he had for their questions. His friends — his only true family — waited down the hallway.
'When can I get out of here?' King raised the bed so he could sit up.
'The doctors want to keep you overnight for observation. No reason why we can't let you go in the morning.'
'Can you send my people back here? I'd like to see them.'
'Only a couple at a time. We don't want a crowd in here.' The nurse pushed her glasses up on her nose. A sweet smile curled on her lips, but she was not a woman to trifle with.
King raised his hand to his forehead as if nursing a headache. The images replayed in his mind. The searing pain of being shot. After that, his memory became stills. Flashing lights. A breathing mask. Bleets of a machine. Doctors hovering over him. Then nothing. He dreamt of his father, though it wasn't his father. More like the ideal of his father. And there was water. Cool. Refreshing. Pure. Like drinking life itself. Lost in his thoughts, he didn't notice Lady G enter.
'Hey,' Lady G said.
'Hey,' King straightened. He pulled the sheets down on his leg, not wanting her to see him in so pathetic a state. 'Just you?'
'Nah, they all out there. Wayne. Pastor Winburn. Big Momma. Percy. Had.'
'No Merle?'
'He out of pocket. Some girl though. Calls herself La Payasa.'
'Who?'
'Says she's with Black's crew. Helped bring Had and Percy back safe. So did Lott.'
'Yeah, I need to handle some things. Old business.' The question was still there, unspoken — Why did you do it? — but silence reigned with no obligation to fill it.
'King, I-'
'You know what I've realized?' King cut her off. Nostalgic for times that never really existed. Sometimes he feared that he couldn't relax and enjoy life because he lived it like it was glimpses of happiness spent holding his breath, waiting for the fall to happen. 'I've worn out my capacity to love. At least in my own strength and on my own terms. I've just sort of reached my limit on what I can do on my own. It's a big world out there and I'm still amazed by all the good. And there's still so much to do. Like this Black situation.'
'You and Merle go on about your duty. Your responsibility. It doesn't have to be you. The world will go on if you don't get on your white horse to try and save us all.'
'When I first met you, you seemed like such a scared little girl. I mean, you came across all hard and stuff, but I could tell. I wanted to protect you. Heal you. I lost my way. Tried to deny my feelings for you, but they were too strong. Fell in love with you. I thought you felt that way too.' It was always so easy to be with her. She understood him in ways few others did, without him having to explain much. King stirred as if bored. His brow lowered. Her voice didn't fill him with the crazy passion it used to. Loving her was like loving a black hole. Some days, he thought he loved her so much he hated her for making him so weak. Then there was something else. Something he didn't want to have to admit to himself or voice because to voice it made it real. That he loved the idea of her loving him. That if she accepted him, he'd finally feel good about himself, because of who she was… Good. Innocent. Pure. 'Everything I did, I did out of love.'
'I wanted to believe it. Trust in it. But part of me always thought that you loved your mission, not me.' Lady G knew that was only part of it. Inside, she was still a little bit of that scared little girl. Trapped in a burning house with no one to protect her. To keep her from being burned. The idea of being loved so completely intoxicated her. It nourished her and she craved it. And she lost her way. She removed one of her gloves. The scars from her burns pulsed like throbbing veins. She held her hand out until King took it.
'I'm guilty of many things. I'm sorry I hurt you. I loved you, but not the way I should have. I should have guarded your heart better. I hope you can forgive me.'
'I do.' King squeezed her hand. 'If I were to ask 'why?' would you have an answer?'
'Would anything I say help? Can't we just move on?'
'We can. Maybe we ought to. That would be easy. But not… real. We'd both always have questions that would haunt us.'
'Do you ever wonder what happened to us?'
'Every day.'
'You left.'
'I…' by reflex, he almost said 'I didn't stop loving you' but even that would have been a tacit admission of a truth. That he prided himself on how he guarded his heart and life were. How she slipped under his radar, right past his walls of protection. He didn't see her coming, then next thing he knew, she occupied a place in his heart. Nor was there any defense to be found by crying out to her, 'You made me love you. You forced me to let you in, then you left me. You left me all alone. I had nobody. I needed you.'
'There was an emptiness with you. Like you weren't all there, not… filling me.'
'And Lott filled it? I couldn't?'
'You couldn't. Not really. You weren't there.'
'I was good to you. Why didn't that matter?'
'It did, it just wasn't enough. Not from you. That was easy for you. What I needed from you, you couldn't give because it wasn't in you to give.'
They met each other's eyes, affection tinged with regret and sorrow. The tension was gone. Nothing to rub up against. No one to blame. King cursed himself for falling into a laid trap of their weakness of character. They fought to gain some sort of control over their environment, their lives. He couldn't help but think it was somehow his fault. The price of a crown was often a heavy heart.
'One day, impossibly, it won't hurt this much,' Lady G broke the silence. The last thing she wanted to do was hurt him anymore.
'What's broken can be made whole. What's dirty can become clean.' The words came out of King, though he wasn't sure if they were directed at him or her. 'That's the hope we live in.'
'You're crying.'
'So are you.'
The conversation had already delved deeper than he was comfortable with. A wound dug into in order to remove the settled rot was a good place to allow the healing to happen. Saying any more might push them to a place they couldn't come back from. So they stopped. Movement caught Lady G's attention. She cut her eyes back at King, then lowered her head to excuse herself. Lott stepped to the bedside.
'You look good,' Lott said, not knowing where to begin.
'Do you want to do that?' King asked. 'Begin with a lie.'
'No, not really.'
'You don't have to be here.'
'Where else would I be? You shouldn't be alone.'
'I'm not alone. Not as long as I have people around me who love me.'
'You ain't gonna make this easy.'
'You are a lie. Let me know something about the you that hides.'
Hurt spilled from Lott's eyes. A pain left buried in his chest. 'I love Lady G. I always have. And I love you. You and me… we brothers. And I betrayed that. I betrayed both of you. I'm sorry, man. I… You don't know how sorry I am.'
There it was.
The betrayal in a sentence. Somehow it seemed bigger before it was said. Now here, they were both broken, regretting the stupid decisions they had made and the pain caused in the wake of them spinning out of control while their worlds had been tossed upside down. A lot of hurt had passed between them. Sometimes too much time elapsed and there was nothing left of a relationship to mend together. Sometimes, you just had to pick up the relationship where it lay. And sometimes, you just had to see the weight of the hurt on the other person's face to know how genuine it was. 'You need to quit punishing yourself.'
'But King…' The words 'I'm sorry' still felt too small to contain all that Lott carried and wanted to convey to King.
King waved him off. 'Enough. We need you. I need you. We can't do this thing on our own.'
