Chapter 40
FORTY
Alexia
The second the ER doors close behind us, a nurse is calling numbers over her shoulder, BP dropping, heart rate climbing, and I have to half-jog to keep a hand on the bed rail as they wheel him down the corridor.
“I'm sorry.” I get it out between steps, breathless. “Leon, I am so sorry.”
He doesn't look at me. Stares up at the fluorescent lights sliding past overhead instead, jaw working, face gone the colour of the sheet under him.
“Sorry for what, exactly.” His voice is thin, breathless, but there's no doubt about the fury underneath it. “Sorry for being with my mates behind my back? Or sorry you got caught lying to me about it?”
I give the medical team credit for not reacting to the family drama. “Both. Neither.”
He winces as the bed rattles over a bump. “Pick one, Alexia.”
“Leon. I... I can't, I have feelings for them all,” I pant.
“Fucking hell! I didn't mean pick one of the guys.” He coughs, a pained grimace flashes across his face, tearing at me. “I mean pick which you feel worse about. Being with them or that I found out about it?”
“OR two,” someone shouts, and the pace of the stretcher picks up under my hand, and I'm jogging properly now just to keep up.
“His pressure's still dropping,” someone else says, and my stomach drops.
We hit the double doors marked Theatre — Staff Only, and a hand closes on my shoulder before I can go through them.
“You need to wait here, miss,” the voice says, kind, but all I can do is focus on my brother's face.
All the blood drains out of me. “No, please. Wait!”
He lifts his head, just enough to find me before the doors swing shut between us. The bed slows for a second, like it knows these might be the last words we get.
“Wait for what?” he says. “You've had plenty of time to say what you needed to say.”
It's the last thing I hear before the doors seal shut, and I'm left standing in the corridor with my hand still curled around a rail that isn't there anymore.
I just stand there until someone tells me I have to move.
I don't remember walking back to the waiting room. I just find myself there, on a worn leather bench, staring at the wall-mounted TV with the sound off, and I don't register the guys arriving until Marcus is crouched in front of me with both hands on my knees.
“Lexi? Where is he? What's happening?”
I blink him into focus. “They took him into surgery.” My voice comes out flat, like it belongs to someone else. “They couldn't tell me anything else.”
Zachary sits down hard in the chair next to me. Rhys stays standing.
Marcus reaches for my hand and I pull it back before he gets there.
“Lexi—”
“Don't.” I hear how sharp it comes out but I don't know how to soften it. “I don't want to be touched right now.”
He nods. “Sorry, baby. I'm just trying to—”
I drop my head into my hands. “This is exactly what I was afraid of. This. Exactly this.”
“Sweetheart, we didn't want him to find out like that.” Zachary stares down at the floor. “None of us wanted that.”
“No.” My voice cracks straight down the middle. “I didn't want him to find out at all.”
Nobody says anything for a second.
I watch all three of them process what I said: Marcus winces, Zachary's jaw goes tight, Rhys just stops breathing for a moment.
“Were you ever going to tell him?” Rhys says after a while. Impossibly quiet, almost gentle. “Or were we always going to be your dirty little secret?”
“That's not... shit, no. That's not what I meant.” My hands are shaking. I press them flat against my thighs and it doesn't help. “I meant we needed to be careful. Because look — look what happened. He's back in there because of this. Because of me.”
“He's back in there because Craig's a vindictive prick,” Marcus says. “He lost his chance with you and he couldn't handle it. This is not because of you or us, Alexia.”
I spin to face him. “It's the same thing, Marcus, don't you see that? None of this would have happened if—”
“If what? If we didn't exist? If we never finally admitted our feelings to you? Is that what you wish?” I get up and walk down the hallway, bracing myself to say the thing I've known had to be said since I stepped onto the ambulance.
I come back, arms wrapped around myself, staring at a spot on the wall behind Zachary's head. The first time I try, the words don't come out. I have to take a deep breath before I try again.
“I think it's best if we end this,” I say. And suddenly I wish I was the one on the operating table. It would explain the way my heart feels like it's been cut wide open.
Nobody speaks for a second.
“Okay.” Marcus says it slow, each word its own sentence. “If it's too much pressure right now, with everything going on, we can take a step back. Slow down. Whatever you need.”
“No.” I shake my head. “Not a break. Permanently. This. Us. All of us. It's over.”
I want to walk away, but I owe them the rest of this conversation. Or maybe I owe it to myself, to savour these last few moments with them.
“No.” Zachary's on his feet now, shaking his head like he wants to erase the memory of the words I've just spoken. “That's not what we want.”
“It doesn't matter.” I harden my voice. “You don't get to decide this.”
“Neither do you,” Rhys says, and there's an edge in it I've never heard from him. “You don't get to make this decision for the four of us on your own. Not here, not like this. Not because you're scared.”
“I'm not scared, I'm being realistic. Nothing good has come out of this. Nothing! Look where we are, Rhys.”
I turn away from them, let my chin quiver for one second, then wipe my hand against my eyes and face them again.
“That's not true and you don't really feel that way,” Marcus says, his voice soaked in hurt.
And I wish I could tell him that of course I don't. That the time with him, with all of them, was the best of my life. But I don't. This is the best way.
“It's not true, Alexia,” Zachary says, quieter.
I swallow down the words on my tongue, and remind myself why I'm doing this.
“Isn't it? My brother is back in surgery. My whole department watched Craig call me a—” I can't finish it.
“And Leon heard it. My big brother, who I've idolised and who has protected me my whole life, heard the horrible things a colleague said about me.
And the only thing he took away from it is that all the people he loves and trusts most have been lying to him for months!
We can't keep doing this to him. He's my family!
I've nearly lost him twice in one month, and I am not risking that again for—”
My voice trails off. Because I can't say it.
“For us,” Zachary finishes for me.
“That's not what I meant.”
“It's exactly what you meant.” His voice is rising now, control slipping. “You're choosing him over us. Which—fine. He's your brother. But don't stand there and pretend it's some noble sacrifice when it's really just you finally admitting that we don't matter.”
The look of hurt on his face is almost too much for me to bear. But I do.
“Of course you matter. You know that's not what I mean. And I've never thought I was being noble. None of what I've done lately is noble. I'm trying to keep my family safe from being hurt again.”
“You don't get it, do you? You are our family too.” Marcus, loud now, the words coming out furious. “Not just Leon. You've been part of this family since before any of this started, Alexia, and you don't get to just erase that.”
“Family doesn't put each other through this.” My voice is shaking now. “Wouldn't it be easier, for all of you, if you didn't have to choose? Between him and me? If you never had to be put in a position where you had to worry about losing him?”
Nobody answers straight away.
But then I see it happen — a split second of what if. What if none of this had ever happened?
I latch onto it anyway.
“See,” I say, quieter now. “Even you know it.”
“No.” Rhys's face changes fast, alarm chasing out whatever was there a second ago. “That's not what I was thinking. I would never want to know what my life would be without yo—”
“We can't keep doing this.” I say it over him, because if I let him finish, I don't know if I'll be able to hold onto the decision at all.
“I know it's not fair on you. Any of you.
And you can't keep having to wait around for me to make up my mind.” I swallow down what feels like pieces of my heart splintering off. “So I've made it. We are over.”
Nobody moves.
Then a doctor appears at the end of the corridor, calling my name.
I go.
And somehow, I manage not to look back even once.