Page 59 of The Player's Club
Caroline’s eyes were closed. She had multiple IVs, along with an oxygen cannula in her nose. She looked horribly thin—her cheeks were sunken in and her once beautiful blond hair thin and wispy. For the first time, she looked her age or maybe even older. It almost made it easy to pretend it wasn’t her; maybe that would make this whole thing less painful.
Seeing the woman who’d basically controlled my life once upon a time was strange. Right now, she didn’t look like she even had the strength to turn on the hospital TV, let alone tie me up, whip me, and make me beg for her mercy.
Her eyelashes fluttered open. “Who . . .?”
I sat down and took her hand. “It’s Mac, Caro.”
Realization dawned slowly on her face. She tried to sit up but didn’t have the strength. It was devastating to see how weak she was.
“Mac,” she kept saying. She touched my face, tears in her eyes now. “Is it really you? Or am I hallucinating again?”She let out a croaky laugh. “You know, these painkillers they give you—they mess you up. I keep seeing people in the corner of my eye, but nobody’s there. But you seem real enough.”
“It’s me. No hallucination. I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner.”
“You should be careful. Dave has been staying the night with me. You don’t want to run into him.”
“I’ll be careful.” Even though I offered her assurance, I wasn’t afraid of him. It didn’t matter to me if he caught me here, but I didn’t want to do anything to upset her in this condition, so for that reason, I hoped he didn’t see me.
She let out a breath, then winced. “It hurts to breathe. They say the cancer has spread all over. Even with painkillers, there’s still pain. How is that? I don’t understand it. Aren’t painkillers supposed to take away the pain? I guess I’m the lucky exception, or maybe I’m being punished for all the pain I’ve dished out.”
She was rambling, and it hurt to see. Caroline had always been such a force of a woman. She’d done everything with confidence, including taking me under her wing and showing me the BDSM lifestyle at a time when I was desperate to understand myself. She never rambled or talked about hallucinations. She was never dying.
I realized now that cancer had left Caroline a shell of her former self. Selfishly, I almost wished I hadn’t come. At least then my last memory of her wouldn’t be this woman in a hospital bed who was at death’s door. But this was life. And as tempting as it would’ve been to pretend this wasn’t happening, I was glad I came.
“Mac, sweetheart,” Caroline was saying. She touched my cheek. “I don’t have much time left. I wanted to tell you—I needed to tell you something—”
She started coughing so hard that I almost called for a nurse. But Caroline forced me to sit back down. At that moment, I saw a glimmer of her former self and couldn’t help but smile.
“That’s a good boy. You know I’m still in charge, right?” She smiled grimly. “I wanted to tell you that I never stopped having feelings for you. Even after all these years. I told myself to forget about you, but I couldn’t. And then when I got diagnosed, it was like a light bulb went off.”
I stared down at her, shocked. Horrified. Confused. And angry, too. This was the first moment I started to second-guess having come here.
“What about your husband?” I asked hoarsely.
“What about him? He’s never understood me. Never fulfilled me either.”
“Then why did you stay married to him?”
It was our age-old argument: why she’d stayed with her husband despite her numerous affairs with other men. It had haunted me years ago. Now, though, it just made me feel pity for her.
“You know the reasons, Mac,” she replied, sounding angry. “It wasn’t that simple.”
“Of course not.” I patted her hand. It wasn’t worth arguing about—not anymore. She hadn’t been willing to give up the security her marriage had afforded her. And I’d been just a kid without a penny to my name. Back then, it’d stung. Now? I understood, even as I pitied Caroline, too.
“Tell me you feel the same,” she said, her tone imploring. She was shaking now, clearly distressed. “I know you loved me once.”
Guilt made me weak. “I still love you,” I said, even as I felt the words to be a lie.
She took a deep, trembling breath. Then she closed her eyes, and I could tell my words—my lies—had given her peace. And for that, I couldn’t feel guilty about saying them.
She was about to die. If I could give her this, I would.I needed to be the bigger person here. Even though Caroline’s actions would leave me distrustful for the rest of my life, I still wanted to bring her solace. It was no wonder I’d doubted Elodie enough to give Tony her name. I’d been conditioned through Caroline to believe that a woman can really hurt you by lying to your face and cheating someone she claimed to love. The thing is, I knew Caroline believed she did love her husband. That was what made everything she did so fucking scary. She would try to justify it, because she claimed he couldn’t give her what she’d needed.
Before I left, I kissed her on the forehead and said a silent prayer that she wouldn’t suffer much longer.
When I was heading out to my car, I heard my name. Thinking it was a fan, I turned, only to see a fist coming straight at my nose. It was a hard enough blow that I was sent reeling.
“You son of a bitch! How dare you show your face around here? I should’ve shot you when I had the chance,” said a voice I never thought I’d hear again.
It was Dave Bradford. And he looked like he was about to have a stroke.