arms over my chest in such a way to emphasize my biceps, and leaned my back against the door, closing it.

Yes, I’d resorted to peacocking my muscles.

“What are you doing here, Robby?” Uncertainty knitted Amanda’s eyebrows. She flicked a glance at me and then looked back at Robby.

Robby. What kind of grown man has a name like Robby?

“Your father called.” Robby did his best to put himself between me and Amanda. It gratified me to see she’d folded her own arms over her breasts. It irritated the hell out of me that those breasts were covered by nothing but a bathrobe. “He said Dr. Waters was testing for another match and he knew I’d want to be here for you again.”

Four words drilled through my head. Your. Father. Called. And again.

Charles Sinclair had called Robby Aames. Charles Sinclair had told him about something intensely personal to me and Amanda. Charles Sinclair had suggested Amanda would need Robby’s support, because apparently I wasn’t good enough.

And Robby Aames had been there for her more than once.

Another word scraped at my consciousness. One my brain had relegated to the product of a nightmare I obviously wasn’t having.

Boyfriend.

I ground my teeth. Yeah, the guy in front of me, he looked exactly like the kind of guy Charles would approve of for Amanda. Neat hair combed into slick perfection, a student or graduate from the university where Charles himself was a professor. The perfect guy to date Charles Sinclair’s daughter.

The woman who’d told me she wasn’t seeing—

“Dad shouldn’t have done that,” Amanda responded with a sigh. “And you didn’t need to come.” She gave him a sad smile. “But thank you.”

A lump lodged in my throat, thick and impossible to swallow. She’d smiled at him. Just who the hell was Robby Aames to her? Boyfriend? How could he be? After she and I had …

Pushing myself from the door, I crossed to her side. “Amanda?”

There was no animosity in my tone, I couldn’t let there be. I was balancing on the edge of a precipice. Any crack in what tenuous control I had over my emotional state would see me go to a place I didn’t want to go.

But I was close. So fucking close it scared me.

Amanda shook her head, frowning again. “I’m sorry, Bren.” She smiled that sad smile at Robby. “This is Robert Aames. Robby. He used to be my father’s teacher’s assistant. Now he’s a family friend.”

Family friend. Very different description than the one Robby had given himself. So who was telling the truth? The very fact that the question itched at me left me unsettled. The fact that I had no clue of the actual answer only made it worse.

“Robby.” Amanda touched my arm. “This is Brendon. Tanner’s father.”

“The bodybuilder?” The look Robby gave me made me want to punch him. “That explains the lack of a shirt, I guess.”

“Robby,” Amanda dragged out his name in a warning.

I wanted to give him a warning. But it wouldn’t have been just his name.

“Sorry,” he offered her a contrite smile and tried to snag her fingers, but she didn’t let him. That was one thing, I guess. “I just wasn’t expecting …” Clearing his throat, he turned to me and held out his hand. “Hi Brendon, welcome to San Diego.”

I closed my hand around his, holding his stare. His grip turned to a vice and, in classic Alpha-dog behavior, he closed his other hand over the back of mine and tried to turn our locked hands so his was on top.

Tried and failed. At least I’d won at something today. “G’day, Bobby,” I said.

Contemptuous conceit flashed in his eyes and his smile widened. “Robby.”

I gave him a look of hollow contrition. “Robby.”

Smoothing his hand over Amanda’s back in a way that shouted Fuck off, she’s mine, he met my eyes again. “Can I assume you’re the test Charles told me about?”

“Brendon flew in this morning,” Amanda said, stepping away from him. She looked uncomfortable, but was that because she didn’t want him touching her, or because she didn’t want him touching her while I was there?

Fuck. What should I do?

Robby affected a sympathetic expression. I saw straight through it. “You must be tired. And then to get here and discover … well, everything.”

“It’s been a shock,” I answered calmly. Inside was a different matter.

Robby grunted a response as he nodded and scratched a spot under his right eye. I’m pretty certain he did it only so I could see the Rolex on his wrist. Or maybe my agitated state was messing with me?

“I take it you haven’t received the results yet?” he went on. “I was the first to be tested, after Mandy and her family, of course. I’m almost a match, close enough Dr. Waters will use my stem cells if a complete match cannot be found by the end of the week.”

I didn’t flinch. Even as the room turned into a roaring void, I didn’t flinch. But I felt sick. Physically sick. Like someone had pierced my stomach with a sharp stick and was churning it about. I wasn’t a match. But this … this … dick was almost one? I couldn’t save my son, and this guy, with his Rolex, slicked hair and SDSU T-shirt may very well be able to?

Pulse thumping in my ears, my eyes, I turned to Amanda.

I could see she was flustered. Stressed. She was pinching at her thumbnail again. A frown creased her forehead. “As soon as Parker canceled out me, Chase, and Mom and Dad as suitable donors, the search for a match began. Friends offered to be tested the moment they found out what Tanner had.”

“And Bobby was one of those friends? Is almost a match?”

“Robby.” Robby corrected. I didn’t look at him. But I could hear the smugness in his voice, hidden in the considerate patience of his interjection.

Amanda nodded, gnawing on her bottom lip. If she had any idea of how I was feeling, she didn’t show it. “Almost. The problem with almost is Tanner’s body can reject the transplant, and that can cause GVHD – graft-versus-host disease. A bone marrow transplant with non-matching stem cells, no matter how close to a match, is very very risky, and only a last resort.”

The room crushed down on me. My skin itched all over. “I thought the last resort was calling the father.”

Pain etched Amanda’s face. Her eyes welled with tears. “Bren,” she whispered, “please don’t.”

At her side, Robby loomed large. “Hey hey hey, Mandy girl,” he crooned, smoothing his hand up and down her back again. “It’s okay, I’m here now. I’m here.”

Fuck, I wanted to smash his face in. I wanted to break his perfect nose, crack his chiseled jaw.

“You weren’t the last resort, Bren,” Amanda stepped toward me, pressing her palms to my chest. My gut knotted at the contact. My stupid male body reacted. My brain, however, rebelled. Rebelled against what my stupid, gullible heart wanted.

“No?” I closed my fingers around her wrists and removed her hands from my chest. “You just waited until time had almost run out before calling me, though, didn’t you? I could be wrong, but that seems to me to be the very definition of last resort. I’m sorry I fucked up and failed you, babe.”

And with that, I dropped her wrists and strode through the living room to the bathroom. My gym bag and backpack were still in there – the only things I had brought to the US apart from a woefully inadequate defense against everything Amanda could do to me.

“Brendon,” she called after me. She grabbed my arm as I snatched up my bag. “Brendon stop. I need to explain. I need you to understand.”

“I understand it very clearly, Amanda,” I shot back. “I’ll get out of your road now. I’ve come up lacking so there’s no need for me to be here, is there?”

I didn’t wait for her to respond. At that point, nothing she said would have helped. I’d failed her. I’d failed our son. And Robby with his Rolex was there to do what I couldn’t.

Go Robby. Yay.

Robby, the hero that he was, was standing in the living room when I stormed back in, my shirt and shoes in his hands. “You might need these,” he suggested.

Sucking a slow breath, I took them from him and got into his personal space. I held his gaze and smiled, or maybe sneered. I really couldn’t be sure. “Thanks, mate.”

He flinched. Not a lot, but a flinch all the same – a slight turn of the head, a small shuffle of feet.

“Bren,” Amanda grabbed at my arm again. “Please, this isn’t—”

“What I think?” I shot her a look over my shoulder. “Nothing has been since I arrived, Amanda. And I’m done with it.”

Without another word, I left. I didn’t slam the door. I didn’t turn to see if Amanda was coming after me. For the second time that day, I left Amanda’s apartment in an emotional state that scared me. For the second time that day, I’d stormed from her home half naked.

For the second time that day, I’d wished to fucking God, I’d never met her.

And straight away, before the regret finished tainting my anger, I knew that wasn’t the case. Because of Tanner.

I had to go see my son. Now. I had to see Parker Waters. I had to find out what happened next. I had to find out what I could do.

Stopping on the steps outside the apartment building, I dropped my bag at my feet, tugged on my shoes and pulled my shirt over my head – no university letters on this one, just a cartoon dog farting a music note.

“Brendon.”

My gut clenched at Amanda’s shout behind me. I turned and watched her hurry toward me through the foyer.

“Brendon, you need to let me explain.” She caught my hand and held it tight. “Please, at least give me that?”

“Because I can’t give you what you really want from me?”

Fresh pain filled her face. “I wanted to call you the second Parker confirmed none of my family was a match. The second. I had my phone in my hand, your number on its screen.”

“So why didn’t you?”

She looked away, her forehead creased in a disgusted frown. “Because Dad said he wouldn’t pay for Tanner’s medical expenses if I did.”

I let out a frustrated breath, bunching my fists as I shook my head. “He hates me that much, eh? He’d rather risk the chance of his grandson getting better than let me back into your life?”

“He thinks he’s trying to do what’s best for me.”

“And obviously I’m not.”

She turned back to me. Tears swam in her eyes and clung to her eyelashes. What I would have given to cup her face in my hands and kiss them away. “I should have told him off,” she said, the words a husky rasp. “Should have told him to mind his own business, but the health care system over here is … well, it’s not the Australian system. And I couldn’t afford to do it on my own.”

A hot pain sheared through my heart. “If you’d called me, you wouldn’t have been on your own. I would have been here with you. I would have liked the chance to be there from the beginning. I would have helped you in every way I could.”

Her bottom lip trembled. “Bren … I’m sorry …”

I gazed at her, devoured every line on her face, every freckle, every mark. Committed it to memory. And then I did cup her jaw in my palm. And I did bend down and kiss away the hot tears on her eyelashes.

“Bren,” she murmured, leaning into me, her hands on my chest, over my heart.

“I’ve loved you since the day I met you, Mandy,” I whispered against her eyes. “Be happy.”

I turned and walked down the path. Away from her.

“Brendon …” she called.

I didn’t look back. And she didn’t come after me.

It was, I think, for the better.