Live wild, mama.
I closed my eyes.
Oh God.
Oh no.
Oh fucking God, no.
“Lexie, baby, you there?”
No. No. I wasn’t. I wasn’t anywhere. I was lost. Totally lost. More lost even than the lost I’d been for a month and a half.
Lost forever.
“Yes,” I lied, opening my eyes.
“He… he…” another audible breath, “he’s alive, precious, but they say he’s not gonna last long. This Julius man said that maybe you’d wanna see him before he… he…” another audible breath while my body shook the bed and my throat burned so bad I knew it would never feel normal again, “passes. But he said there isn’t a lot of time.”
Suddenly full of energy, I threw back the covers and jumped out of bed. “Where is he?”
“County hospital outside Carnal.”
“I’ll get the first flight,” I announced, glad for the first time I had fifty thousand dollars of my husband’s money.
My husband’s money.
My husband.
My throat constricted, cutting off my air.
I forced saliva down it and doing it fucking hurt. But it worked; I could again breathe though I was doing it shallowly.
“Did he give you a number?” I asked.
“Yes, baby,” she answered.
“Can you…” I grabbed my suitcase and tossed it on the bed. “Can you… will you, when I get my flight, will you talk to him for me?”
I couldn’t talk to Julius. I couldn’t connect, even over the phone, with anything that belonged to Ty.
I couldn’t.
“Anything, Lexie,” Ella whispered.
“Thank you, honey,” I whispered back then stopped dead, froze and I couldn’t stop it, it hit me, no controlling it, it was too strong, the feeling overwhelmed me and the sob tore out of my throat, the sound so loud, it filled the room, reverberating, bouncing back and beating into me like fists.
“Baby,” Ella cooed in my ear. “Get your suitcase, get your clothes,” she guided me. “Pack. I’ll call Bessie. She’ll call for tickets. Just get yourself packed. That’s all you have to do. Bessie’ll take care of you.”
Bessie would. She’d been doing it awhile. She would do it forever.
Three good things in my whole, fucking, entire life – Bessie, Honey and Ella.
And the fourth was dying in Colorado.
“I’ll get packed,” I whispered.
“That’s my baby,” she whispered back. “Now, I’m gonna let you go and call our Bess, yes?”
“Yes,” I replied quietly.
“Pack, baby.”
“Okay, Ella.”
I heard her disconnect. Then I felt it slice through me leaving nothing but raw in its wake.
Then I pulled my shit together and started packing.
*
One hour later…
“I saw him,” Bessie said.
We were in her car on the way to the airport.
“What?” I asked, my mind on other things, my head so full it was aching, about to explode.
“With you on the beach,” she went on.
I sucked in breath and stared out the windshield.
Then I whispered, “Bess –”
She kept going. “Watched,” she whispered. “Watched him with you. Didn’t go to you, the way he was…” She cleared her throat. “The way he was with you. I liked it, Lexie.”
I closed my eyes, clenched my teeth then opened them and begged, “Stop.”
She was silent.
Then she wasn’t.
“Thought you took so long to call me for dinner, he was gettin’ through to you. You called, I was surprised. All these weeks, kept thinkin’ how I could tell you, how I could talk you into –”
“Stop.”
She stopped.
Then she started again.
“Shoulda talked you into givin’ him another shot.”
She should have. She should have done that.
But even if she did, I wouldn’t have listened.
“Doesn’t matter now,” I whispered.
“No,” she said gently, “doesn’t matter now, Lexie.”
It didn’t matter now.
Nothing mattered now.
She fell silent and kept driving.
*
Ten hours later…
I’d run the gamut, convincing myself my voice would be the miracle healing elixir that would wake Ty up the minute I whispered in his ear in his hospital bed and set him to healing to knowing by the time my plane touched down at Denver International Airport that he’d be dead by the time I arrived.