Gentleman Nine(75)

“Just now. I came here straight from the airport. Have you been here the whole time with her?”

“She’s been here for a couple of days. I’ve been here the majority of the time.”

Still looking through the window at her, I asked, “Is she gonna be alright?”

“Yeah. At this point, they’re just monitoring her. This is the first time she’s really fallen asleep. She needed it badly.”

As much as we were making an attempt to be cordial, you could cut the tension in the air with a knife. It felt like it was only a matter of time before one of us lost it on the other.

“Why did you even come here, Channing?”

And with that, it would seem my losing it would be happening sooner rather than later.

I whipped my head toward him. “Excuse me?”

“She told me you weren’t even speaking to her. She didn’t even do anything wrong.”

I was ready to punch him. “Well, forgive me if I got upset because my girlfriend kissed her ex-boyfriend.”

He angrily laughed at me. “Your girlfriend? She’s not your girlfriend.”

“The fuck, she isn’t. She became mine long before you came back from the dead and fucked everything up.”

“Sorry to ruin your plan of fucking me over the first chance you got. You mean to tell me that Boston job was a coincidence? You heard we broke up and wasted no time pouncing on her.”

I bent my head back in laughter. “Are you kidding me? You have some nerve to accuse me of that when you’re the one who fucking pounced on her the second I went away to college. You knew how I—”

“Excuse me, gentlemen!” A nurse interrupted our sparring. “You’re going to need to take this outside. A hospital floor is no place for a fight between two grown men.”

Rory and I just death stared at each other for a few seconds. Huffing and puffing, we stalked over to the elevators and down to the lobby.

Exiting the building in silence, I wasn’t sure if we were about to roll up our sleeves and go at it outside or what. All I knew was, whatever was about to happen between us had been a long time coming, a decade in the making.

We ended up in a grassy area off to the side of the building that was adjacent to a parking lot. There was no one else in sight, which was probably a good thing.

He held his hands out. “What are we even doing out here? What do you want from me, Channing? It’s not enough that you stole the only woman I’ve ever loved out from under me, fucked her, and manipulated her into falling for you?”

I got in his face. “Is that what you really think? You think what she and I have isn’t real? I feel sorry for you if that’s the case, because you’re gravely misinformed with a false sense of confidence. You weren’t there. You have no idea what’s developed between us.”

“You wouldn’t know a mature relationship if it hit you in the face, Lord. Have you ever told her exactly how many women you slept with before her?”

“She knows everything about me. And I’m not the guy you think you know. But I don’t owe you an explanation of how or why I might have changed. I’m not looking for your opinion.”

“I don’t believe that you have changed. I think Amber was a revenge fuck for you.”

Now, he was going below the belt.

“You’re really looking to get decked, aren’t you?” I unintentionally spit at him when I said, “Don’t you ever utter those words again unless you want your face rearranged.”

“So, then, tell me why. How was it that you ended up with Amber as soon as we’d broken up? Out of all of the women in the world you could’ve been with, you ended up with my girl?”

“I was there for her because you dicked her over, jackass—or so we thought. No one knew your real reason for leaving her at the time. She was shattered. You’d broken her heart. That was all I knew. Amber and I never stopped being friends even when you guys were together—you know that. Why should it surprise you that I was there for her when you crushed her?”

“‘There for her’ equals fucking her? Isn’t that taking advantage of a vulnerable person?”

“Again, I don’t owe you any explanations…but it wasn’t my intention to fall in love with her. Believe me, I tried as hard as I could not to.”

“Well, you should’ve fought harder.”

I leaned in and took pleasure in saying, “Best thing I ever did was to give up the fight.”

He gritted his teeth. “So, that’s it? You think you can just appear out of nowhere and steal her from me when she and I have nine years of history together?”

“Out of nowhere? I think there’s a little more to the story than that. Do I need to remind you that you stole her from under me? You knew she was interested in me before I left for UF. Yeah…she told me. You warned her against me.”

“She was innocent. You were not a good fit for her. It was the right thing to do at the time.”

“Of course, it was the right thing—for you. It was all part of your plan.”

“So, fucking sue me for wanting her so much that I was willing to sacrifice our friendship for it. That was how much she meant to me. I couldn’t help that I fell in love with her.”

“Well, I can’t help that I’m in love with her now. You threw away what you had because of a bad decision you made. You chose not to be up front with her. You ended it and left her completely devastated. I picked up the pieces, and you know what? I don’t want to give them back. I love every single broken piece of her. And I can’t feel guilty about that, even though I’m really sorry about what happened to you after the accident.”