“What would it take for me to get to her?”

Nothing was a hard limit. I think he knew it.

“I want fifteen percent of your shares in Fiscal Heights Holdings.” He served me my own medicine and shoved a good amount of it down my fucking throat. I didn’t even think about his request before the words left my mouth.

“Take them. They’re yours. Now get me up there. I need to see her.”

“Twenty,” he said. Fucker.

Straight-faced, I said, “Yours.”

“Twenty-five. All of your shares. Mine. Sign it tomorrow morning.”

“Take all my shares. Take my clothes and my apartment and my inner organs. Let me see her. Reason with the LeBlancs.”

He got up, finished his coffee in one gulp, and set his cup down.

“The thing is, Mr. Cocksmacked, I don’t need any of your shit. But I’ll help you. This is the hard part, by the way. Even if her parents would let you see her, the LeBlanc sisters don’t go down easy.”

I stood up, finally allowing a smirk to grace my face.

“Well, then it’s a good thing I’m a very good tackler.”

What makes you feel alive?

The struggle. To breathe. To live. To not let go.

THE MUTTERS BEHIND THE CLOSED door awakened me. Whoever stood there lost their patience quickly. The stomping on the floor tipped me off. Then the voices started bleeding into my ears and the puzzle pieces fell into place.

Mama raised her voice. “I don’t actually care. My daughter is very sick, and you were well aware of that. You know her, after all. Now go away, boy, and don’t you come back here. Rosie is fighting for her life, and make no mistake, I blame you for it. What makes you think she’ll want to see you?”

“Mrs. LeBlanc.” His voice had an edge I couldn’t decode. Dean Cole wasn’t the groveling type. “I apologized. Let your daughter decide for herself. I assure you, she wants to hear me out. Ask her.”

“She’s asleep.”

I opened my mouth with the intention to call out to them, but nothing came out. The unwelcome transformation my body had gone through in recent hours left me speechless. Literally. No longer able to move my head, I found myself fighting for my next blink. Everything was sore. I had to take shallow breaths purposely, to make sure that my ribs wouldn’t crack. I needed to tell the nurse to up my painkiller dose. But I didn’t complain. Morphine would only make me sleep more, and there was so much going on around me, I didn’t want to miss a thing. The other reason I didn’t want to be given more narcotics was naked, raw fear. What if I died in my sleep? My eyes were heavy, but I fought to stay awake.

I was desperate to see Dean again. Did he screw up? Yes. Badly. Was I mad at him? Sure. Furious. But when you were on your deathbed, there was no time to be mad. Vindictiveness was thrown out the window, along with any other soul-eating, negative trait that was ingrained in us. When you were on your deathbed, time reminded you just how precious it really was. Feelings were bare and open for the world to see, poke, and dig into.

“Charlene.” Vicious interfered from the hospital hallway outside my door. “Rosie loves Dean. He has a reason for not meeting her in the Hamptons yesterday, and I can tell you that his reason doesn’t suck. At least ask her if she wants to see him.”

“Fine, but not right now,” Mama huffed, and I heard her smacking her thigh. “As I said, she really is asleep right now, and I’ll be damned if something like this nonsense wakes her up while she should be resting. Go. I will call you when she wakes up.”

“New York is three hours away, ma’am.” Dean tried to reason with her.

“And that’s a long journey, huh, Mr. Cole? My daughter made it to see you here. You didn’t even bother to show up.”

That shut both of them up. A few minutes later, the door opened and Mama walked in. I didn’t know where Millie or Daddy was, but I guess they were all taking turns to watch over me. Every single waking moment was spent with someone else. It made reaching out to Dean by a text message or a call impossible. Asking for personal space wasn’t fair to the people who stopped their lives to cater to me.

The mattress dipped as my mother came to sit by my side.

“How are you feeling, sweetheart?”

I opened my mouth and tried to talk, but my words came out as a desperate hiss. “Been better.”

She laughed and sniffed, wiping away a couple of tears. I wondered if all families were messes of epic proportions when a youngster was dying, or was it just mine? I wasn’t a kid anymore, but I was used to being everyone’s baby. Vicious called me Little LeBlanc. Dean called me Baby LeBlanc. Everyone else, Rosie-bug. And so a part of me came to foolishly believe that I had more time.