We’d done that.
And how was I to know that I could survive when my best friend lay in a hospital bed not surviving what we’d both fought so hard for.
Sobriety meant making healthy choices, even when they felt like the most painful ones.
“I don’t trust myself with you, Cade. I need this. I need time,” I whispered.
His stare was full of frustration. “I’m not good at waiting, Izzy.”
I rolled my lips between my teeth, not sure I could hold out much longer away from him anyway.
He sighed and ran a hand through his thick hair. “Do you have anyone you can call to be here with you?”
“Other than security for no good reason?” I pointed at some of the men in suits. What could I say? I couldn’t bring myself to call my family. Delilah would be concerned. They’d worry, and their worry would bring the weighted guilt of what I’d already done to them. “I’m fine here on my own. I’d like Lucas to have his privacy.”
“It’s still good to have support,” he pointed out.
I wondered if he believed that, if he ever had support. “Would you call your family if they worried constantly about you relapsing?”
He tilted his head like he was considering it. “Sure. Bastian would be there.”
I gulped as he said his brother’s name. Sebastian Armanelli. It should have brought a lot more fear than it did. “You love your brother?”
He smiled like he knew the real question I was asking. “I will always love my brother, dollface. And I stand by everything he’s done and does, even all the mistakes he’s made. Just like I’m sure your brothers and sister would do for you. Family doesn’t shrink from your mistakes and disappear; they just sink their roots in deeper to get you out.”
I bit my lip because I wanted to believe what he was saying, because I wanted to think that my family didn’t want to rid themselves of their bad wolf, but I couldn’t. Instead, I just shrugged.
“Ah, it’s something that’s learned, Izzy. We’ll have you figure it out one day.” Cade motioned to the food. “Now, sit and eat your sandwich.”
I sighed. Even if I was hungry, eating anything right now felt ridiculous. “I wish he’d wake up to eat with me. He loves subs. Or that they’d at least let me in to see him.”
“They will soon enough. Now eat. I made it a priority to feed you on that retreat. You’ll have to do it on your own now while you make me wait to be a part of your life for God only knows what reason that is today.”
I grumbled that he might be waiting a long time and then asked, “Why is it a priority that I eat?”
“We can’t give Gerald the satisfaction of you losing your ass, now, can we?”
It was an insult or a joke or maybe a compliment. Either way, he got the first smile pulled from me that day as I listened to him and sat down.
Before he left, the man strode up to me and tipped my face up to his. “It’ll be okay, baby doll. I promise.”
Then he kissed my forehead and walked over to the nurse’s station.
Cade wasn’t a god. He wasn’t a doctor. He wasn’t even a nurse. Yet I believed him. Maybe because I wanted to or maybe because amongst the men in our world, Cade really was a higher power of some sort.
Further proof of it showed when, not a minute later, a nurse came to usher me back to Lucas’s room and I saw Cade standing down the hallway, giving us a final nod like he’d orchestrated getting me into his room.
I didn’t have time to read into it. I was focused on Lucas as I hurried into the sterile, overly clean room. The white curtain was pulled back and the monitors were beeping as my big lug of a friend lay there, quiet, peaceful, and without a smile on his ever-happy face.
Lucas looked like he was resting, and I hoped he felt like it too. I hoped he was putting his demons to bed as he slept in between the world of life and the one of death.
Crying for him wouldn’t do him any good, but I did it anyway. Then I tucked in his sheets just right and rearranged his tray table to make sure the tissues were set up there with a cup of water for when he woke. I ordered food that wasn’t perishable, and I turned the TV on low and found BRAVO.
“Look, Lucas, it’s your favorite housewife. Kyle’s about to host another extravagant party. I swear, one day, they’ll realize none of the parties matter. It’s about who you spend your time with instead, huh?”
I hated that tears were running down my face again.
“I used to think it was all about a guy and the parties I went to with him. Can you believe that? Then, he left me and I realized his love was gone and I hadn’t taken the time to figure out how to love myself. Or how to love my family and the people who were really there for me, you know?”