Page 219 of Baby For The Mountain Man

I took a deep breath and winced. It felt like my insides were on fire. A machine buzzed next to me and Leo’s angry whispers came from what may have been the right side of my bed. I was in the hospital, I just knew it. I hated places like this, where people always try to make you feel better even though you might never be fixed. I remembered feeling like this when I broke my shoulder. Completely helpless, at the doctor’s mercy. I took another breath and again my lungs shuddered under the pain. Whatever those assholes had done to me, I would get them back for this. I had to.

Apparently I was asleep for almost three days. When I finally came to, they were able to remove the tube that was going down my throat so I could finally talk again. My mother was there, gripping my hands tightly between her own frail fingers. She was going to be really angry when she got a chance to get over the fact that I hadn’t died. I wasn’t looking forward to that conversation. I’d lied to everyone. The only person that actually knew that I was going to match was Berkley.

Berkley. I had seen her in my dreams a hundred times over the past few days. But now that my eyes were finally open and I was taking in the landscape around me, there she was, asleep in a hospital chair in the corner. She hadn’t been a dream. She was real. She’d been at the fight and had seen everything go down. She had been with me at my absolute worst. But she’d stayed, just like I wanted her to, even though I pushed her away. Jesus, I was lucky.

Leo was the first to notice that my eyes were open. “Berkley, wake up! He’s awake. How do you feel, son?”

“Like pickles,” I barely croaked out. My throat felt like there were needles all through it. I would consider that before I talked again.

My mom looked at me with sad eyes. She looked a lot older than she had last week. That was my fault. “I’m just glad you’re okay, honey. It’s going to take a while, but you’re going to be okay.” I realized I could only see out of my one eye, and I lifted my hand carefully to touch the other side of my face but was met with gauze instead. “They had to do surgery on your face, but they said it should heal in a few weeks. You’re alive, that’s all that matters.” I could hear the restraint in her voice, chasing away the tears. She was trying to be strong for me, and that meant that things were a lot worse than she was letting me know.

Somehow deep in my belly I knew that I’d almost died. Or maybe I did, maybe they brought me back to life. And that was also my fault. I always was my own worst enemy.

Leo gave me a loving look which I knew was going to be followed by serious talking to. He always took care of me, so it was his duty to be the one to let me have it. “What the hell were you thinking? Going off by yourself like that! To an underground fight! You knew what those chumps wanted to do to you. You had a death wish going there. And now you had your mother and Berkley and me worried. That’s on you.”

The pain in my throat was too severe to speak again so I simply nodded and cast my eyes down, trying to relieve myself of some of his shame. He was completely right. All of this was on me.

He put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed it. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”

I knew that he meant it too. “Corina, why don’t you and I take a little walk? Give him and Berkley a minute alone.”

My mother kissed me on the forehead before she followed him out the door, looking over her shoulder at me as the tears welled up in her eyes. I’d hurt her so badly.

Berkley sat down on the side of my bed with bags under her eyes from lack of sleep. I couldn’t believe she’d stayed after how I had treated her. She deserved so much better than this.

“You scared the hell out of me. I came to that fight to stop you. Those guys wanted to kill you, to knock you out of the competition permanently. Did you know that?”

I slowly shook my head, the room spinning as I did so.

“Don’t ever do something so stupid again. I just don’t think my heart could take it.”

She chewed on her lower lip, and even in the hospital bed it still turned me on. Berkley was everything I wanted, but nothing I deserved. Once I had my strength back,

I would explain that to her and let her make her choice. I wouldn’t make it for her, not this time.

FOURTEEN

BERKLEY

“Wake up!”

“Why? I asked groggily.

“Girl, you made me promise not to let you sleep all day. You’re going to miss your two PM class. How much longer are you going to keep this up? Dillon’s going to be in the hospital another three or four days. And you’ve been dragging your ass for a week. I don’t know how you’re keeping up with your class schedule and spending most of your nights at the hospital.”

I rubbed my eyes, trying to control the burn from lack of sleep. Naomi was right. I hadn’t been sleeping much. Dillon’s mother was at the hospital anytime she could be, but when she was working her shifts as a waitress, I spent as much time there as I could. He had finally started to talk again and his face was healing up well. The doctors were impressed with his progress, and they felt that they would send them home by the end of the week. I knew it was killing him to just lie in a hospital bed, but I was hoping that every second he had to lie there made him think about making poor choices again. But there was something blossoming between us at the hospital, the way his fingers intertwined with mine and how he seemed so peaceful when I was there. Somehow I knew that deep down he was thankful I’d been there that night, and he knew that we were even now. A debt for debt.

“I know I said that, but I need to sleep sometime.”

She shook her head, “Yes, but you need to sleep at night so you don’t miss your classes. I know you’re like totally hung up on him, but you barely know him. He’s obviously dangerous, doing some illegal fight. You have to watch yourself, before you get too involved.”

I was already involved. That was a big part of my problem.

“I promise that I will take care of myself. I just have to take care of him for a little bit longer too. He gets out this week. Then things will go back to normal.” I was excited to see his apartment. I had a feeling it would be was ridiculously clean and probably didn’t have a lot in it, since he spent so much time at the gym. But I was hoping I would find a couple small pieces of him there, something that would give me more information than he did. Dillon was still mostly a mystery to me, regardless of how much time I spent up a hospital talking to him.

“Fine,” she muttered before walking out of our bedroom and going to her own class. I pulled myself up into a sitting position—thank God for multiple pillows—and looked down to check my phone. My dad had called me again, second time this week. That was unlike him, and I had a few minutes before class, so I thought I could talk to them on the way there. I grabbed my bag and shoved my laptop inside before pressing the call back button and walking out of my room.

“Hi Daddy. How are you?” I could almost feel his smile from the other end of the line.

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