Page 44 of Revived

It was my turn to shrug. How the hell could I be honest with her? For a good decade, I was so hung up on Kendra that I couldn’t even think about anything beyond meaningless sex with women. Some of them stuck around a week, others a little longer. One night stands were never my thing, but commitment was never on the table – not with any of them.

“Is it because you were always in love with her?” She asked, seeming to already know the answer.

“I knew, the moment I saw her with another man touching her pregnant belly that it would never happen, and I guess after that, it wasn’t something I thought about with anyone else either.”

She hummed out a sound and grew quiet. At first, I wondered if I said something wrong, but then her deep, even breaths were a dead giveaway that Mel had passed right the hell out on me. I leaned in again and kissed the top of her head once more before plucking up the down comforter at the end of the bed and pulling it up over our bodies.

~*~

Waking up next to Mel shouldn’t have been startling, but it took a moment for my brain to kick in and figure out why my heart was hammering so quickly inside my chest. Then I heard it again. My cell was ringing, and that was the tone I had set for my son. Ever since his accident, I’d dreaded phone calls. The worry that he’d suddenly relapse or have another one, while ridiculous, was still prevalent in my mind.

I eased out of bed and found my jeans on the floor where they’d been discarded so carelessly the previous night. Somehow, I managed to answer just before Chevy hung up. He chuckled into the phone as I grunted a hello. “I thought you had last night off, why do you sound like death?”

“A man can still have a late night even when he’s not working, Son.”

“Please, tell me you mean that late night happened with Mel, or just the guys,” he pleaded.

It was my turn to laugh. “She’s still here,” I explained quietly as I moved away from the bedroom area of the suite and out to the combination kitchen-lounge area.

“Well, that’s good news,” Chevy mentioned, though his voice was heavy. I knew he must have been calling with news of his own, and from the sounds of it, not the good kind. It made me almost feel guilty about the fact that I’d had such an incredible night with Mel, finally.

“What’s going on, Chev?”

“I talked to Opal, finally.” He sighed so heavily that I swear I felt it through the phone. “It took forever to get her family to let me in to see her.”

“How is she doing?”

“She’s getting better, but I guess there’s no feeling down the majority of her legs. The doctors think she’s lucky because she still has full function of her hips, bladder, and whatnot. Opal doesn’t see it that way though. She thinks she’s broken.”

“Well, she has every right to feel that way, and it will take her awhile to come to terms with what that means for her life. From what you just said, it sounds like she was pretty lucky though.”

“Yeah, I just wish she would see it that way. Opal doesn’t think we should be together anymore because a rock star can’t have a girlfriend in a wheelchair.”

“Well, Chev, as much as you don’t want to hear this, it’s something you need to consider. She’s not comfortable with her outlook yet. Imagine the media splashing her issues on the front page of the tabloids. Imagine being out in public with her and being mobbed by fans. I’m not saying it’s not possible, but her condition will definitely require more planning on your part when your band starts to take off.”

“I know all that. I talked to Phoenix about the logistics for her safety when she’s at home, school, work, or out on tour with me. I’m pretty sure we covered almost every possible scenario and how to handle it just in case.”

Pride swelled my chest that my son was so forward thinking and also that he wasn’t willing to just toss his girl aside because she was hurt. “I’m so fucking in awe of you,” I told him.

“What? Why?”

“Do you know how many up and coming rock star little shits would think of all of that, let alone ask an expert to help them plan?”

“No clue,” he replied.

“None that I’ve ever known.” I thought a moment about Jay, from The Infinite Everything then. “Okay, well not many. I probably only know one who would have been thinking that far ahead about logistics. Most wouldn’t have seen her as a problem to keep around, the few who might have done so, would have made her safety someone else’s priority.”

“Then those assholes wouldn’t deserve her,” he argued back.

“Not denying that, Son. I’m just letting you know that I’m proud of you for being the standup man who would prove everyone wrong. Did you talk to her about already having a plan?”

“Of course I did, but she just said that it wouldn’t matter. It’s only half the issue. She says that she wouldn’t be able to keep up with my lifestyle and I was already thinking about all the ways I’d have to change things up just to accommodate her.” Chevy grew quiet for a minute, but I didn’t think it was appropriate to butt in. He sounded like he was thinking through something. “What made you give up on my mom? You said you were in love with her, that if you had known about me, you would have given it all up to stay with her, with us. What changed that for you? How do you decide when the feelings you have aren’t enough anymore?” He was rambling, and desperation was beginning to crack his voice. “If you truly loved her, how could you just leave her behind?”

“Kendra Kendrick was the love of my life,” I told Chevy. “She was everything to me, but I knew that her family would never accept me if I was out changing people’s oil, working at the local grocery store, or even joining the military. Blue collar work was never going to impress them. Hell, having no money, no fame, and no special name to speak of would never have impressed those people. For as much as your mom probably complains about them, I knew she needed them too. She loved them, despite their flaws and interference in our relationship.

“I left to make that name for myself, to earn the money that would impress them and allow me to give Kendra the life she’d grown up with. I knew what it was like to have nothing, Chev. I grew up with a mom who didn’t really care to figure out what her best was when it came to parenting. I watched different men float in and out of my life, which meant sometimes we had enough to eat and other times, I was going hungry while they burned through the money eating out and my mom took care of those assholes instead of me. Never in a million years did I ever want to become one of them and force your mom to have to look after me, or not have enough for her or any future children we’d have.”

“Okay, I get that, but why didn’t you just take her with you? That’s what I want to do with Opal.”

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